Top Psychologist: How To Heal A Broken Heart & ATTRACT Healthy Love | Guy Winch

In this episode, I sit down with psychologist and bestselling author Guy Winch to explore the intricate world of emotional health and relationships. Guy shares his insights on building self-esteem, managing heartbreak, and creating healthy foundations for lasting partnerships. We dive deep into the importance of emotional literacy, discuss how to navigate the complexities of modern dating, and explore strategies for raising emotionally intelligent children. Guy's wisdom, gained from three decades of clinical practice, offers listeners practical tools to improve their emotional wellbeing and build more fulfilling relationships. In this episode you will learnHow to build a strong foundation for relationships through intentional communication and self-awarenessThe importance of emotional literacy and using tools like the "emotion wheel" to better understand and express feelingsStrategies for healing from heartbreak and rebuilding self-esteem after rejectionThe critical role of self-acceptance and self-understanding in forming healthy relationshipsPractical advice for parents on fostering emotional intelligence and resilience in their childrenFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1683For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Tara Swart – https://link.chtbl.com/1629-podMacken Murphy – https://link.chtbl.com/1587-podDr. Becky Kennedy – https://link.chtbl.com/1586-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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  That actually starts before the heartbreak, when people begin to fall in love. You become addicted. Love is an addiction. That's why the withdrawal of love is the form of withdrawal. Dr. Guy Winch.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Guy received his PhD in clinical psychology from NYU.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  He's been working with individuals, couples, and families in his private practice in Manhattan since 1992.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Guy Winch.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  Our brain doesn't distinguish that well between emotional and physical pain. This is true in functional MRIs. They look incredibly, incredibly similar.

• 0:32Lewis Howes?

  Between emotional trauma and physical trauma.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Pain, emotional pain and physical pain. The divorce rate is so high and people are so unhappy in relationships. We should be teaching this stuff in schools. Relationship dynamics are like cement. You can mold it when it's wet. It's much more difficult to do when it's dry.

• 0:49Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are three or four things that individuals could do to enter a relationship to give them a chance for happy, healthy, long-term love?

• 0:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:01Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Guy Winch in the house. So good to see you, man.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  You as well, Louis. It's great to be back.

• 1:11Lewis Howes?

  It's been too many years, but you've been on twice before and you're one of my favorite psychologists to be on here and the things that you do around understanding science and self-help and kind of blending them together, I think is really needed in the world right now. So thank you for being here. Very excited about this. One of your, the first thing I want to dive into is a quote that you have on, I believe, your website. You said, "Brain studies have shown that the withdrawal from romantic love activates the same mechanisms in our brain as when addicts are withdrawing from substances." I don't know if that's from your TED Talk or on your website, but that seems fascinating to me that the same type of withdrawal from a relationship, from love, is similar to

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  an addict from substances. Which one do you think is harder to heal from? Someone going through substance abuse or someone going through a breakup?

• 2:08Speaker 00

  Look, first of all, we have services for people who go through substance abuse. There's a lot of medical care available, their medications available, their support available. Much less so for romantic heartbreak, especially if you're an adult, especially if you're older, you know, than in your twenties where you're supposed to be over it, where these things are for kids, kind of thing. And so you find then that you're going through a ridiculously difficult experience and people are looking at you like, come on, it's been a week.

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Been over it, you know, and you would not say that to somebody who's, you know, coming off opioids. But what's interesting to me is it actually starts before the heartbreak, when people begin to fall in love. And anyone who's done that recently will remember, you become addicted to the person and it can happen extraordinarily quickly. It can happen because you swiped and they swiped back and you suddenly figured out, oh, this is it. She's the one. That's going to be the answer to all my problems. And you start to feel addicted, i.e. you think about them all the time. Nothing else really matters as much. They're every correspondence, every word tilts you

• 3:21Speaker 00

  up or down and, but what, she didn't say love you. She always says, I love you. What, now, she was in the supermarket with five bags in her hand. She didn't have the finger, you know, that's not, you go into a panic. And so it starts when you get addicted. Love is an addiction or a form of one. That's why the withdrawal of love is the form of withdrawal.

• 3:40Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. So what is the way that most people fall in love? How is that look like in today's society? How do we fall in love? Is it, I see someone and eventually I make a decision, that's the person I want to be with. Like if something clicks and isn't it, and is it around their identity or their potential identity of what they could give me in the future? Is it around their, our chemical attraction that gets us kind of deciding? Is it around, is it more analytical of like, on paper, they look amazing and all their accolades and their status or what they can provide for me? When do we make a decision that I'm going to choose to love this person?

