1013 Overcome Shame, Process Pain & Maximize Mental Health w/Lori Gottlieb

“If we don’t rewrite our story, we relive our story.”Lori Gottlieb is a psychotherapist and the author of "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone." In today's interview, she discusses tools to help you heal from a difficult past, the importance of "wise compassion" when dealing with those you love, and why you should look yourself in the mirror for 60 seconds every day. Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,013 with New York Times bestselling author Lori Gottlieb.

• 0:08Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:31Lewis Howes?

  Author Robert Braut said, "In the end, there doesn't have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to." An actor Harvey Fierstein said, "Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself." I'm so excited because my guest today is one of the wisest women I've ever met, someone who truly understands the value of writing your own story in life and writing it extremely well. And Lori Gottlieb is a renowned psychotherapist who writes the weekly Dear Therapist column in The Atlantic. And now she's out with a New York Times bestselling book called, "Maybe You Should Talk to Someone," which weaves Lori's experience giving advice with her decision to seek counseling herself as a therapist.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  And I've wanted to have Lori on this podcast for a while now, and we had an incredible, wide-ranging discussion on how her decades of wisdom can translate to a better life for you. In this episode, we discuss how people have much more agency than they realize, the importance of something called wise compassion when dealing with your loved ones who are going through heartache, also tools to help you heal from the damaging effects of shame, how to better narrate the story of your life, because I feel like so many people don't tell a good story from their past, and it affects them now, and why you should look yourself straight in the mirror every single day for 60 seconds minimum.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  I'm so excited about this, and if you're enjoying this during this episode at any time, make sure to share this with someone who you think would love listening to this as well, and who would get a lot out of this. And a quick reminder, make sure to click that subscribe button on the School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts, as well as giving us a rating and review if you want to help spread the message of greatness to more people in the world. Okay, after a quick message, the one and only Lori Gottlieb.

• 2:28Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. I'm super excited. We've got the therapist in the house, Lori Gottlieb. Thank you so much for being here. I'm very excited. I love having therapists on here because I feel like my, my whole life is about healing trauma and letting go of stories that I've written that I need to rewrite, which is something you talk about all the time. And I want to start with a question that I think I'm curious about, which is what is the question you get the most as a therapist?

• 2:53Lori Gottlieb?

  The question I get the most as a therapist is, how can I be in less pain? People don't ask it like that, but I think that's what people are doing when they first come in. You know, basically when people come in, they want something to change. That's why they made the appointment. But usually what they want to change is someone else or something else, right? Like I want this person to change. Yes, yes. How do you get, how do you get that person to change? And I think what they come to realize is that they're going to have to make changes.

• 3:18Lewis Howes?

  But, okay, so people come in because they're in pain and they want the pain to go away. And they've tried, maybe they've tried something else that didn't work. And you're like, talk medicine, right? Without having to take a pill, how can I relieve this pain, this suffering, this problem? But the problem, what I'm hearing you say is never about another person. It's always with them?

• 3:38Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, not always. I think that relationally, a lot of people don't realize that even if the other person is problematic. So right when I was training, one of my clinical supervisors once said, before diagnosing someone with depression, make sure they aren't surrounded by assholes. Right? So, you know, it's not like there aren't problematic people out there.

• 3:54Lewis Howes?

  Their environment.

• 3:55Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. But then what is your response to that? And I think that people don't realize how much agency they have. They don't realize that they can choose their response to their circumstances. They can choose their response to the people around them. And I'm not saying that there aren't incredibly daunting circumstances right now in the world, for example. But then how do you respond? You know, what are you going to do about it? And I think that's where people get stuck.

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  And you talk, I love your TED Talk because you talk about rewriting your story from the past. And I believe that we, we hold on to our stories. And we probably continue to write them in a more powerful way that keeps us trapped or traumatized. Is that fair to say? That something happens in our past. We hold on to the story daily. Or whenever we're triggered, and it's like amplifies the story in our minds.

• 4:43Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, it does. And, and the problem is that often, whatever that version of the story is, we carry with us and we never revise it. And so you create a story when you're younger, for example, about something that happened in your life. And then as an adult, you've never looked at that story through the adult lens. You're still looking at it through the childhood lens. And so that's why I say that when people come in, that we're all unreliable narrators.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 5:08Lori Gottlieb?

  That we all tell a story through, you know, this lens. And, and the thing is, these are usually faulty narratives. So there's a, there's a broader version of the story that people haven't looked at. And so I feel like in a lot of ways, what I do as a therapist is I act as an editor. And I have, of course, a writing background. And so I help people to revise their stories. Because the reason they can't move forward in the story, the reason they can't get to the next chapter, is because of something is wrong with the story. They are stuck. And so it's almost like I'm helping them with writer's block.

• 5:42Lewis Howes?

  I mean, for me, life is an interpretation.

• 5:44Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 5:44Lewis Howes?

  Right? There's an instance that happens, and we can interpret it as good or bad. Or we can interpret as this is a neutral event, and I'm going to make the most of this. Is that, is that fair to say?

• 5:55Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, absolutely. And also what, how we attribute other people's parts of the story, right? So who are the villains and the heroes in this story? You know, I talk in the book about the difference between idiot compassion and wise compassion. And idiot compassion is what our friends do. They back up our story, no matter what. We say, this happened. This happened with my boss. This happened with my partner. This happened with my parent, right? This happened with my best friend. And we say, "Yeah, that was terrible."

• 6:21Lewis Howes?

  Screw them.

• 6:21Lori Gottlieb?

  Screw them. They're a jerk. You know, that's awful. You're right, they're wrong. Don't let anyone treat you that way. That's what we do. And if you've listened to your friends' stories, you start to realize over time that even though the situation and the names might be different, the kind of story they're telling is similar. It's kind of like if a fight breaks out in every bar you're going to, maybe it's you.

• 6:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:41Lori Gottlieb?

  But we don't say that. That's idiot compassion.

• 6:44Lewis Howes?

  Idiot compassion is where we as friends say, "Yeah, you're the best person in the world. This person's horrible."

• 6:50Lori Gottlieb?

  Yep.

• 6:51Lewis Howes?

  Leave them or let them go.

• 6:52Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  Forget about them. Like, they're so bad at what they did. There's always two sides of every story.

• 6:57Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, right. And so, the value of therapy is that we offer wise compassion. We hold up a mirror to you and help you to see yourself in a way that maybe you haven't been willing or able to do. And that's where the other version of the story comes in.

• 7:11Lewis Howes?

  So how do we have wise compassion for our friends? When they're like, "She cheated on me. He left me. They had an affair," uh, whatever.

• 7:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 7:21Lewis Howes?

  How do we change our story and also show compassion that we're there for our friend? Not making, when they're in a vulnerable place, not making the other person right or wrong.

• 7:31Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 7:31Lewis Howes?

  But being there for them and also kind of giving them some tough love, I guess?

• 7:36Lori Gottlieb?

  I wouldn't call it tough love. I would just call it...

• 7:38Lewis Howes?

  Reality?

• 7:38Lori Gottlieb?

  Love.

• 7:39Lewis Howes?

  Love.

• 7:40Lori Gottlieb?

  It's love. It's much more loving to be truthful in a compassionate way. So I sometimes call them compassionate truth bombs.

• 7:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Lori Gottlieb?

  Because we need to hear them. But how do we do it? It has to do with timing and dosage. So the timing is when they're really raw, when something just happened. You know, now's not the time to say, "You know, this has happened with your last three boyfriends."

• 8:00Lewis Howes?

  Right. Maybe you're the problem here.

• 8:03Lori Gottlieb?

  Have you noticed that going through people's phones is not working well for you?

• 8:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 8:07Lori Gottlieb?

  You know, we are not going to say that maybe in that moment. So that's on timing. And then the dosage is how much are you going to say in a particular moment and in a particular conversation? It doesn't all have to happen in one conversation. So I think that that has to do with being a good listener. And a lot of us don't know how to listen. And I think it's really helpful. I see a lot of couples in my practice, too. And if you can say to the person when they come to you with something, "How can I be helpful in this conversation right now? I know you're really hurting. Do you want to just vent? Do you want a hug? Do you want me to help problem solve with you? Do you want my honest opinion? Or do you want me to hold off and we can have that conversation another time?" Let them tell you what they want so you can give them something that is helpful to them

• 8:50Lori Gottlieb?

  in that moment and then in another conversation, you might be able to offer them something more.

• 8:55Lewis Howes?

  When they're not completely raw or broken.

• 8:56Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 8:57Lewis Howes?

  And hurt.

• 8:58Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 8:58Lewis Howes?

  So what is that specific question when anyone's coming to you with a challenge or a complaint or hurt? What's the question you should ask them?

• 9:06Lori Gottlieb?

  How can I be helpful to you right now? I know you're really hurting.

• 9:11Lewis Howes?

  What does that do for the person who's hurting when they hear that?

• 9:13Lori Gottlieb?

  It helps them to reflect on, oh, wait, what do I need? Right? Am I just gonna download all of this stuff? And then I'm not gonna feel any different at the end? Or is there something else that I want right now? And maybe downloading it will make them feel different. Just make them feel seen and understood and heard, which is important. Or maybe they want something else, but let them tell you. And I think the other thing is these three words that are really helpful when they're talking to you are tell me more. So instead of saying, you know, when they, when they say like, oh, here's what's going on. And we say, oh, well, we try to cheer them up. Like, you know, here's what you can do. We try to fix it. We try to cheer them up. We try to make them, make it seem like it's not so bad, whatever we do. Instead, just say, tell me more.

• 9:58Lori Gottlieb?

  We do this with our kids. I can say as a parent, we do this all the time, right? So your kid comes to you and says, you know, I'm really sad about this. Or I'm really worried about this. We say, oh, don't worry. No, it's not a problem. We say, oh, don't be sad, right? Go have ice cream.

• 10:14Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, exactly. But the thing is that then you get the message as a kid that like, oh, wait, I, I'm not supposed to feel this. And really what it is, is we get uncomfortable as parents with our kids' feelings.

• 10:26Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 10:27Lori Gottlieb?

  Because we can't, we are uncomfortable with feelings. We grew up in a way where feelings were messy. Feelings were uncomfortable. Feelings were something that, you know, was, they were gonna be trouble. As opposed to feelings.

• 10:40Lewis Howes?

  Stop crying, stop crying.

• 10:41Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes, as opposed to just, you know, let's, feelings are actually a great thing. People say, oh, there are these negative feelings, like sadness, anxiety, anger, whatever, even envy. I always say, feelings are like a compass. They tell us what direction to go in. So with envy, for example, I say, follow your envy. It tells you what you want. If you are feeling envy, that's great, because it says, what do I desire? It puts you in touch with your desire. What is it that I desire? And what steps can I take to get something like that in my own life? If you're feeling sad, if you're feeling anxious, what is not working right now that you can look at? If you stuff down that feeling, if you pretend it's not there, it just gets bigger. And here's what happens. It doesn't go away.

• 11:21Lori Gottlieb?

  It comes out in too much food, alcohol, drugs, insomnia, a short-temperedness, inability to function, distractibility, that mindless scrolling we all do through the internet. A colleague of mine said that the internet was like the most effective short-term, non-prescription painkiller out there.

• 11:44Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:45Lori Gottlieb?

  Right? And so what happens is your feelings are still there, but you're not dealing with them.

• 11:48Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we never deal with our emotions or feelings?

• 11:52Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, you, first of all, get sick.

• 11:55Lewis Howes?

  Physically sick, emotionally sick, mentally.

• 11:58Lori Gottlieb?

  Everything, everything, right? So we have, just like we have a physical immune system, we have a psychological immune system. And we have to take care of our psychological immune system. So it's just like, you know, what do you do to keep healthy with your body? Like, you're gonna eat right, you're gonna exercise, you know, you're gonna do all the things that you wanna do to take care of yourself, you're gonna get enough sleep. Those things also help your psychological immune system. They're not totally separate. The mind-body connection is profound. But at the same time, you know, are you going to be around people who don't nourish you? That's going to hurt your psychological immune system. That's gonna make you sick. Are you gonna stuff down your feelings? That's going to make you sick. And so, how do we take care of ourselves?

• 12:40Lori Gottlieb?

  And part of it is, instead of trying to numb out your feelings, because numbness isn't the absence of feelings. Numbness is a state of being overwhelmed by too many feelings.

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 12:51Lori Gottlieb?

  And then, not only do you not experience the feelings that you don't want to experience, but you don't experience the other feelings. You mute one feeling, you mute the others. You mute the pain, you mute the joy. So you're living in this state where you don't actually get to feel the range of feelings that make us human.

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  What is that state called?

• 13:10Lori Gottlieb?

  I would say, I was gonna say dead. I mean, I feel like you can be alive, but not living. And that's what happens to people is that they're alive, they're going through the motions, they wake up every day, but they're not really living their lives.

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  What's an assessment we could take for ourselves, if someone's listening or watching, to ask themselves how alive or how dead they are? And if the people in their life closest are actually good for them? Or are hurting their psychological states?

• 13:39Lori Gottlieb?

  Right.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  Is there a questionnaire we could take, like, just off the cuff? Is there an assessment? Is there a few things we could ask ourselves?

• 13:45Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that it has to do with a sense of vitality, right? Which of course, like vitality, the word like life is right in there. When you wake up in the morning, are you excited about what you're doing? Is there meaning in what you're doing? Do you feel connected to how you're spending your days? Because at the end of your life, are you gonna look back and say, what did I do that was meaningful? You know, and maybe you should talk to someone. In my book, I, there's a woman that I treat, she's this young woman who goes on her honeymoon, she's newly married, she comes back, and she has cancer. And she says to me at one point, she says, why do we need a terminal diagnosis?

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  To have a wake-up call.

• 14:23Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, why do we need a terminal diagnosis to live our lives with intention? Why do we need, why do we need that to really pay attention? And I think that if we can keep the awareness of death on, sitting on one shoulder, and I don't mean in a morbid way or in a creepy way, it's, it's not depressing, it's actually, again, going back to vitality, it helps us feel alive, because life has 100% mortality rate, and that's not for other people, we like to believe that, right? And so, the thing is that if we know that we have a limited time here, I think we would pay more attention to what we're actually doing every day.

• 14:58Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so hard for people to pay attention?

• 15:00Lori Gottlieb?

  Fear.

• 15:01Lewis Howes?

  And, but they're, they're like, they feel like they're stuck sometimes for years. Right, it's like, I stay stuck in a relationship that's, I know it's not right for me for years. I stay in a depressed state for years. I, you know, I stay in a job that I hate for years. It's all based on fear.

• 15:17Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, I think it is fear. You know, I think it's fear of uncertainty. This is gonna sound strange, but change is really hard because we cling to something that's familiar to us. So even though we may know, oh, this would help me, this would be a good change for me. We don't do it because it's unfamiliar. And so if you grew up with a lot of chaos, if you grew up feeling sad all the time or anxious all the time, that feels like home to you, even if it's unpleasant or even miserable.

• 15:46Lewis Howes?

  She'll keep finding chaotic environments.

• 15:49Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, you keep recreating it. Yeah, and so, you know, it was funny because my own therapist gave me this great analogy. He said to me, he said, "You remind me of this cartoon, and it's of a prisoner shaking the bars, desperately trying to get out. But on the right and the left, it's open, right? No bars. So basically, the prisoner is not in jail. And that's what so many of us are like. We feel like we're trapped. We're not in jail. We can change. We can just walk around the bars. But why don't we? Because with freedom, the freedom to walk around the bars, comes responsibility. And if we're responsible for our own lives, that scares us. We feel like, oh, I don't know if I can do that. I don't know if I'm competent enough to do that. Or now I'm to blame if things don't go right. I can't blame it on everything else."

• 16:33Lewis Howes?

  Is this one of the reasons why inmates, after a long time being in prison, who get out, go back into prison? Because they feel like they need to be back in that environment? Or are there other reasons?

• 16:43Lori Gottlieb?

  I think there are other reasons. I think we don't give people the support when they come out. You know, the mental health issues that they needed to be treated for were never, you know, they never got that support. And then they come out, and they're back in the same situation where they don't have that community support.

• 17:01Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so hard for us to take responsibility for our own happiness?

• 17:04Lori Gottlieb?

  I think that if you grew up in a household where you were seen and heard and understood, those are the people who do take responsibility for their own happiness. I think for people who felt like they were ripped off in their childhoods, there's a part of them that's still in a fight. There's a part of them that still wants that redo. And so it's kind of like, they're not aware of this, but what they're saying is basically, "I will not change Mom and Dad until you give me the things that I did not get in childhood."

• 17:34Lewis Howes?

  So they'll go find a partner that... Emulates their environment from mom and dad and try to change them so they

• 17:42Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, right, this is the irony of relationship, right? For those people who have not sort of worked through it. This is so common. And I think all of us have this piece in us, right? Because nobody had a perfect childhood. So what happens is people say, okay, when I'm an adult, I'm going to pick a partner who really makes me feel nourished, who really gives me all those things that I did not get growing up. But what they don't realize is unconsciously, they have this radar for the people who are who look very different from their parents on the surface. But then, once they get into that relationship, it's kind of like, uh-oh, this feels familiar, right? And so what they did was their unconscious said, when they were picking their partner, hey, you look familiar, come closer. Even though in consciously, they thought,

• 18:26Lori Gottlieb?

  oh, you're totally different from my parents. I'm going to, this is going to work out great. But no, they have radar for that. If they haven't worked out the stuff that's sort of their unfinished business. There's this saying, we marry our unfinished business. We actually do marry our unfinished business. So that is why it is so important as an adult to take responsibility and say, you know what? I'm going to have to grieve this loss of what I didn't get. And I'm going to have to work through this and assess where I am as an adult so that I pick people and surround myself with people who are healthy for me.

• 18:59Lewis Howes?

  What if you've chosen someone that you love deeply, but it's unconsciously your unfinished business? Is that the wrong person for you? Once you realize, oh, they're never going to change? Or is that a point for us to reflect back and say, actually, I need to heal the past, accept this person for who they are, and be willing to flow within this relationship?

• 19:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, what happens is so you married your unfinished business, but so did they. And so if you can both recognize that, if you realize, hey, wait, we have a lot of conflict in our relationship. Or we're really avoidant in our relationship. Or we don't feel connected in the way we want to feel connected. That's a great opportunity for both of you to work out your unfinished business.

• 19:40Lewis Howes?

  To heal together.

• 19:40Lori Gottlieb?

  To heal together, right.

• 19:42Lewis Howes?

  And so that relationship could thrive.

• 19:45Lori Gottlieb?

  If you both are willing to look in the mirror at yourselves and do the work. Yes, that could be a really beautiful relationship. And it could be very healing for both of you, in fact.

• 19:56Lewis Howes?

  It could potentially be the strongest bond ever if you both were able to go through that.

• 19:59Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 20:00Lewis Howes?

  But if you're unwilling to go through that, then what? You're gonna be in pain?

• 20:04Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. Well, both people have to be willing. I mean, that's the thing. So it's like you may wake up one day and say, oh, wait a minute. I have all this unfinished business. And then your partner says, yeah, it's all you. You're the problem in the relationship. You know, it's kind of like in couples therapy so often, I'll see something like someone will say like, you never listen to me. And I will say, how well do you listen to them?

• 20:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 20:23Lori Gottlieb?

  Right? It's always like.

• 20:24Lewis Howes?

  If you're just yelling at someone all day, are they gonna wanna listen to you?

• 20:26Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, right. So, you know, there's this dance that we do in relationship. And what happens is people are doing these dance steps. And people become very, they become very ingrained. It's like, oh, here we go. You can script out people's arguments. You know exactly what they're gonna look like.

• 20:41Lewis Howes?

  It starts with one thing and then it goes back into many different things where you're like, oh, man.

• 20:44Lori Gottlieb?

  And you know exactly how it's gonna go and who's gonna feel what and who's gonna accuse the other person of what. And that's the dance. And so if one person changes their dance steps, the other person either is going to fall flat on the dance floor or they're gonna have to change their steps too if they wanna keep dancing.

• 20:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 20:59Lori Gottlieb?

  And usually, so we always say, you can't change another person, but you can influence another person.

• 21:05Lewis Howes?

  How?

• 21:05Lori Gottlieb?

  By changing your dance steps. So, for example, we like to say insight is the booby prize of therapy. Meaning you can, people will come and they'll be like, oh, now I understand why I keep getting into that argument with my partner. And so then they go home and they come back the next week. And I'll say, well, did you do something different when you got in that argument? Well, no, but I understand why I did. So you have to be both vulnerable and accountable when you come to therapy.

• 21:26Lewis Howes?

  How do we fight better? When we are in constant repeat pattern, every month or every week, it becomes an argument around something for whatever reason. It's a pattern. And couples start to notice it. How does one person or both people recognize and say, "Okay, I'm gonna change my dance steps and I'm gonna fight or dance better."

• 21:46Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah. The first thing is to notice, sort of, what do you own in this? What is your reaction? So we have a choice. Every time someone presents us with something, there's a great quote in the book, it's a Viktor Frankl quote, where he says, "Between stimulus and response, there is a space, and in that space lies our freedom to choose."

• 22:05Lewis Howes?

  Between stimulus and response, so between an action happening and your response to the action.

• 22:10Lori Gottlieb?

  So your partner says something.

• 22:11Lewis Howes?

  There's a window of opportunity.

• 22:13Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes, there's that space. Usually that space for us will look like a breath. The breath is everything. The breath, really.

• 22:20Lewis Howes?

  If you don't breathe, you're screwed.

• 22:22Lori Gottlieb?

  If you need to take the breath, or you will just respond. It's sort of like we have these neural pathways that are wired, right? And someone says something, and you react not just to what that person in front of you is saying, but it goes back to something that reminds you of something from a long time ago. People who aren't even in the room are in that moment with you. And so that's that neural pathway. And so what you need to do is you need to take a breath. It's like a big stop sign on that road, that's your neural pathway. So hold up the stop sign. You can even picture a stop sign in your mind. Stop, breathe. Now, you get to choose. How do I wanna respond to this? Do I wanna respond in the way I've responded the last gazillion times? Which has not worked out well?

• 23:06Lori Gottlieb?