• 4:18Speaker 00

  We don't.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Make a decision. We don't decide. Because if you decided, you could actually decide to fall in love. And there's so many people who would love to fall in love, maybe even with the person that they're actually with already. But struggle to do that, or people who have fallen out of love would like to fall back in love. Or the person that, you know, that's trying to woo them is perfect for them in every way. Why can't they just love them? That would be great. I just don't. So, you know, we can't quite make ourselves fall in love. But you know what happens is that people fall in love. It's very psychological because it's with an incredible absence of information. You, it happens quite quickly. You don't know the person. You don't. You have a few data points and you're connecting them to create a monolith

• 5:02Speaker 00

  with five data points. Out of a flawed human being. Potentially flawed. You have no even idea where. And, you know, you have the rose colored glasses. Everything is cute. Those things that are going to become incredibly annoying later on are still cute to you. And you just fill in the gaps with optimism, with hope, with, oh, they're probably like this. And so you really don't know the person you've fallen in love with most of the time. Because I said, if you need to know the person, you have to wait until you have your first fight. If you don't know how they fight, you don't know how ugly it gets. You don't know how ugly they get. And that can make a big difference. But that doesn't usually happen before you fall in love. It happens after. You don't know how they fight. You don't know how they travel.

• 5:46Speaker 00

  You know, maybe you love to travel and they are such an anxious mess in an airport that you really want to just, I am not with this person at all. You know, like, you don't know that.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  You don't know how they are with their parents, your parents, with, you know, the holidays, whether they are a mess, they're fun. Like, there's so much you don't know. But people tend to fall in love before, you know, a full year's cycle of getting to know someone, right?

• 6:11Lewis Howes?

  Could you imagine if you had a full year where it's like you went through every holiday cycle with someone, you got to meet their family and friends in multiple different situations, you traveled once or twice at least, you got to notice them when they're at their lowest moment or emotionally tired or physically tired, and so you got to see how they react to situations that are not ideal, you got to deal with arguments with them or disagreements and see how they respond when you don't agree with them, you got to see how, you know, one of your values don't fully align with their values and can you accept one another's values and their background and their upbringing and their deficiencies. Wouldn't it be amazing to have a full year of that before deciding to fall in love?

• 6:56Speaker 00

  It would be amazing. Some people do. I mean, it's not everyone that does that, but, but, and some people, I mean, it's hard to not fall in love for that full year. You would have to kind of hold yourself back in a certain way, but some people do, are much slower to boil in that sense. And so they are very fortunate in that way because they're making a much more informed decision. What you're doing, if you don't do that, is you're doing damage control, or you're trying to like, you know, shove a round peg into a square hole or something like that sometimes, and that's when it becomes a little iffy. And then a lot of people are like, I don't know if we should get married, we're having so many problems, but.

• 7:32Lewis Howes?

  We've been together for three years.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, I guess, but it says you should somewhere. I don't know where it says it, but apparently it says you should somewhere because that's how they act, like it says you should.

• 7:40Lewis Howes?

  I feel like, you know, we've also never been trained how to be in a relationship with one person for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. Like, we've never been taught that, right? We haven't been taught a lot of things about dealing with heartbreak and failure and rejection. We haven't been taught those things, but also people haven't lived long enough when they're 25, 30 to say, how can I be with one person and have a fulfilled life for the next decades? How can I really thrive for a long-term happy marriage? Unless we've seen a model from our parents, which most people haven't, we don't know that skill either, right? And it's just, we don't have that skill set. What would you say if people could?

• 8:22Lewis Howes?

  Set themselves up. You've been doing this, you know, work for what, three decades, four, more now?

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Three decades.

• 8:28Lewis Howes?

  Three decades. You've been working with individuals, you've been working with couples, married, single, all these different individuals, people at a high level of success, people who are starting out in their career. What would you say are three or four things that individuals could do today to enter a relationship in the best way possible to give them a chance for happy, healthy, long-term love?

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Okay, how much time do we have? But I'm gonna start with this. I think the thing we get wrong most about relationships is that we are absolutely clueless about how critical the first steps are.

• 9:10Speaker 00

  Those first dates, those first months, what you are doing is you are creating an unspoken contract with that person about what our couplehood is going to look like. Who's going to be responsible for what, what the dynamic is going to be, what the vibe is going to be, who's going to be pursuing, who's going to be the pursued. Everything you do is a precedent.

• 9:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  But you don't realize that you're setting a precedent. So you're just like, oh, this part's okay, this part I didn't love as much, but fine. No, it's not fine. I mean, maybe it's not a big deal, but if that's what's going on, that's what the other person is expecting would be cool to go on.

• 9:56Lewis Howes?

  Forever. Yeah, yeah.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  And in that relationship, you are setting, like, if somebody tends to be 10, 15 minute late to all the dates, and you're like, it's only 10 minutes, I'm not gonna be, you know, I'm not gonna, then you are signing up for the fact that you get to be late, and if suddenly 10 days in, you're like, you know, it's really not cool that you're late. They'll be like, where have you been for 10 days? That's not a new thing. You know what I mean? There's literally that expectation the other person has, that if this is what goes on, this is what goes on. But if you're not aware that you're writing this unspoken contract and signing it and agreeing to all these precedents, then you're setting yourself up for a relationship that a lot of people are like, oh, I'll fix this later, I'll fix it in post, and like,

• 10:38Lewis Howes?

  This isn't a movie.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Here's why. I'll say this last part about this piece. Relationship dynamics are like cement.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  You can mold it when it's wet, when it's fresh. But you can't, it's much more difficult to do when it's dry and it dries very quickly. So you have to be aware of that.

• 10:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and if you wanna jackhammer it two years in the future, cuz you don't like the way it's laid down, that's gonna cause real damage. And it's hard to mend that. It's, it's, it's, uh, it's not like, uh, well, I've got the Japanese saying where like they break a bowl and it's like golden, it's like,

• 11:14Speaker 00

  Kintsugi, that's that, kintsugi.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  It's not that, this is like, you're breaking a, a, a, a road. And you're breaking a path and you have to almost create a bridge.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  Once you break it two years later.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:24Lewis Howes?

  And that person has to wanna go over that bridge.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:27Lewis Howes?

  Every time.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  And that's for each thing.

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  For each thing you wanna fix or change or tweak.

• 11:33Lewis Howes?

  This is interesting, I'm so glad you're saying this because we've known each other for how long, eight, eight years maybe or something like that, I don't know. Eight, nine years? And, uh, you know, we're not super close talking all the time, but you've seen me go through three different relationships in the last eight years. And, um, you've seen me kind of show up differently in this relationship based on what we've talked about. And there are things that I did differently, I think because one, a lot of the wisdom I gained from you and other different therapists and psychologists that came on that I was able to learn from. Two, I was doing a lot of my own healing work in the, the practice every week with someone that was helping guide me to heal, uh, in my last relationship and going to this new one. And, um,

• 12:16Lewis Howes?

  three, because I was just sick and tired of experiencing so much pain and sadness and suffering in relationships, like the pattern that I was choosing. That I was like, I need to do something completely different than I've always done. Whether this works out or not, I have to just try something completely different. And I felt like what I've done has really worked well for me, I don't know if it'll work well for everyone. But it sounds like I'm doing what you're saying people should be doing. Which is entering a relationship in a way that is going to lay the cement and the foundation for the whole relationship. And really doing it early on, not waiting. So a few things that I did with Martha and we did together is when we started dating, I said, listen, I'm gonna be,

• 13:02Lewis Howes?

  We're gonna date each other, but I'm not going to have sex with you. Right? It's one of the first things I said, like, it's not happening. Where, you know, that wasn't the case in previous relationships. So that's the first thing I was like, how I want to get to know someone without chemical interference, you know, without sexual chemical interference. That was always blurring me, you know, in the past. That was the first thing. And it's almost like we got to know each other as friends. And you kind of hear people who are married a long time or happy, they're like, yeah, we were friends early on. Or like, we were just in a friendship first, and then it grew into something because we really loved each other. Right? You hear that a lot. Not that that's always the case, but that was what we did.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  And I think that was really helpful for me to see all the parts of her and say, do I accept all the parts of her? I mean, we don't have to like all the parts, but can I accept it? Because she's not going to change who she is. Maybe, but this is pretty much who she is. And I was able to see clearly, I, I accept all the parts of her to get into a committed relationship after a few months. Right? Of us spending a lot of time together, traveling together, seeing her family, like, all the things we did early on, I was like, I put myself in those situations, friends, family, travel, before getting committed. And that was really helpful. It was kind of like a year cycle and a few months. The next thing that I did

• 14:26Lewis Howes?

  is I told her the truth about everything. And from my past, what I've done in my past, things I was proud of, not proud of, everything. And I told her my vision for my future. And I said, this is the man I am now. This is the man I'm growing into, and this is the man I want to be in my vision for my life, my career, my family, everything. And I'm not going to change it for one person, to make one person happy. You've got to accept this part of me, and I want to know what your vision is for your life. And see if we're in alignment. Obviously, things might change and evolve, but if that's what you want, I want to be accepting of your vision for your life and you accepting of mine. And that was really helpful. And then we also did a values exercise.