  Or do I wanna try something different? So that's part one. Part two is perspective-taking. A lot of people who are in really highly conflictual relationships have trouble with perspective-taking. They can't imagine that the other person has a valid perspective. Now, you might not agree with every piece of how they view this, but there's some overlap. Between how this person views it and how you view it, but you are not willing to see that. And so I have this new podcast called Dear Therapist and on the podcast, so much of what we do is we help people to take the perspective of the other person. There's something that you are not seeing right now.

• 23:47Lewis Howes?

  Why is that so hard for people to see someone else's perspective?

• 23:50Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, two things. One is because, you know, that unreliable narrator thing that we think that we are right and we don't want to be told. And so what we hear when we say there's another perspective, we're not saying you're wrong. We're saying there's more to the story. So there's a difference between their perspective is valid as well is not saying your version is wrong. We're saying there's more. So people hear it though as you are wrong. And the other part of it is that there's a lot of shame. That people are sticking to a certain story because if they allow that other part of the story to come in, the part that they're responsible for will probably come up and they feel a lot of shame.

• 24:32Lori Gottlieb?

  So when I see individuals in therapy, they come in and they tell me a story and they leave out the parts that they are embarrassed about, the parts that they feel like that was not my finest moment.

• 24:42Lewis Howes?

  Like what? Give me an example, like, oh, I screamed back or I did this.

• 24:46Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, like, you know, here's what happened or here's, here's, this is, this is the situation and my, my partner did this or my mother did this or my child did this or my boss did this, whatever. And they don't tell you these other details and they sort of trickle out later on. And they're very relevant to the story. But that's shame, right? And so, you know, that's why the therapeutic relationship is so important because you get to a point where you really trust the therapist and you're able to be really honest about what happened.

• 25:17Lewis Howes?

  How much does shame shape our stories?

• 25:19Lori Gottlieb?

  Oh, so much. I think that, you know, as humans, we want to belong. And what shame is about is I'm not going to belong. I'm not going to be loved. The greatest human need is, you know, how can we love and be loved? And when you feel like there's something I did that people will look upon badly. They might not like me if I tell them this. That's just, you know, wired into us.

• 25:46Lewis Howes?

  It's like the ego death to us. It's like the emotional death. If like, if someone knew this about us, they would not love me and I would emotionally die.

• 25:53Lori Gottlieb?

  And I would be alone.

• 25:54Lewis Howes?

  And I'll be alone, yeah.

• 25:55Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, and we need other people.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  I felt like this way for many years where I opened up about sexual abuse about seven years ago. And for 25 years, no one knew because I was so ashamed. And I felt like if anyone knew, how could they possibly love me?

• 26:10Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 26:10Lewis Howes?

  Or accept me? Or how would anyone want to date me? Or my family, how would they not disown me? These were the stories that I was writing. I was a bad editor.

• 26:18Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  How does someone who's done something that they're not proud of in the past? Who's had something done to them that they're not proud of? Whatever, they've been in a situation that they feel shame around. How does someone start to process that shame to heal? So that doesn't continue to run their life and keep them imprisoned?

• 26:38Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah. Well, I think they do what you did, which is you started talking about it. And I think you have to choose your audience.

• 26:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Lori Gottlieb?

  Which is really important, especially as you're just starting out. So you want to make sure that.

• 26:51Lewis Howes?

  Don't tell your abuser. Who's the toxic relationship is, yeah.

• 26:56Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, you know, I think you have to really choose someone who's safe. And, and, and if you don't have those people, you know, I think a therapist is a really good place to start. But I, I do think that it's harder for men to talk about anything. Whether it's sexual abuse or even, you know, just sort of like the, anything they feel vulnerable about. And so men will come into my office and they will say to me at some point, you know, I've never told anyone this before. And then.

• 27:22Lewis Howes?

  Do women say that?

• 27:23Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes, so, so here's the thing. Women will say that. They'll say, "I've never told anyone this before, except for my mother, my sister, and my best friend."

• 27:31Lewis Howes?

  You're the only one who's like, "Don't know."

• 27:32Lori Gottlieb?

  You're the only one, right, right.

• 27:33Lewis Howes?

  Well, I haven't told this to you.

• 27:34Lori Gottlieb?

  I told my book club, I told, you know, whatever it is. They've told like a few people, but they feel like, because women, it's acceptable for women to talk about these things. And so they feel like they haven't told anyone because they still feel like there's some degree of privacy around it.

• 27:48Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 27:49Lori Gottlieb?

  Men literally have told no one. And they might, even if they have like a great partner and they have close friends, you know, they have a great family, whatever it is, they feel like, "I cannot tell anyone because vulnerability for men in our culture is not okay." Even though we say that, so this is funny.

• 28:08Lewis Howes?

  Even though women say, "I wish she would open up. I wish she'd be emotional. I wish she would cry and be more sensitive." But then when they are, they're like, "I need to be strong right now."

• 28:16Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, so this is exactly what happens in couples therapy. So I'll have two people sitting on the couch and I have a couple. And say it's a heterosexual couple and the woman says to the man, like, "I really want to get to know you. I feel like we would connect so much more if you would just open up to me. I want to know what's going on inside there, right?" And he does. And let's say he tears up. Let's say he actually starts crying in a way where like his body is convulsing, right? She looks at me like deer in headlights.

• 28:46Lewis Howes?

  So how do I do?

• 28:47Lori Gottlieb?

  And she's so profoundly uncomfortable.

• 28:50Lewis Howes?

  Gosh.

• 28:50Lori Gottlieb?

  And yet, this is the thing that she was asking for. So what she'll say is, "I don't feel safe when you don't open up to me. And I don't feel safe when you're vulnerable with me." Like there's like, it's like Goldilocks. It's like, not too much, not too little, but right in the middle. That's how vulnerable you can be with me.

• 29:10Lewis Howes?

  I've been saying this for a long time, that I feel like this is one of the the main things that hurts all intimate relationships.

• 29:18Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 29:19Lewis Howes?

  When a person doesn't feel safe to share their emotions to the person that says they love them the most. And actually makes them wrong for it, or makes them less than, or retracts their love when they're vulnerable. So, I don't know the solution for this, besides saying this all the time and besides saying ladies, like if you want a vulnerable man who's emotional, you have to accept him when he's emotional.

• 29:42Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, not just accept, but embrace. I mean that's the thing.

• 29:45Lewis Howes?

  Encourage.

• 29:45Lori Gottlieb?

  Encourage that.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  Because it's so much harder for a man in general, in our society, to be vulnerable based on what we've grown up with and based on what we see, that if you're not encouraging it consistently and celebrating it almost, why would you expect them to keep opening up when they have something they want to share? If you're gonna make them wrong for it.

• 30:06Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, right. So that's exactly what happens. There's somebody I write about in the book who, you know, there's this tragedy that happens in the family and he feels like he has to be the rock for the family.

• 30:17Lewis Howes?

  Always, right?

• 30:18Lori Gottlieb?

  He's like, "My wife, she can cry about this, she can be sad about this, but if I break down, I'm the thing holding everything up." And that was just not true. Actually, that was the thing that was making their marriage not work, that was making him feel anxious and not sleep and not function well, right? And that was the thing that got his wife to, at a certain point, saying like, "I can't be in this marriage if we can't connect." But he thought he had to be the rock for the whole family. He could not feel his feelings. And instead, what happened was when he finally said, "No, actually, this is tearing me apart too", that's when they started healing. That's when they started getting close to each other again.

• 30:54Lewis Howes?

  What advice would you have to any woman entering a relationship, a new relationship with a male partner?

• 31:02Lori Gottlieb?

  I would say make sure that there's no double standard in the relationship. Make sure that if you want an open relationship where there's lots of trust, you feel like you can come to each other with anything. You know, there's this saying about like, "You invited the lie", which means that when you don't give people the space to talk to you about something that's difficult, they will keep things secret from you.

• 31:26Lewis Howes?

  They won't share with you.

• 31:27Lori Gottlieb?

  They won't share with you and they will start keeping lots of secrets from you. And then they'll be like, later on, they'll be like, "Really, this was going on in your life? Why didn't you tell me about this?" Because you created a culture in which they couldn't. So if you want to feel safe and secure in the relationship and you want that openness, then you have to really embrace it and make sure that you're embracing it not just with your words, but with your actions. So your partner comes to you, they talk to you about something and you don't try to kind of shut it down, you don't get profoundly uncomfortable. You know, if your friend, you know, like your girlfriend came to you and did that, like, you know, your best friend, you would be like, oh, you know, however you would be to them, why are you going to be different to this person who is the person that you're spending your life with?

• 32:12Lewis Howes?

  Why are, again, I don't want to generalize all women, but why are women in general, I guess, wired that way? To not feel safe when a man opens up and shares an insecurity, a vulnerability, why are women wired that way?

• 32:27Lori Gottlieb?

  We have, these are artifacts of, you know, a culture that taught men and women, girls and boys, when they're growing up, this is how you are in the world, right? And you see this as parents, right? So I have a son and I saw this, it was profound for me to see this. So when my son got to a certain age, when he was little and he would fall down and, you know, he would cry or whatever it was, you know, everybody would be like, oh, honey, you know, at the park or whatever, you know, little boys, okay, at a certain age.

• 32:55Lewis Howes?

  Like two, three, four, five.

• 32:57Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes. All of a sudden, it was like, girls, they fall off the jungle gym, everybody's there. Boys, they're crying, it's like, oh, it's okay, shake it off, shake it off. I was horrified. Shake it off? Like, he might even have a concussion, right? Shake it off, right?

• 33:13Lewis Howes?

  I mean, this is my whole childhood. It's like, you know, you play football. I mean, I remember breaking my wrist in a game in high school and them just saying, tape it up. It was just like, my wrist was broken.

• 33:23Lori Gottlieb?

  It was like hanging there, right?

• 33:24Lewis Howes?

  No, it's broken. I tape it up, I keep playing because it's just like, no, keep it playing. Unless you're... Dying. I remember I broke my ribs in a game and I could not breathe. And I was just laying on the ground. I could not move, so I had to be like taken off. But you break an arm, you you have a I had a concussion once. I just kept playing like. It's just, oh, just be tough.

• 33:44Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, right.

• 33:45Lewis Howes?

  It's hard for men, make sure you make sure men stay accountable, but it's hard for men to. We have that mindset to switch it off and then be vulnerable and then switch it back on. We'll have to be tough and strong.

• 33:56Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, so it's interesting. You're using the words tough and strong because I think that what happens is that men start to associate tough and strong with not feeling.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Lori Gottlieb?

  Like, I'm not going to feel the pain of my broken wrist. I'm just going to keep playing. I'm not going to feel the pain of this breakup. I'm not going to tell anybody about it. Right about how much pain I'm in. I'm not going to tell people about the pain of my sexual abuse because I'm going to be strong. And what they don't realize is that strength is actually being able to talk about these things. So when people make the call to come to therapy. I'm looking not only for what's not working in someone's life and why they're there. I want to know why now. Why this week or this month did they call? Because that to me is a sign of strength. And I'm looking for their strengths as much as what's not working. So they think, a lot of men think, and they'll say, they'll say like, oh, I'm so embarrassed that I'm here. Women tend not to say that. Women are like, I'm so glad I'm here. I've been waiting to do this, right?

• 34:50Lori Gottlieb?

  So to them, it's a sign of strength that they came because they value their health in that way. Men are like, I can't let anybody know that I'm here. Like, it's a weakness and I have to reframe it for them and say, no. The fact that you are here is a strength.

• 35:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. That's why I think it's really cool that Michael Phelps is talking about therapy and talk space.

• 35:08Lori Gottlieb?

  Basketball players too.

• 35:10Lewis Howes?

  Love and all these people.

• 35:11Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, Kevin Love. DeMar DeRozan.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 35:14Lewis Howes?

  I think it's really important for for us to see models of men that we're inspired by. I didn't really see that growing up of like. A man that was going through challenges, they went to therapy or dealt with sexual abuse and talked about it open. I never saw that model. So I just felt like, oh, I'm the only one dealing with this. This doesn't happen. But when I started to open up, it's crazy the amount of men that you mentioned, like men never share. Even to a friend, they never tell a soul where a woman in general might share three friends before they come to the therapist and say they've never shared.

• 35:45Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  When I opened up about sexual abuse. There were hundreds of essays from men emailing me. But also when I did it in person in kind of a private, kind of group therapy session. So many men came to me privately after the session and said, "I'm 55 years old, I've got three kids and my wife doesn't know, my kids..." Like, no one knows. This happened to me over and over again when I was nine. More people would open up that no one knew. It's like, what happens to us when we have a secret around a shame that we're so ashamed of and no one knows? What happens?

• 36:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 36:20Lewis Howes?

  When we hold that in?

• 36:21Lori Gottlieb?

  I got the most heartbreaking letter in my advice column, this Dear Therapist column that I write. And it was from a man who was, you know, I think he was like in his 60s, maybe he was in his 70s. And he said, "I have this secret and nobody knows. And I am so profoundly lonely. I'm so profoundly lonely because I have tons of friends." You know, it wasn't that he was, that he didn't look lonely in life. He said, "Inside, I am so lonely because I've carried this around with me for my entire life. I have not told a soul and I feel like I'm pretending, like I'm one person to everybody else. But they don't know everything. They don't know this thing that is so important to me."

• 37:05Lori Gottlieb?

  And I wrote back to him and that letter got such a big response because everybody felt so much compassion for him and just wanted to say to him, "Please talk about this. Please tell people who you really are. Please don't pretend. Please take the mask off."

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Lori Gottlieb?

  Right? I remember the same thing happened when I saw Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan on a panel and they were talking about depression and anxiety and how much they suffered. Packed room, right? And all of these men raising their hands, saying like, "I, you need to talk about this." And, you know, what was, you know, people wanted to know about their experience. And I remember DeMar DeRozan talking about like, he was like having this anxiety attack and he was driving and he was driving to the stadium and he saw this big billboard of him. You know, that he was like this guy who had it all together. And he's like, "I'm having a panic attack in the back of the car right now and no one knows." Right? So that's what I see in therapy with men. And that's what I think in relationships, we have to be so aware.

• 38:05Lori Gottlieb?

  That men have all this extra baggage.

• 38:08Lewis Howes?

  Gosh.

• 38:08Lori Gottlieb?

  And to really create a space for them to be who they are, who they really are, and not some image of what our culture thinks they need to be.

• 38:15Lewis Howes?

  For someone watching or listening right now saying, ah, men have so much privilege, men have so much rights, men are, you know, so much fortune and opportunity, like, who cares if they have baggage? Like, it doesn't matter because they've been, um, whatever.

• 38:31Lori Gottlieb?

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 38:32Lewis Howes?

  Oppressing, they've been, uh, privileged for many, many years, so deal with it.

• 38:37Lori Gottlieb?

  Let me tell you something, part of toppling the patriarchy is allowing men to have feelings because it gives women more equality too. So if you, if you give men these privileges of, and I say it's a privilege, right? To be able to be who you are, men then have the space to make room for women. It, it, it is something that, um, privileges everybody.

• 39:04Lewis Howes?

  When men, when you give permission for men to open up and not shame them, or not make them wrong, it actually gives you more power as well?

• 39:13Lori Gottlieb?

  It, it gives, so the reason that a lot of men, there, there's so many, I mean, this is a very complicated topic, but I can say that this is what I see. That when men are given the permission to be vulnerable, women are given the permission of power.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:27Lori Gottlieb?

  And that's, that's, so that's what happens is like you need to level things.

• 39:31Lewis Howes?

  So if women want more power, more say, more opportunities, in general is what I'm here to say, the more you embrace men for the vulnerabilities that they have, or the insecurities, the shame they have, and you celebrate them for their emotions, the more they're willing to connect and open up opportunities back and return.

• 39:49Lori Gottlieb?

  And also it gives women power in another sense because when emotional lives are valued. Hmm. Okay, so women, it was always like, oh, these are women's issues, right? Anything that was in the emotional realm, these are women's issues, like, but men, we're talking about the really important things, but women, they have all these emotions, right? So that, that's not really relevant, that's like they have their little things over there. But now when you say, wait a minute, emotions are something that are powerful. And they impact not just the individual and not just the people in your family, but society and culture at large, right? So when we start to say, wait a minute, our emotional lives matter for our society, then something that was considered, you know, a women's issue now becomes a human issue. And that gives women more power.

• 40:33Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful, yeah. It's talked about more, it's, that's interesting. Should everyone do therapy even when things are going great?

• 40:41Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, you know, so I'm not someone who proselytizes therapy. I'm not like, everyone needs to be in therapy. I think therapy is like getting a really good second opinion on your life from someone who's not in your life. And that's the part that's key, like someone who's not in your life. Because again, going back to that idiot compassion and all of that. But also, sometimes the people in your life will say like, you need to change, you need to do this, and it's because it will benefit them, not because it will benefit the person that they're trying to say you need to go to therapy, right?

• 41:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 41:09Lori Gottlieb?

  And so I think that it's really valuable to be able to take off the mask, to be able to say, here's what's really going on. And I don't have to worry about like the bias of this person who's in my life who might have some ulterior motives that they're not even aware of.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  To benefit them, yeah.

• 41:25Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Lewis Howes?

  Should we always, should we be accepting ourself where we're at? Or should we be always wanting to change?

• 41:33Lori Gottlieb?

  I think that, first of all, when you say accepting, I think that if anything, we are too hard on ourselves. That we aren't kind to ourselves. And so people get really confused about this because they say, well, if I'm really kind to myself, if I have a lot of self-compassion, then I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna try to grow, I'm not gonna try to be better, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna hold myself accountable for the things that I need to change. That's not true. If you self-flagellate, you're gonna make it so much harder to grow and change because you are going to be bathed in shame. Self-flagellation just makes you feel ashamed. So maybe you'll like do things, but you're not gonna be doing them in a way where you can really look at yourself because you're gonna feel so much shame around looking at yourself that you are going to deny

• 42:17Lori Gottlieb?

  a lot of things you need to take responsibility for. So when I talk about kindness... I talk about, people will come in and they are so self-critical and they don't realize how self-critical they are. So, I had this patient who like completely had no awareness of how self-critical she was. And I said, "I want you to write down everything you say to yourself in the span of a few days and come back next week and let's talk about it." And I said this because when I give talks, I will say to people, "Show of hands, who's the person that you talk to most in the course of your life? Is it your partner? Lots of hands."

• 42:51Lewis Howes?

  It's ourselves, yeah.

• 42:52Lori Gottlieb?

  Is it your sibling? Is it your best friend? Is it your mom? Whatever. It is ourselves. We don't realize that. And we don't even know that that voice is playing in the background like a bad radio station, right? And it's just playing all the time and it's things like, "Oh my god, you're so stupid. You made that mistake." Or, "Oh my god, you look terrible." Or, "You'll never be able to do that." We say that to ourselves all the time. Or, "You're so awkward." Or, you know, whatever it is.

• 43:14Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it something like 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day we have? And most of them are repeating thoughts? And most of them are negative thoughts?

• 43:22Lori Gottlieb?

  I believe that. I believe that because I hear that inner dialogue. I hear it in myself, but I hear it in my patients, right? Because that informs why they believe what they believe and why they act the way they act. And so, she came back, this patient who I said, "Write down everything." She came back the next week and she was like, "Oh my god, I'm such a bully to myself. I had no idea." She's like, "I can't even read this to you. It is so mean."

• 43:47Lewis Howes?

  Because you would never say this to your partner or someone you cared about.

• 43:49Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. Not only because you're, it's not because you're being kind and you wouldn't say, it's because you don't actually believe that about them. So, if you say to yourself, "Oh, you're so stupid. You said that." If your partner said that, you wouldn't think, "Oh, my partner's so stupid. I can't believe they said that." You wouldn't judge them in that way.

• 44:05Lewis Howes?

  I wonder if every parent did that exercise and did it to themselves and asked them, "Would I say this to my kid every day? And if so, what type of life would they have if I always said these thoughts to them?

• 44:18Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 44:19Lewis Howes?

  The way I say it about myself?

• 44:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 44:20Lewis Howes?

  And I think a lot of parents probably are saying those thoughts to their kids in some ways, which is like very critical.

• 44:26Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Lewis Howes?

  Or very like degrading in certain ways when they don't achieve, which repeats the cycle of them saying, "I'm not enough. I suck. I'm stupid. I'll never be smart enough," whatever it is.

• 44:36Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, it's the pressure, right? So it's like, they might not say it that way, but there's this sense of, you know, "Do better. You're not good enough." So this week I got a letter in my Dear Therapist column, and it was from a 14-year-old girl. And she said, "My mom is always pressuring me to get better grades, to be thinner. And if I'm not outside exercising," because she wants me to be thinner, then she says, "I'm not studying enough. But if I'm studying," she says, "Get outside. You're not exercising enough." And she's like, "I don't know how to talk to my mom about this," right? And I said to the girl, I said, "Listen, here's the thing. Your mom thinks that she's being a good parent." That's the irony of this. Like, your mom thinks that she's trying to set you on a path to have a better life,

• 45:19Lori Gottlieb?

  and she's showing her love this way, but she's showing her love in a way that is not at all loving, right? And so you need to talk to her about the fact that you don't feel loved.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  How does a 14-year-old, 10-year-old communicate to their parent that "I'm not feeling loved" without the parent reacting, getting angry? Like, how does that even... How can you even have that conversation?

• 45:38Lori Gottlieb?

  So I gave her a script in the column.

• 45:40Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 45:41Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 45:41Lewis Howes?

  So having a script, okay. Read your column, and you can learn how to do that.

• 45:44Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 45:45Lewis Howes?

  How do we eliminate shame? Is it all by responsibility? Is it by editing our story? Is it by talking about our story? How do we get rid of shame? Because I feel like a lot of people live with minor shames over years that they never get rid of.

• 46:01Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. So let's differentiate, first of all, between shame and guilt. Because we should feel guilt.

• 46:07Lewis Howes?

  If you do something bad, we should feel like, "Oh, that was stupid."

• 46:10Lori Gottlieb?

  If you don't feel guilty, you're a sociopath.

• 46:12Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 46:12Lori Gottlieb?