• 15:10Lewis Howes?

  I never created a values exercise in any relationship before. It was like, oh, we like each other and you're beautiful and you like me and whatever. We're having fun. Let's just be together. But we went on a trip and I said, I want to do a values exercise and get clear on what you really value around family, friendships, money, time, everything, raising kids, like, what are the values in your life that you have? And we wrote them separately and then looked at them together. There wasn't any influence. And we were in alignment on our values, which was helpful. And so having that clarity of kind of like, no chemical

• 15:49Lewis Howes?

  interference around sexual acts to values to, this is a vision of my life. This is my lifestyle. This is what I want to create. Do you accept it? Because if you don't, I'm not changing for you. And we were able to get in alignment. And that doesn't mean it's all going to be perfect. And it's like, it's going to work out. But that created the foundation, the pavement you were talking about, where we were like, okay, let's cement this. Let's start to like mold it and start to let it dry. Now that we are in agreement of these things with each other. And there was one other thing that we did that I'd always wanted to do. Because I'd always ended every relationship in therapy, and then it ended. And I said, I want to start my next relationship in therapy. If that's with you or someone else, like,

• 16:32Lewis Howes?

  I'm not getting in a relationship unless someone else is willing to agree to have a, you know, a session once every six weeks with someone, where we can get clarity on agreements. Because there was never agreements in relationships that were clear and that people stuck to. And I was like, I want agreements so that there's a disturbance, we can create an agreement quickly. So there's less disturbances. And she was like, yeah, sounds great. I'm in. Those things that we created from the beginning have given me so much peace. You asked me like, how are you feeling before the interview? I was like, I felt pretty peaceful. And it's because I've never been in a relationship where I feel fully accepted for me. And I feel that. So I have the energy to go out in life and

• 17:15Lewis Howes?

  tackle what I want. And it's been really beneficial. But I went through, you know, 20 something years of pain and suffering in choosing relationships without having the courage to do these kind of activities early on. And I don't know if that's something that you would recommend for all people. It took a lot of work. It takes time. It's like, you can't rush into something. But it's given me a lot more peace in this relationship, so.

• 17:41Speaker 00

  So I am, I am so excited to hear that that's how you went about it. No, I'll tell you why. First of all, that's why you're at peace. Because you've done the due diligence. There's not these corners of her that you've never seen, exposed, or don't know about. Unlike, well, I like what I see, but who knows what I don't. You actually have seen a lot because you've asked a lot of questions. The due diligence you did over there, that investment of if I'm choosing a life partner, I'm gonna vet this as much as possible. I'm actually gonna put in the work to build a foundation. People always say like, oh, we have a good foundation. Did you build it or did you just, are you just evaluating what actually turned out?

• 18:26Speaker 00

  Or did you intentionally, deliberately build a foundation? You did. That kind of due diligence is extraordinarily rare. And why it's so such a shame that it is rare is because we give that due diligence to purchases like homes and cars. I know people that spend two hours a day studying car models before they make the commitment on their next car. But they're not gonna spend an hour thinking about their next relationship or what they should do or about whether they should have kids or how they want to raise them or what their values are, all of those things. To me, like, if you're ever gonna put in the work to do the research, do the due diligence,

• 19:07Speaker 00

  to put in the effort to build something intentionally, deliberately, mindfully, a relationship's where it should be. And by the way, not just romantic ones, because all these rules of relationships are true for all kinds of relationships.

• 19:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I mean,

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  what is the big mistake that people are making today then in relationships by entering the relationship? Is it they haven't healed from the previous one? And can you enter a new relationship while being wounded from the previous one? Or do you need to be on some type of healing journey to set yourself up for? A better opportunity, do you think?

• 19:41Speaker 00

  First of all, I think you can get into a relationship in any situation. It just might mean that you will have more work to do and that the relationship will have more work to do.

• 19:48Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  If you're coming at it from a wounded place or, you know, something like that, you know?

• 19:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  When you said, you know, I told her what the plan was. In other words, you told each other, and this was your individual thing, you're like, this is the ride I want to be on. So that's the, that's what you'll be joining me for. You need to know if you want that ride. And she's saying the same thing to you, this is the ride I want to be on. And you need to know if that's the one that you want to join me on. Now, they're not in conflict necessarily at all. You know, each person's goals and dreams or how they want to develop or what kind of life they want. But it's very thoughtful and it's very important to say, this is the vision. Are we sharing it? You know, and to ask all these questions, to have these conversations are not easy to have.