  Right? So we should feel guilt. So shame is, "I am bad." Guilt is, "I did something bad." So when you say, you know, "How do we get rid of shame?" I think that we need to be able to say, "Yes, I did something that hurt someone else. And I need to take responsibility for that. And I feel bad about that." And you should. Right? So when people, people always say like, you know, oh, you know, I don't, I don't want to make someone feel bad about that. No, they should feel bad about what they did. I had a guy come on the podcast who said, you know, he, he cheated on his wife, he left her for a coworker. And he couldn't take responsibility for what he did because

• 46:53Lori Gottlieb?

  it would give her ammunition, like if he took responsibility and said, you're, you know, I, I did something, I did something really bad. That then she would say, you're right, you know, you did something bad. Yes, you should feel bad. You should feel bad about what you did, but that doesn't mean that you as a person are bad.

• 47:10Lewis Howes?

  You made a bad decision.

• 47:11Lori Gottlieb?

  You made a bad choice. You hurt someone profoundly.

• 47:14Lewis Howes?

  Take ownership responsibility.

• 47:15Lori Gottlieb?

  Ownership of that and the consequences of that.

• 47:18Lewis Howes?

  How long do you live with that guilt slash shame?

• 47:21Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, sometimes I will say to people, um, you know, how long do you think the sentence should be for this crime? Right? Is it a life sentence? Because then basically you self-flagellate for the rest of your life. Really? Is it a life sentence? Or, or is there some kind of period of reckoning? Where you are taking responsibility, you are trying to make it up to people in whatever way you can. You are trying to be a better person in the ways that you can. You have grown from this experience, right? Okay, that, that might be your prison sentence. But then you move on, you're out of jail. I don't mean you're out of jail like, like you don't remember it.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  You can't do that again.

• 47:58Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, you can't do it again, right? And, and you've taken responsibility, you've, you've done your sentence right now. But so many people want to say, okay, well, I deserve a life sentence for this. And then they don't, again, then they're not really living.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's almost like we're the best, we're the worst judges to ourselves of like sentencing the punishment.

• 48:17Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, right. Like would a jury of your peers.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  And so you're going to jail for life for this action, right?

• 48:24Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. Would a jury of your peers give you the same sentence?

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 48:27Lori Gottlieb?

  People who really love you. Would a jury of peers who really love you and who think what you did is wrong, give you the same sentence?

• 48:34Lewis Howes?

  Is there a scenario in which? We do something really bad. We hurt someone, we leave someone, we whatever, we steal, lie, cheat, whatever it is, we do something really bad. And we feel guilty and shameful. Is there a way to eliminate shame quickly? And just move and stay in guilt for your sentence until you can move on?

• 48:56Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, I think a lot of people try to get rid of their shame through an apology. And I write in the book a lot about apology because I feel like you have to ask yourself, who is this apology for? So many times, people apologize because they want to feel better. But it actually doesn't help the other person, right? In fact, it probably creates more pain in the other person.

• 49:20Lewis Howes?

  Should we not apologize if we make a mistake?

• 49:22Lori Gottlieb?

  Um, no, I'm not saying don't apologize, but I think you have to, first of all, understand, you know, why am I apologizing? What is this apology going to accomplish? How is it going to help the other person? How is it going to help them?

• 49:32Lewis Howes?

  Not how's it gonna help me, how's it gonna help the person I hurt?

• 49:35Lori Gottlieb?

  How's it gonna help them? You know, a lot of people, they feel like, well, if I apologize, then, you know, everybody will feel better. It's almost like they want forgiveness from the other person. And there's this myth in our culture that, you know, you should forgive people and you will feel better, right? No. If you actually don't forgive them, that's called forced forgiveness. You don't have to forgive people. You can have compassion for them. So some of them will say like, do you forgive your parents for, you know, some, some abuse that happened? And then we, we almost force people, like, you have to forgive your parent or else you can't be free of this. No. You can have compassion for your parent in terms of they had an abusive childhood, this is why they did what they did, but do you have to forgive them if you don't actually feel that forgiveness?

• 50:18Lori Gottlieb?

  No. The compassion in and of itself will help you to move forward. But it's almost like, like a double abuse, right? To say you have to forgive someone even though you don't actually feel this forgiveness.

• 50:32Lewis Howes?

  I've always heard that like forgiveness is not about the other person. It's about you setting yourself free from the anger, resentment and pain.

• 50:38Lori Gottlieb?

  But only if you actually feel that way.

• 50:41Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. So you don't have to, but you should get to compassion so you can set yourself free. I mean, otherwise you're gonna be feeling a lot of anger.

• 50:50Lori Gottlieb?

  So in the book, there's this, there's this mother who has, or adult children are estranged from her because of there were, there were ways that she didn't protect her children from abuse from the alcoholic father, right? And the kids are extremely upset with her and they, they suffered and still suffer in adulthood because of this. And so she kept wanting their forgiveness. And what I said to her was, you know, you can be the best mother now that you can be, but nothing will change what happened in the past. And if you expect them to forgive you for something that happened in the past, you're not being a good mother to them now. What they need is they need you to take responsibility for what happened. And then not to have a life sentence, you know, they might give you whatever sentence they want to give you, but not to give yourself a life sentence and be the best mother that they need now.

• 51:35Lori Gottlieb?

  What do they need now? And that's what she did. And she was giving them what they needed now and it didn't erase what happened in the past, but it allowed them to have some compassion for her. And it allowed some kind of relationship to happen that was very healing for the kids. Because now they had a mother. And whereas they didn't have a mother before because of all of this anger and resentment.

• 52:00Lewis Howes?

  What if someone does something where they don't feel like what they did was wrong?

• 52:04Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 52:05Lewis Howes?

  Or intentionally trying to hurt someone and they actually felt like, oh, I wasn't trying to do something wrong or I didn't try to hurt you. But the person is so offended and so hurt and they're like, I will never forgive you. Like, how does someone handle that?

• 52:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, I think that's where the perspective taking comes in. Where if you are in relationship with someone who can't perspective take enough to say, um, okay, I can see what you're saying. I can see this was your intention. Then that's not maybe a great relationship.

• 52:37Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. Yeah. Maybe that was the right person for you. How do we start to become better narrators of our past story? What's a process? Because we all have stories that we hold on to and we imagine things in different ways. We amplify or downgrade things from the past.

• 52:57Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Lewis Howes?

  How do we learn to rewrite those so they're in our favor?

• 53:01Lori Gottlieb?

  I think that the first thing is if you can write the story that you've been telling yourself over and over from the perspective of the other people in the story. So whether that's your mom, or your dad, or your sibling, or your partner, or whoever it might be, if you can actually get out of your story for a minute and go into their headspace without going back and saying like, you know, as you're writing their story, but wait a minute, there was this other, you know, extenuating circumstance. And just writing it as you imagine they were doing what they were doing because of whatever reason, okay?

• 53:36Lewis Howes?

  Not saying it's okay what they did.

• 53:37Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, it's not okay, but this was what they were doing and this is why they were doing it. There's no way that you can do that if you're doing it in good faith. Meaning, you know, you're not doing it to be right, you're doing it because you're saying, I can imagine this is what they were thinking. Even the guy who had the affair, right? If she could rewrite that story and say, oh yeah, I can see how every time he tried to bring something up in our relationship, I avoided it. And so he felt like he had nowhere to go. That doesn't excuse the affair. But I can see why he felt trapped.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 54:11Lori Gottlieb?

  Okay, so if you can write it from his perspective, even though what he did was, you know, he made, it was wrong. It was, everybody agrees it's wrong.

• 54:19Lewis Howes?

  What does that do for us? That gives us compassion for that person in that moment during that story? Or what does that do when we write it that way?

• 54:25Lori Gottlieb?

  It helps us to see that, that people are complicated. And, and, no, but I think we forget that. I think that when we're really married to one story, we forget that as complicated as we are, so is the other person. And so if you vilify the other person, you're gonna be stuck in this victim position. You're going to feel like a victim and you're never going to see that this person didn't try to hurt me in this way, that this person did hurt me and we all agree that I was profoundly hurt by this. But the person wasn't trying to do that to me. And so it takes you-

• 55:01Lewis Howes?

  It's not denying our feelings.

• 55:03Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. It's saying, it's saying, I'm not, I wasn't necessarily a victim in this in the way that I think I am. And if you can get out of the victim position and say, this was really hard, this was really painful. This is something that has affected me and probably will affect me in lots of ways. But at the same time, I can understand that there was more to it. And you're not holding on to that other piece of, you know, I was the victim.

• 55:27Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Because when we claim ourselves as the victim, what happens?

• 55:32Lori Gottlieb?

  Then we feel helpless. And we don't feel like we have agency in other parts of our lives. That becomes our identity. I was the victim then. I have to protect myself all the time in every other relationship, every other encounter that I have. And it doesn't give us the freedom to actually be who we are. We will always have that sense of, I have to be extra careful here.

• 55:53Lewis Howes?

  I mean, what if someone's saying, well, this sounds great, but I have been a victim my whole life. I've been a victim of parents who weren't there for me. I was in foster care. I was adopted. I... Whatever. I was, I didn't have equal rights. I didn't have these things. I've been a victim of sexual abuse, of all these things. How can you say that I haven't been a victim in my life when, when these cases are all proving that I have been?

• 56:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. The, the point is that you might not have had the resources or, you know, you might have been helpless as a kid, right? Because as a kid, you are helpless. But you're not a victim now. And I think that's, that's the difference. So in your relationships now, right? You are not a victim because you have agency.

• 56:40Lewis Howes?

  You have the ability to choose differently or to think differently or to-

• 56:44Lori Gottlieb?

  I'm not talking about cases like, you know, someone rapes you, okay? You're a victim, right? That you, you did not have a choice there. I'm talking about in your relationships when you feel really hurt by somebody. And then you start to understand, well, the reason, like in the affair there, okay? The reason he did this was this, doesn't justify it. But it helps you to see that, oh, I was doing something too. Every time he tried to connect with me, I would say, you know, why are you criticizing me? That was what happened in this scenario.

• 57:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Lori Gottlieb?

  Every time he came to me, I would say, why are you criticizing me? And now I realize, oh, maybe he wasn't criticizing me. Maybe he was saying like, I want to feel closer to you, but I heard it as a criticism. And I contributed to the dynamic in the relationship and in the marriage. What he did was still wrong. But I can see that I need to learn something from this too. That if I go into my next relationship as a victim, I will probably feel like every time my partner comes to me and I'll say, why are you criticizing me? I'm gonna, I'm gonna perpetuate this and I will be a victim again.

• 57:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 57:39Lori Gottlieb?

  But I don't have to be. Because next time, when my partner comes to me and says, hey, there's this thing going on in our relationship, instead of saying, why are you criticizing me? I might say, oh, tell me more about that.

• 57:49Lewis Howes?

  So what happens if we never rewrite our stories from the past? To have that perspective and awareness and compassion mentality?

• 57:57Lori Gottlieb?

  If we don't rewrite our story, we relive our story.

• 58:00Lewis Howes?

  Over and over.

• 58:01Lori Gottlieb?

  Over and over and over. We are stuck, it's like Groundhog Day. It is.

• 58:05Lewis Howes?

  Oh, bad.