• 20:31Lewis Howes?

  They're not.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Because it, I'm sure it wasn't the case that everything you said, she was like, yeah, me too.

• 20:36Lewis Howes?

  No, no.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, me too. Stuff needed to be worked out. And then you're like, is this critical? Is this deal breaking? Is this something that we can manage to accept? You know, you will use that word a lot, totally about acceptance. That's correct.

• 20:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  That's the question. So you're actually walking into a bit of a, of a, of a marsh when you do that. It's not like all skipping along. But as long as you're willing to do that work.

• 20:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 20:59Speaker 00

  You get off and you get off into dry land.

• 21:02Lewis Howes?

  That's true. Dry, peaceful land.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 21:05Lewis Howes?

  Abundant fertile land that you're just like, ah. No, it doesn't mean there's not going to be challenges and life's going to throw things at you. But I think if you're in it together and you're able to create agreements early on, then it just doesn't mean you have to have a lot of disturbances within the relationship. There might be things coming at the relationship that you need to handle together. But when we're in disagreement constantly about each other or what's wrong with the other person and what they didn't do or what they didn't do for me. Then it's just gonna be a weaker foundation, I think, when you don't have agreements.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  What you guys did is for a year, however many months, you actually practiced communication, conflict resolution, negotiation. You you practice all these very important

• 21:49Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Couples, relationship and communication skills that would have come up a little bit here, a little bit there, but not in that, you know, substantial a way. So you guys developed these muscles to to and these and these, you know, habits with one another of like, if we have a problem, we know how to talk about it. We know how to be honest about it. We know how to resolve it.

• 22:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  So that's the other part of the peace and the confidence. You worked all that out. You developed those skills together in the formation. That's why they go into therapy every few, every six weeks or whatever it was. Great idea. Let's get a little bit of guidance on that because it doesn't hurt. It actually helps quite a bit.

• 22:25Lewis Howes?

  And there was nothing wrong in the relationship early on.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  It does not have to be to learn good habits.

• 22:29Lewis Howes?

  I know. It was amazing. But it takes time and investment. I told her, I was like, I don't think I'd have been ready for you 10 years, if I met you 10 years ago. I wouldn't have been, I wouldn't have seen you the same way. I wouldn't have been, I didn't have the tools or the skills to like, deal with my emotions. I was still healing. I was still growing. And I, and, you know, and I was doing my interview show and I had resources, but I think a lot of people don't have the tools or the skills to have the courage to speak up for what they want, to navigate challenges in a relationship when they feel their button is pushed and they're just reactive. They don't know how to respond calmly because they're in fight or flight. I've been there many times in the past. Like, it's a, it's a massive problem for people. They don't have the tools.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  Do you see, I mean, how do you see like the younger generation, people in their twenties or thirties, being able to get into relationships and have these tools if they've never been trained? Like, it took me a long time to have a lot of pain to be like, okay, I need to learn something different.

• 23:31Speaker 00

  But look how much research you did along the way. You know, this is the third interview we've had. We speak outside of this sometimes, but you are prepared. You do the reading, you do the research. You've learned so much from so many different experts. You were not a layperson coming at it. You practically have an honorary PhD in psychology and relationships already for all the stuff that you've done. I'm serious.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  Right, but most people don't have this.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Most people do not. That's my point. In other words, you do have to put in the work. You had put in the work. And in the books I write and the things I do is to get people to be more thoughtful and more mindful about how they feel and what they want and what they do. Because we can't be on autopilot all the time and most of us are on autopilot all the time. One quick thing I wanted to touch on, because I think this is something that young people say to me a lot and it's problematic. They say, one person will say to another, I don't like when you did so and so. And that person will say, well, that's who I am. I'm not going to change and you shouldn't try and change who I am.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  And I think it's really important that people distinguish who you are from what you do.

• 24:46Lewis Howes?

  From behaviors.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  From behavior.

• 24:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Speaker 00

  They're not asking you to change who you are a lot of the time. If it's like, oh, you hate skiing, you must come with me on skiing vacations three times a year. It's not gonna happen. But if it's about, I don't like when you say those things to me. Well, that's just who I am. No, no, no, that's what you said. It's not who you are. And so people get stubborn and they don't want to change things that you actually should change.

• 25:09Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  And be open to.

• 25:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I mean, you can't be disrespectful and say, well, this is who I am. Accept me for being disrespectful to you.