• 58:06Lori Gottlieb?

  And everything, and you see it in everything. It's not just like in that particular situation. It's not just like in our, in your romantic relationships. You'll see it at work, when you're like, oh, what did that person mean by that? Oh, you know, you know what I mean? Like, like the things that you do in your relationships, you do in all of your relationships.

• 58:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow, this is fascinating. What would a nighttime routine be for someone who feels trapped, stuck in the process of messiness, whether it be relationship, work, or just inner negative thoughts? What's a one to two minute routine that everyone could take at night? To help let go of shame, negative thoughts? Mistakes they made from that day, what they forgot. What could we do at night?

• 58:50Lori Gottlieb?

  So there's this thing called the miracle question. It's used in therapy.

• 58:53Lewis Howes?

  Ooh, I like this.

• 58:54Lori Gottlieb?

  And the miracle question is, if you could have the kind of life that you want to have, what would that look like? And what is keeping you from having it? What is in the way right now that you can do?

• 59:06Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so asking ourselves that question. And then what, journaling, kind of what's in the way from us right now?

• 59:12Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, like write down, what is that scenario? And what steps do I need to take to get there? What is it about me that is keeping me from getting there?

• 59:20Lewis Howes?

  So taking responsibility.

• 59:21Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, not about everybody else and this and that and whatever. What is it about me that is keeping me from taking that first step? You know, we always like to say that most big transformations come about from the tiny, almost imperceptible steps that we take along the way. So sometimes something feels really daunting because it's like, oh my gosh, I'd have to do all of these things. If you take one step every day toward that miracle question, right? You're going to get closer to it.

• 59:47Lewis Howes?

  Now, how, I mean, you sounded like a personal growth coach over here. Now, you sounded like someone who would just coach. You know, this is something that I would say to people a lot, like, what do you want? Where are you at now? And what's in the way?

• 59:57Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Lewis Howes?

  What's holding you back from getting there? Or what are the steps you need to take?

• 1:00:01Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, well, sometimes what's in the way, though, is this is where the sort of the therapist part comes in, is there's something, there's an emotional block, right? So it's not just like, here's the step, that you have an emotional step that you need to take.

• 1:00:11Lewis Howes?

  What is the main emotional block that most people have?

• 1:00:14Lori Gottlieb?

  A feeling of helplessness.

• 1:00:16Lewis Howes?

  Why do we feel helpless?

• 1:00:18Lori Gottlieb?

  I think it's an artifact of, you know, something that was from in the past, right? And of course, I mean, there are different layers. So it's not just your family, it's the culture in which you grew up. So society has a lot to do with it.

• 1:00:31Lewis Howes?

  Especially right now with like the political season, people are probably just feel like, I feel helpless, I can't do anything, I can't make an impact, there's so much division.

• 1:00:40Lori Gottlieb?

  Right.

• 1:00:41Lewis Howes?

  It's just that there's so much noise, there's so much chaos, I feel helpless.

• 1:00:45Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, right, and I think that in reality, a lot of people in our in our society have been helpless. Right? I mean, that's what whole Black Lives Matter has been about. That's what, you know, so many movements that are happening. And, you know, we say 2020 has been a horrible year in so many ways, but it's also been a year of, I think, reckoning. And so I think that a lot of people are saying, you know, it's not just what's not working in my immediate family, but what's not working in society? And, you know, what do we need to do to change that?

• 1:01:12Lewis Howes?

  If someone has been oppressed or helpless or been put down in society or a family or a situation, how can they get out of the feeling of not being helpless when they have been?

• 1:01:26Lori Gottlieb?

  Because you have to take the steps where you know that that you aren't helpless, right? So there are there are always certain things that you can do. And so you have to start taking those steps. And then you have to get creative in your thinking. Okay, so here are the steps that I know that I can take. And then what is something that's really out of the box? And that's where people get really inspired, all of us, right? What is something that feels like impossible, right? What is something that's so out of the box? But if I didn't have any constraints, if society were different, here's what I would do. And you will be surprised at how creative you can be at finding a way to do some version of that.

• 1:02:04Lewis Howes?

  The imagination is a powerful thing. What's the biggest challenge you've faced as a therapist? In recognizing and having awareness of your own challenges, whether it be relationships or career or family, what's something that you've had to face that you've overcome or you're still looking to overcome?

• 1:02:22Lori Gottlieb?

  I think that as a therapist, one of the biggest challenges is knowing that people are coming to you because they want something to change, but that they're going to have to do the work. And I'm there to figure out a way to help them to do the work. So I used to play chess as a kid. I was a competitive chess player, which makes me sound super nerdy. And when you're playing chess, you have to think several moves ahead. And my job as a therapist is to help people to see, okay, if I'm going to come in a certain way and help them to kind of take responsibility, right? And they're not having it. I have to, you know, maybe I have to make a different move. I have to come in a different way, but I have to figure out a way to help them to see something so that they can be empowered

• 1:03:06Lori Gottlieb?

  in their own lives. There's a patient that I write about in the book that I fail miserably with, and I wanted to include her because I wanted to show this is what happens. Like, you know, you can see great growth and transformation in people, and you can see people who just quite, aren't quite ready, or I wasn't able to, to help them. And so this is a person who had been to another therapist before me, and at first she said that the reason that she had come to see me was, you know, she just felt like she needed a new perspective, that she had done whatever work she had done, she needed a new perspective. But no, actually, basically she would tell me in various ways every week that I was not helping her. And she would do, you know, she was saying like, you know, she's having all these problems

• 1:03:48Lori Gottlieb?

  with all these other people in her life, and she was doing to me the same thing that she was doing to them, and I couldn't get her to see it. And we have these things called consultation groups, where we bring our cases to other therapists and we talk about them. And everything they suggested, I would go back and try, and it would not work. And then I would say to her, very honestly, I would say, you know, you tell me I'm not helping you, why do you come back every week? Right? So what is it that you're getting out of coming here if I'm so useless?

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if you're making me wrong, and you're being right the whole time, yeah.

• 1:04:18Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, and you know, if, if I'm not helping you, what, why are you here? And then she'd say, oh, well, that thing that you said, that was kind of helpful, right? But then again, I would be a miserable failure. And so at a certain point, I just, I ended treatment with her because I realized that she wasn't ready, and that happened after she said, you know, this never happened with my other therapist. And then she said, will you talk to my other therapist? Maybe you need more information, right? And so I, I decided, yes, I will. So I got a release from her. I talked to the other therapist, and I didn't tell the other therapist anything that was happening in our treatment. I said, I just want to know a little bit about your experience with her. And he told me the same thing. The same exact thing had happened. And I said, oh, that's really interesting because that's what's happening here.

• 1:05:03Lori Gottlieb?

  And I went back to her and I told her that. And she was like, well, that's not at all what happened, right? So I think when, you know, when you talk about what is my biggest challenge as a therapist? It's working with people who aren't quite ready. And so sometimes I think people aren't quite ready to make changes themselves, but they're ready for change. And I can work with that. I can work with that. But what I can't work with is someone who's not willing to see anything different from what they came in with.

• 1:05:29Lewis Howes?

  So it's almost like if you're going to go to therapy, if you want to solve a problem in your life, you need to have an open mind about what the other person is going through that you're having a problem with.

• 1:05:37Lori Gottlieb?

  Yep.

• 1:05:38Lewis Howes?

  And you need to take responsibility for everything on your side of the street as well.

• 1:05:42Lori Gottlieb?

  I think you need to like clear your lane, right? So I think that, you know, even if you're not having problems with other people per se, if you're having a problem with your relationship with yourself, that's going to be problematic in terms of, you know, there are people who are like, no, no, I don't have any conflict with anybody, everything's fine. But they're incredibly lonely, even though they have friends, even though they might even have a partner, right? But they're not really having the kind of connected, uh, deep, rich relationships that they want to have.

• 1:06:11Lewis Howes?

  How do we have a better relationship with ourself?

• 1:06:13Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, I think that's about clearing out the muck. You know, that's about, you know.

• 1:06:17Lewis Howes?

  Does that mean the cleaning the past, the hurt, the pain, the resentment, the anger, the guilt, the shame, like everything?

• 1:06:24Lori Gottlieb?

  And what you see when you look in the mirror every day. So, so all of that stuff, you may think that that other stuff isn't there. But I want to know, what is it like, when you look in the mirror, what do you see? And if you don't see something that makes you want to go out in the world and do stuff and be close to people, then there's some muck to clear out.

• 1:06:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow, yeah. I'm a, I'm a big proponent of looking in the mirror and seeing like, how do you feel? How do you react by looking at yourself in the eyes? For five seconds, do you see something you're excited about, you're proud of, that you're, you're keeping your word to yourself and other people? Or are you letting yourself and other people down?

• 1:07:05Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, and when I say look in the mirror, by the way, I don't mean, so I'm going to bring up social media for a second because, you know, I'm, I'm not anti-social media at all. But I do think that there are certain ways that it can really make us not see ourselves clearly. And so what I mean by look in the mirror is, you know how people will like post a selfie? And they took like 50 takes, right?

• 1:07:25Lewis Howes?

  To get the perfect day.

• 1:07:26Lori Gottlieb?

  And then they filtered it and they did whatever they did to it, right? And then they'll say something like, and with that picture that they filtered a million times and it was however many takes they had, they'll say like, "I'm gonna share this thing with all of you and I'm gonna be so vulnerable." And first of all, you're not being vulnerable because with the picture, it took like, you know, 30 minutes to get that picture. But then they say that, you know, "I'm gonna be so vulnerable with all of you." Let me tell you something, true vulnerability is not saying to everybody out in the world, "Here's what happened to me." I think it's helpful for it to normalize and to de-stigmatize just our struggles in general. But here's the real test. Can you, not that, not doing, posing for that picture, can you just show up looking however you look? And say to the person who means the most to you or the stakes are the highest,

• 1:08:10Lori Gottlieb?

  "Here's the thing that I want to say. I'm gonna take off the mask in front of you because if I take off the mask in front of you, then I'm really being vulnerable."

• 1:08:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Lori Gottlieb?

  And so when we look in the mirror, when I'm saying, "How do you feel about yourself?" I'm not talking about the Instagram version of yourself. I'm talking about you showing up in front of the person who means the most to you. And I hope that eventually you will be the person who means the most to you. That we are the judge, like there's not some jury out there that gets to decide how we feel about ourselves. But then when we look in the mirror and not the beautified version of ourselves, but the real version of ourselves, the messy, complicated version of ourselves, the imperfect version of ourselves. When we look in the mirror, how do we feel about that? That's, that's the kind of question that I want you to ask yourself. And if you can't answer that and say, "You know what? I embrace who I am. I know I have room for improvement. There are things I'm not proud of.

• 1:09:05Lori Gottlieb?

  But I know that I'm going to do something in the world that matters. I know that I matter. I know that I'm valuable." Then you've got some stuff to work out.

• 1:09:14Lewis Howes?

  How do we get someone to believe that they're valuable if they've never believed it?

• 1:09:18Lori Gottlieb?

  They have to come to believe it. You can't, you can't help someone to do that, right? They have to come to believe that through changes that happen in the world. I think people come to believe that they're valuable when they feel connected in the world. When they feel like, you know, I can't emphasize enough how important relationships are. It doesn't even have to be romantic relationships. But your relationships, I always say to people when they first come in, I ask some version of the question, "How is your life peopled?"

• 1:09:44Lewis Howes?

  Is your life peopled?

• 1:09:45Lori Gottlieb?

  Peopled. And I don't know if that's even like a, like a word. I might not even say it that way.

• 1:09:49Lewis Howes?

  What does it mean?

• 1:09:50Lori Gottlieb?

  Like, who are the people in your life? What is, what are the relationships like in your life? And, and, and how nourishing are those relationships? And I mean both ways nourishing. How much do you nourish? And how much are you being nourished? People can have so many people in their lives, but the relationships don't matter to them in a way that they should.

• 1:10:09Lewis Howes?

  So do we build belief in ourself through the actions and energy we give in the relationships that matter to us?

• 1:10:18Lori Gottlieb?

  We, we show our value in the world, right? Like, I think that, you know, we had a teacher on the podcast recently, and she was talking about her students are so lonely. And she is one of these people who like, when she's at school, she really gets involved in their lives. And she's really like, sort of like a surrogate parent to them. And we were coming up with ways that she could really connect with them. And she came up with a way where she said, "I asked them to do something kind for someone else this week." And they all felt so much better about themselves, right? When we put that energy out there, when we put kindness and generosity out there, that's where we feel valuable. So it's not, "I'm so great. I'm so valuable, you know, because I have this amount of money

• 1:11:02Lori Gottlieb?

  or this kind of success, or I look this way," or whatever it is. That's not value. The value is, how am I in relationship to the world?

• 1:11:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How am I adding value to other people? We build our belief in ourselves and our value in ourselves through the action and service of other people.

• 1:11:17Lori Gottlieb?

  Right. And, and also, you know, are those reciprocal relationships?

• 1:11:21Lewis Howes?

  Right. Are you only giving and they're taking?

• 1:11:23Lori Gottlieb?

  Right.

• 1:11:24Lewis Howes?

  Because then you're gonna feel lonely as well, right?

• 1:11:26Lori Gottlieb?

  Right.

• 1:11:27Lewis Howes?

  So how do you know when it's reciprocal or when it's a

• 1:11:30Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, you feel it. You know it. I mean, when it's not reciprocal, that's when people say, wait a minute, this relationship feels off.

• 1:11:35Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:11:35Lori Gottlieb?

  People eventually start to say, wait a minute, the ratio is off here.

• 1:11:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How often do you think we should be doing the mirror test?

• 1:11:42Lori Gottlieb?

  Oh, every day.

• 1:11:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, every day. Just check in with yourself. It's a few seconds. But you actually, you wanna just, you wanna just really sit there for a minute and really see yourself. You know, so often, we talk a lot about how like, we don't look at other people. We don't actually see them because we're looking at our phones, or we're distracted, or whatever. We actually don't look at our own faces. What comes up, you'll see a lot of feelings come up. And so you actually try this at home. Look in the mirror at yourself. When you wake up in the morning, before anything has happened, just spend a few, spend a minute, spend, set your phone for like 60 seconds. And actually force yourself to look at yourself for 60 seconds. It will feel like a long time.

• 1:12:22Lewis Howes?

  It will feel like a long time.

• 1:12:24Lori Gottlieb?

  And notice the feelings that come up as you are looking at yourself. How do you feel? Do you feel delight in yourself? Do you feel shame? What do you feel?

• 1:12:35Lewis Howes?

  And then create a game plan and take action on the things you don't like and improve, right?

• 1:12:40Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:41Lewis Howes?

  I feel like relationships has been a thing that people are struggling with the most this year. With quarantine, with just chaos of the world, everything that's happening. What do you see as the biggest problem in relationships? You work with a lot of couples as well as non-couples, but what is the biggest theme of why people struggle in intimate relationships?

• 1:13:02Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, I think right now, and I think this applies more generally too, is often in relationships, there's sort of like this hierarchy of pain, right?

• 1:13:11Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean by that?

• 1:13:12Lori Gottlieb?

  What I mean by that is like, okay, so, you know, someone will say, like, here's, let's just take it in a marriage, right? So someone will say like, you know, I feel, I feel so neglected, right? I feel so neglected in this marriage, or you know, and I'm the one who's like, but I take the kids all day, but I make the money, but I, you know, I'm the one who always gives the hugs, or always initiates sex, or always this, right? And just like this hierarchy of like, you know, whose pain is greater? And that gets to be addressed. And the other person doesn't, there's no room for the other person's pain. Because it's like, but I'm the one who's in, who's, you know, in immense pain. My pain is so much worse than yours.

• 1:13:52Lewis Howes?

  Comparing pain.

• 1:13:53Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, right, comparative pain, right? And there's no hierarchy of pain. Pain is pain. We, but we do this, we do this with ourselves too, where we minimize our pain. Like, sometimes people will say, you know, I'm not gonna go to therapy because, you know, other people have it worse. And that's a message that they got growing up, that they needed to minimize their pain. We don't do this with our physical health, right? So with our physical health, we don't say like, I broke my wrist, for example, but somebody else has cancer, so I'm just gonna, I'm not, I'm not gonna go do anything about it.

• 1:14:20Lewis Howes?

  I have it so much better than them, so I'm not gonna deal with it.

• 1:14:22Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, we don't do that. But, you know, we do that emotionally. We say like, yeah, I'm feeling sad, or I'm anxious, or I'm having trouble in my relationship. But, you know, other people have it so much worse, so I'm not gonna go. So people don't land in my office until they're having the equivalent of like, an emotional heart attack, right?

• 1:14:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, emotional trauma, it's like some big event.

• 1:14:40Lori Gottlieb?

  Or like, their marriage is falling apart, or they lost their job, or they had a miscarriage, or, you know, like, something big happened. As opposed to like, you know, maybe they had the miscarriage, but they didn't talk about like, all the pain they were going through and trying to get pregnant and all the fertility issues. It's like, yeah, well, it's not that bad.

• 1:14:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:14:59Lori Gottlieb?

  You know? Or, or whatever it is, you know? Or it's like, someone will be like, yeah, I had a breakup, but it wasn't a divorce.

• 1:15:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:15:05Lori Gottlieb?

  So like, it's not that bad. Yeah, there are no kids involved, it's not that bad.

• 1:15:09Lewis Howes?

  Right, but it's still painful.

• 1:15:10Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:15:12Lewis Howes?

  So, the biggest challenge in relationships is hierarchy comparison of pain within the relationship? Why is that a big challenge?

• 1:15:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Because then, what happens is, it becomes a, like a pain competition. And then it's kind of like, well, you need to do this thing to minimize my pain, as opposed to, what can we do together to say, you know, here are the things that, here are some of the things that, here are how your needs are not being met, here are how my needs are not being met, and what can we do to help each other? We don't think about that, it's like, you need to do this for me.

• 1:15:46Lewis Howes?

  Why do we always want the other person to do something for us to make us feel better? As opposed to, going back to what you say is responsibility. How can I show up differently? How can I give differently?

• 1:15:55Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, what happens is people say, "You have to do this for me. If you do this, then I'll do that." And they don't, you know, they're saying like, "Well, the reason that we're not having sex is because you don't help me with the dishes." Or "You don't give me enough affection," or whatever. It's just like, "And so, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna do this. I'm not gonna give you affection, or I'm not gonna have sex with you, or I'm not gonna do the dishes until you do the thing that I want." As opposed to, "Why don't you just do the nice thing?" You know, "Why don't you just do the nice thing?" And you'll find that other people wanna do nice things for you too. It's not like you have, the other person has to go first every time. Be the person you wanna be in the relationship, and then see what the other person is capable of doing.

• 1:16:39Lori Gottlieb?

  If you're being the person you wanna be in the relationship, and the other person isn't, okay, that's a problem. But if you're being the person you wanna be in the relationship, and then you notice, "Oh, they're being the person they wanna be in the relationship too, because they're not feeling so much resentment all the time."

• 1:16:56Lewis Howes?

  And what if after six months of this, it's a one-sided relationship?

• 1:17:02Lori Gottlieb?

  Okay, so here's the thing. When people come to couples therapy, before they even step foot in my office, I tell them, "You need to figure out, before you come in here, what is it that you are going to do, you, each of you individually, to make this relationship better, just from the start."

• 1:17:18Lewis Howes?

  Before you come in.

• 1:17:19Lori Gottlieb?

  Before you come in. And the first thing we talk about when they come in is, each person says what they are going to do to make the relationship better. So it's not, "Oh, my partner needs to do this." It's, "Here's what I need to do to," regardless of what my partner does.

• 1:17:31Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:17:32Lori Gottlieb?

  "Here's what I need to do to make the relationship better." And so, we have these, and it's something very specific. It's not just like, "I'm gonna be nicer." You know, like it's something very specific about, you know, like, you know, depending on what's going on in their relationship.

• 1:17:46Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:17:46Lori Gottlieb?

  And they have to do that, right? And then we come up with more goals for each person. And what they find is that every time they set a goal for themselves, the other person wants to be better too. So each person is setting a goal and it's almost like if there's any competition, they're competing for who's going to be better in their relationship.

• 1:18:03Lewis Howes?

  Really, that's interesting.

• 1:18:03Lori Gottlieb?

  And you find that that's where emotional generosity comes in, where people start to see the good sides of the other person.

• 1:18:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. From your experience, what are the three to five things that the greatest relationships all have?

• 1:18:16Lori Gottlieb?

  Flexibility is a big one. So, I mean, there are studies and I can tell you what the studies say, but I see this borne out just in my office as well. If you are a flexible person, your relationship is going to have a much better chance of weathering the vicissitudes of life than if you're a really rigid person. So flexibility is a big one. Emotional stability. You know, you're with someone who hasn't kind of worked out their stuff. They're going to be fighting with not just you, but lots of other people from the past in the room every time something comes up. You know, there's this, there's this rule, the Gottmans have this rule of five positive things for every one negative thing that is said. That's the ratio. I look at like a bank account, right?

• 1:19:01Lori Gottlieb?

  It's like you have to make five deposits into the bank account before you can withdraw something. And you can see that with your kids too, by the way. Like five positive things, five positive interactions for every one negative interaction, you're a good enough parent.

• 1:19:15Lewis Howes?

  Are you saying five things first before you say something?

• 1:19:17Lori Gottlieb?

  No, no, no, no, no, it doesn't have to be first. No, no, in general, like if you look at the ratio, right? It's like you have to, you have to have like five deposits in the bank for every one withdrawal. So, you know, because nobody's perfect in relationship, right? So you have to have five positive interactions for every one negative interaction that you have.

• 1:19:34Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 1:19:35Lori Gottlieb?

  And that's what the Gottmans found. That's what their studies show.

• 1:19:37Lewis Howes?

  Because if it's the other way, if it's five negative and you get one little positive thing every once in a while, it's going to be emotionally draining.

• 1:19:43Lori Gottlieb?

  Right, because you're not going to, you're not going to really notice that positive thing because everything is clouded by all the negativity.

• 1:19:49Lewis Howes?

  I'm wrong, I'm this, I'm not enough.