• 25:15Speaker 00

  Or stubborn, or difficult, or whatever it is.

• 25:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and I think it's also, I think it's also important to know, like, hey, before you get into a relationship, make sure you find out if this is the way they are and they're not gonna change that. Maybe they're not for you.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  What I really find surprising is sometimes somebody will say to me, yeah, the other person, the person they're dating, they just keep telling me what they want and what they like and what they want and what they like. And it's like, it's so annoying. And I'm like, I'm sorry, they're giving you the user manual.

• 25:44Lewis Howes?

  For communicating.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  For how to be in a relationship with them and you don't think it's important for you to read it? It's amazing they're communicating that. That should be the best thing ever. Now, you like it or you don't like it, but it's not annoying that they're doing it. You should be doing the same. They're giving you the instruction manual on how to be with them.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Pay attention.

• 26:02Lewis Howes?

  No, I think it's really important. I think I, I probably over communicated more in the first year, probably out of trauma from the past of like, okay, this is really who I am and this is my truth and I just want to make sure you're okay with this.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. And she's lying on the couch, watch, trying to watch you going, mm-hmm. I heard you the first three times.

• 26:19Lewis Howes?

  No, I'm like, no, twenty times. And I'm like, she's like, you were really traumatized in the past. I'm like, I just want to make sure you know who I am. All my flaws, all my past, where I'm at, where I'm going. This is what I want. You sure you're good? It's like kind of mile markers, right? You gotta lay the cement. It's like every mile marker. Okay, you're still on the same path. Make sure you're in alignment. Because it's not worth me being like out of an invested and then you want me to change who I am. So I think you gotta be willing to accept the person and make sure you figure out all their behaviors or as much as you can within the first six to 12 months before you take the long road with them. And say, all right, am I down for this journey? If it's a little bumpy, am I cool with it, you know? Or don't choose the person. If they have bad behavior over and over, like you don't have to choose them.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:05Lewis Howes?

  If they're not gonna let you change, like you either accept it and, and that's it. But you had this on your, uh, I think this was on your website as well. A quote from you, it said, "Mental health is about diagn- mental health is about diagnosable conditions like depression and anxiety. Emotional health is about common experiences like loneliness, failure and heartbreak. The non-diagnosable stuff." And you also mentioned that you grew up, another quote from you, who said, "I grew up with my identical twin, which of course made me an expert in spotting favoritism." So when I became a psychologist, I didn't take, it didn't take me long to recognize how much uh, we favor our physical health over our emotional health. For example, if we get a cut on our arm,

• 27:49Lewis Howes?

  we can just tell by looking at it whether we need a badge, a stitch or an ambulance. But when we sustain an emotional wound like rejection, failure.

• 27:59Lewis Howes?

  We have no idea how to gauge whether the wound is deep or whether it requires emotional first aid. And a few of us would know how to treat it ourselves if we did. And as a psychologist, you find that unacceptable, you said. Our physical health and our emotional health are the twins of our general well being. And as such, we should treat them equally. How can we start to self diagnose the emotional wounds that we deal with? And how can we know when we are having a symptom of an emotional wound? That is worthy of a deeper look rather than just a quick rub it off or a Band-Aid.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  I would use a similar guideline than you do for a physical wound. You might wake up with a little bit of a scratchy throat or a sniffle. But you don't know if it's going to go somewhere. If two days later, you're still sniffling and scratchy, you might consider you have a cold or something worse, and you might want to do something about it, but it might go away. It's the same thing. We get wounded all the time. Every time you check social media and that person didn't like your thing or share your thing or respond to your thing, we feel rejected. And every little swipe that doesn't get swiped back, we feel rejected. There's a lot of rejection in the world today. Because we're tethered to so many people electronically, the opportunities are tremendous.

• 29:18Speaker 00

  But if it nags you, really nags you, if it's really bothering you, if you're having trouble shaking it, that's when you might want to consider doing a quick exercise or doing something to actually treat the wound rather than just waiting for it to go away.

• 29:34Lewis Howes?

  So for Phil, what would that nagging feeling look like for someone if it's an emotional wound? Is it a physical sensation internally? Is it like their chest is tight or their?

• 29:44Speaker 00

  It's a preoccupation, probably, and it's a mood.

• 29:47Lewis Howes?

  A rumination of something?

• 29:49Speaker 00

  It can be a rumination or just you keep thinking bad. Why hasn't she haven't responded? I thought the date was good and why is like, she's not responding, I guess. It's like now she's ghosting me like I don't understand. And it's four or five days and it was one date.

• 30:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:02Speaker 00

  And, and you, you just don't get over it. Now, you, I, you don't have to, don't have to run to therapy for that, but there are certain exercises you can do to just revitalize your, your self-esteem, your mode.

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  What's a couple, what's an exercise that someone can do if they're, they feel rejected or feel like someone hurt them, whether it was intentional or not?

• 30:19Speaker 00

  There are two things. Um, actually, there are many more than two. I'm gonna, I'm gonna mention two. One is the don't do. The don't do is, the first thing we all do is become very self-critical. In our efforts to understand why it happened, we review everything that might not be great with us, to see if that's the reason. Is it because I'm not this, or I am that, or I'm too much here, I'm too little here? Maybe it's because, oh, I knew I shouldn't have done, like, there's this, this, and, and this is not, you just got rejected. Not the best time to go through the greatest hits of your insecurities. You know, you wanna be doing the opposite, reviving your self-esteem, not actually reviewing all the wounds that you've sustained in the past. Because when you look at past wounds, you reactivate them emotionally, right? If, if, you know, you had physical injuries, if you think about

• 31:02Speaker 00

  them, they're not gonna hurt. But if you think about some of the emotional times, about the rejections, or about the depressions, or about something that got you really upset, you're gonna get upset again, even if it's 20 years later.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 31:13Speaker 00

  It is, but that's, that's the problem.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  When we think about a memory of trauma that we have yet to heal, and we relive that in our mind, is it almost just like we're living that moment all over again?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, but it, it, it's not one that you have yet to heal. It can be one you've healed. If you think about something small and incredibly irritating that happened 15 years ago, and you start literally thinking through the details, you're going to start to feel really irritated. It has zero consequential meaning in the present, none. But that's how we are. I mean, our emotional reflection reactivates these things. So, so, and, and it's important, because if, that's when, if you're spinning about, oh, I'm not this enough, or that enough, and that person rejected me, was it for the same reason? Is it, is it, like, is it this? Like, what's going on? Like, you start to question yourself, and that's just doing damage to your self-esteem. Because, if it's after one date, and really, truly, if it's after five, whatever the reason is.

• 32:09Speaker 00

  It's about chemistry. It's about fit. It's about timing. It's not personal. It's personal in that you might not have been good fit for them, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person or not a great fit for anyone else.

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Why do so many people take it personally when they get rejected in a dating situation or relationship?

• 32:26Speaker 00

  It's not only that. They take it personally and then they generalize it to mean something even bigger than what it does. I never find love. Really? She just didn't sway back. I mean, that seems like a leap, an inference to make from that, but it's a very natural thing we do. We assume it's us. Now, literally, the people do that when they text it with somebody back and forth for a bit and then that person disappears. You have no idea if you're even talking to a real person. You have no idea. That person might be in the hospital. They might have been chatting with you to piss off the person they're actually living with at the time. They might be going through whatever hell we could work. There's a thousand things that can be going on for you to assume that you did something wrong in five texts that was so bad that like it's completely unnecessary. But that's where the mind goes.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  So let's stop that damage. That's the first thing to not do. But the thing you can do is the opposite. You want to remind yourself in those moments of what you bring to the table, what you do have to offer. Now, you can't fool yourself. You can't say to yourself, I'm the most gorgeous person in the world, if you're not. And if the feedback that you get is that you're not, because your mind won't believe that. You know, we have this automatic way of thinking that will reject things that fall outside the sphere of what it considers believable. And so you can't just like convince yourself of something that's not true. You have to focus on the things that are. So think about your best attributes. I have amazing eyes. I know I'm going to find someone who will want to gaze into them. I am such a great listener.

• 33:54Speaker 00

  I'm emotionally available and I'm always up for doing things. Those are wonderful qualities and characters that somebody will appreciate, et cetera. You actually review what is worthwhile about you and not do the opposite.

• 34:09Lewis Howes?

  You know what it sounds like? Before you start dating or getting into a relationship, one of the best things that you can do for yourself is build your self-esteem is what it sounds like. Because when you have a quality or high level of self-esteem, you're not going to get into a relationship that's not good for you. You're not going to stay in one that where someone's treating you poorly or not respecting your boundaries or you're not going to take the scraps of something because you're just lonely, right? So building self-esteem sounds like a great. Foundation for the individual before even getting into a relationship.

• 34:41Speaker 00

  It is doing, and the way you do that is doing what you did in your relationship on an individual level. I.e. you get to know yourself and you get to accept yourself.

• 34:55Lewis Howes?

  All the parts of you.