• 1:19:51Lori Gottlieb?

  Yep.

• 1:19:52Lewis Howes?

  Okay, that's number three. Are there a couple more you have or?

• 1:19:55Lori Gottlieb?

  I would say taking responsibility for yourself is really important.

• 1:19:58Lewis Howes?

  Even if the action that happened was wrong and bad to you?

• 1:20:02Lori Gottlieb?

  Take responsibility for how you respond to what happened.

• 1:20:05Lewis Howes?

  Take responsibility for your response.

• 1:20:07Lori Gottlieb?

  Yes.

• 1:20:08Lewis Howes?

  Is there one more, any chance?

• 1:20:12Lori Gottlieb?

  You know what, yes, I would say that emotions in a household are contagious. And if you are anxious all the time, if you come home at the end of the day and you're critical of everything that happened and you're complaining all the time, if you are depressed and you're not getting treatment for it, the mood of a house is contagious. And so, really be aware that what is going on inside of you is affecting everyone around you.

• 1:20:40Lewis Howes?

  What do you think would make you, you're already an exceptional therapist, you've got this amazing column, you've got a podcast, Dear Therapist with my friend Guy Winch, you've got this New York Times bestseller, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, which is amazing.

• 1:20:55Lewis Howes?

  What would make you a better therapist? You're already great, but what's...

• 1:20:59Lori Gottlieb?

  Oh no, I mean, I think there's, I think that we're always growing as therapists. I mean, and maybe you should talk to someone, the reason that I wanted to show, you know, I followed these four patients and then the fifth patient is me as I go to therapy and you can see that I steal things from my therapist all the time. Like, he does something and I think, wow, that is really good, that was really effective, and I will literally drive from his office to my office, do it on the next five patients, right? I mean, you can see that happening in the book. And, and I think that, you know, while I make it my own, right? Because I think authenticity is really what helps us connect with our patients. You know, I say at the very beginning, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, that my most significant credential is that I'm a card-carrying member of the human race, that I bring my humanity into the room all the time.

• 1:21:44Lori Gottlieb?

  I don't mean my personal life, but I bring my, my authenticity, my personality into the room. And I think that as a therapist, you know, when you're training to be a therapist, it's almost like if you want to be like a great pianist, you have to learn the scales perfectly and then you can improvise, right? Same thing with, with therapeutic training, like you learn all the techniques, you learn all the theories, you learn how to be with patients. But once you really perfect that, you do that in, you know, the first several years, right, then you can start to improvise. And I think you learn so much as you're improvising. You get better every year. I think every, you know, every week I probably get better as a therapist because you're learning, um, you know, your patients hold up a mirror

• 1:22:29Lori Gottlieb?

  to you as much as you hold up a mirror to them.

• 1:22:31Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So you're still a practicing therapist. You do, you have clients come in person, or I guess over Zoom.

• 1:22:37Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, now it's virtual. Yeah.

• 1:22:38Lewis Howes?

  Uh, you've got your podcast, Dear Therapists, which you guys do weekly, is that right?

• 1:22:43Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, every Thursday the podcast drops.

• 1:22:44Lewis Howes?

  Every Thursday. And give us a scenario of what that is. It's a caller, it's a...

• 1:22:49Lori Gottlieb?

  Yeah, I know. It's great because, you know, what we're trying to do is democratize therapy. We feel like a lot of people maybe don't know what therapy is. They have a lot of misconceptions about it. They don't have access for all kinds of reasons, um, you know, financially, logistically. Um, and so just like in the book, I wanted to show what therapy really is and how it can be helpful. In the podcast, you know, someone writes in their problem, then Guy and I talk about it. You hear like two therapists discussing everyday problems and it's a different perspective because you normally don't get to hear how therapists might talk about your problem. And then we bring the person on.

• 1:23:22Lewis Howes?

  Oh, you bring...

• 1:23:23Lori Gottlieb?

  And then we bring them on. We have a session. And then we have a session.

• 1:23:25Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:23:26Lori Gottlieb?

  And so then we have a session with them and we, and what's interesting is...

• 1:23:29Lewis Howes?

  Do they get to hear you talking about this behind the scenes?

• 1:23:31Lori Gottlieb?

  Once they listen to the podcast, yes, but they don't get to hear it beforehand. Uh, because we're sort of talking about it like, okay, this is how we think about the problem. And then we have a session with them and we have an hour to move them to a new place because what's unique about the podcast is we give them specific actionable advice at the end of the podcast, that then they have one week to try out. And then they have to tell us how it went.

• 1:23:54Lewis Howes?

  They have homework.

• 1:23:55Lori Gottlieb?

  They have homework and they have to, and they have to report back. And you hear it all in one episode. So you hear what happened. Um, and what's been great about the podcast is that everybody is doing their homework and they're telling us, this is what I did. And what's really great is when, you know, during the session, it's maybe a hard session, right? And then you think, yeah, and we make predictions, by the way. So at the end of the session, we, like, they go off, they go do their homework, but Guy and I make predictions, like, do we think they're gonna do it? What do we think is gonna be in the way of they're doing it? Um, and they come back and they tell us what happened. And then we talk about, you know, did they do it? Did it work? Did it not work? And why? So I think we can learn a lot about that piece of not just, here's the advice, but why did it work? Or why didn't it work?

• 1:24:40Lewis Howes?

  I think it's brilliant. I really love Esther Perel's Couples Therapy Show. Where should we begin? So I'm assuming this will be-

• 1:24:47Lori Gottlieb?

  That's what we do. Yeah.

• 1:24:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, this will be just as powerful, but it's two heads. And Guy's an amazing-

• 1:24:51Lori Gottlieb?

  It's co-therapists. Yeah.

• 1:24:53Lewis Howes?

  And Guy's an amazing individual, a great, wise person to bring on. So I think that's great you guys are doing it. I've got a couple of final questions for you, but I want to make sure people get your book. Maybe you should talk to someone, check it out online, anywhere books are sold. You can check out the podcast, Dear Therapist. It's on Apple and Spotify and all those places. You're also on social media, Lori Galib underscore author on Instagram, Lori Galib one on Twitter, and Galib Lori on Facebook. Where are you most active?

• 1:25:20Lori Gottlieb?

  Probably Instagram and Twitter.

• 1:25:22Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so Instagram and Twitter. We'll have all this linked up in the show notes. This question I ask everyone at the end is called the three truths. So I want you to imagine it's your last day on earth, and you've accomplished everything you want to accomplish. You've got the family you want, the relationship, you've got the practice you want, you've written all the books, everything. But for whatever reason, everything you've created has to go with you to the next place, wherever that is, once you die. And we don't have access to your TED Talks, your books, nothing. All your great wisdom's gone. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true that you would share with the world, three lessons you've learned through your life or therapy or experience. And this is all we would have to remember you by, these three lessons.

• 1:26:03Lori Gottlieb?

  Okay.

• 1:26:04Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are your three truths?

• 1:26:06Lori Gottlieb?

  I would say there's nothing more important than kindness to yourself and to other people. I would say, remember that human beings are ridiculous, because that allows us to, while we need to take our lives seriously, we don't need to take ourselves so seriously. And I would say that we all have a place of knowing inside of us that we don't often listen to. And it's very quiet, because it gets drowned out by all of the other voices that are much louder. And if you can get quiet with yourself, you will hear the voice from that place of knowing, and that should be your North Star.

• 1:26:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's really hard to get quiet. So much noise.

• 1:26:52Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, listen, I, as you know from Maybe You Should Talk To Someone, I switched careers a million times. And it led me to this hybrid career that embodies all of the different pieces of what I did from working in.

• 1:27:05Lewis Howes?

  Like a Hollywood writer, writing a script?

• 1:27:07Lori Gottlieb?

  I was, I was, I was an executive at NBC, working on like Friends and ER. I left to go to medical school. I left medical school to become a journalist. I left journalism to become a therapist. And all of it had to do with story and the human condition. Every single thing I did, it was just experiencing it through a different lens. And everyone thought I was crazy. Every time I would make one of these changes, well, you know, they, oh, that's not practical. Or that's not this, or it's not that. And, you know, I think when you start second guessing yourself, because other people aren't going to live your life. Only you get to live your life. So why do you want to live your life based on other people's ideas? Right? And so I really had to be in that place of knowing that I didn't know exactly where it would lead,

• 1:27:52Lori Gottlieb?

  because there were all these places where I ended up leaving them to do something else. But I was going in the right direction. And so I think it's so important, that's like when you think about what are you going to leave behind? What are these truths? I think about what I want my son to hold true to him, to hold dear to him as he goes through life. And I want him to hear that place of knowing and not get talked out of the life that he wants to live.

• 1:28:17Lewis Howes?

  That's inspiring story. And I acknowledge you, Lori, for constantly listening to your, your truths. And even when you said, I'm investing in medical school and I'm invested in this career, for years, you said, you know what, it's not exactly what I want to do, but.

• 1:28:31Lori Gottlieb?

  But it's closer.

• 1:28:31Lewis Howes?

  It's closer, and it helped me learn a lot of things. I'm going to make the most of this and go to the next thing. And maybe this is what you do for a while, and maybe this evolves into something else in three to five years or 10 years. And this will be part of your story for the next chapter. So I acknowledge you for. Constantly thinking about humanity and how you can tell better stories and help us learn how to tell our own stories better through your experiences and all these different things you've done, the work you do here and your book, your podcast, your TED Talk, your column is truly changing lives and I acknowledge you for showing up with a big heart every day and helping humanity because that's the card you hold the most. That's the card you always have, the human card. So I'm very grateful for that about you.

• 1:29:12Lori Gottlieb?

  Well, thank you. I mean, I think that these conversations that you have every week are doing exactly what I'm trying to do as well. So I'm just so glad that we were able to have this conversation.

• 1:29:22Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. I'm an untrained therapist and my final question for you Lori is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:29:30Lori Gottlieb?

  Wholeness.

• 1:29:32Lewis Howes?

  There you go. Lori Golly, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

• 1:29:35Lori Gottlieb?

  Oh, it's my pleasure.

• 1:29:37Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode, my friend. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it is powerful to help you rewrite your own story, tell a better story, heal from the shame of your past and truly start living the life that you want to live right now. If this empowered you, inspired you, motivated you, lifted you up in any way, make sure to share this with a friend, post it on social media, tag me, tag Lori. You can use the link lewishouse.com/1013 or just copy and paste this wherever you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. And please, if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button over on Apple Podcasts right now if you enjoyed this. And if you've been around for a while, but you haven't left a review

• 1:30:19Lewis Howes?

  yet, please leave us a review and a rating because that'll help us spread the message of greatness to more people on that platform. And I'm just so grateful for you for everything you do and how you listen, how you show up and be a part of the School of Greatness community. And if you want more inspirational messages from me, I send out weekly text messages to inspire you, motivate you, and continue to take things to the next level, then just text me right now the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960 to get on my texting list of inspirational messages every week. And I'll leave you with this quote from the great Brene Brown. She said, "Vulnerability is not winning or losing. It's having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome."

• 1:31:05Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that a challenging one for us to have that presence, that passion, that peace, that love, even when we have no control over the outcome? And I want to remind you that if no one has told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is? It's time to go out there and do something great.