• 34:55Speaker 00

  All the parts of you, because there's no one who's perfect, right? Every good quality you have comes with a downside. It's going to be true of everyone, right?

• 35:04Lewis Howes?

  Give me an example for yourself.

• 35:05Speaker 00

  For me?

• 35:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, what's a good quality that comes with a downside?

• 35:09Speaker 00

  I can think of several, but okay. I, I, I have a sense of humor.

• 35:17Lewis Howes?

  Very funny.

• 35:18Speaker 00

  I enjoy my sense of humor. I sometimes deploy it in ways that are maybe not.

• 35:25Lewis Howes?

  Bad timing or something, or?

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Yes, because if the joke is going to be funny, I'm going to say it no matter what, just because you can't, I can't pass it up. And I'm gonna be upsetting someone by doing so, potentially. I, I try not to. It does, it leaks out in, in, in sessions sometimes.

• 35:43Lewis Howes?

  When they're like sad, I'm like, yeah, whatever.

• 35:46Lewis Howes?

  Inappropriate moments.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  I'll, I'll give you a quote, you know, and I'll, I'll give you, this is terrible, actually I shouldn't do it just because it'd make me sound so bad.

• 35:53Lewis Howes?

  Now you have to do it, you have to do it.

• 35:56Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm not gonna say anything about the person, but it was a session in one in which somebody was having an issue in a relationship. And I was challenging them on why they're not, you know, setting more limits with their partner who needed limits set with them.

• 36:08Lewis Howes?

  Setting boundaries.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  Right, and they said, yeah, that's how it is. And this person was very successful, you know, and they said, that's how it is. I'm a, I'm a lion in the boardroom and a pussycat in the bedroom. And I said, I agree with every word except cat. It was funny to me, not funny to the other person. I apologized for it. I apologize again if they happened to be listening, that wasn't, but the point was actually sound.

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  I didn't need to, but the joke was dangling and I I couldn't. And so here's a thing that has a downside.

• 36:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Right, somebody who's very, very, um, let's say conscientious about things. That's a wonderful thing that they're conscientious. But it's also a standard that they're probably gonna likely have that they'll likely want to hold you to as well. So love you to receive it, but then they're gonna be expecting it. And so that can be a pain, you know, sometimes. I mean, there's always a downside to things. So you just have to learn to accept and to go, this is great. Yes, it comes with that. I'll accept it because I like that.

• 37:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. If someone has gone through a heartache or has, you know, sadness or felt rejected in their life right now. And they're looking to rebuild their self-esteem and rebuild a a powerful, you know, strong self-identity. What would you say are three to five things they could start with over the next few months to build a powerful self-esteem? So that they can make a better decision in their next dating relationship experience.

• 37:36Speaker 00

  So first of all, they have to be honest with themselves about, you know, like you have to, this is, these are writing exercises.

• 37:42Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  You know, you can't maintain so many data points in your head. But you wanna make a list then of what are the qualities that you like about yourself? What are the ones that you don't? And be honest, this is private, no one else is gonna see it. So be be very, very honest with yourself. Like, what are the things about you that you think are good? And the fact that you have them doesn't mean that they're in performance all the time. You might miss at times, but generally I tend to be this and generally is also that, you know? So laying it out. B, which of the that's of the things you're not that thrilled with? Do you actually wanna work on and improve? Because we're all or should be trying to improve on a regular basis. And so here's your list of of, you know, where you can spend, where the opportunities are.

• 38:23Speaker 00

  As they say in in a job reviews, this is where your opportunities are to improve here and here. So where are the opportunities? And then how can you go about it and choose one at a time? Because these are, you know, difficult things, but but work on yourself. That's the first thing.

• 38:36Lewis Howes?

  Make a list of the good qualities and the opportunities for growth.

• 38:40Speaker 00

  Correct. Secondly, you need to get in touch with how you feel. Because this is all an emotional thing. And we are remarkably emotionally inarticulate. Our language, and I literally mean our ability.

• 38:56Speaker 00

  To distinguish what we feel, the nuances of what we feel is extraordinarily limited. Men are usually worse than women, but generally, this is something that, you know, when I ask people, how do you feel? They're like, um, cool, okay. And I'm like, give me, you know, this was a complex situation that happened over there. This happened, this, like, you must have difficult, you know, all kinds of feelings about it. Yeah, so I'm bummed. Not a feeling, really. I mean, it implies one, but it's not.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  I can relate to that. Before you go on, I can relate to that for men or women watching or listening, because I used to, my default emotion was anger. But really, it was, I felt betrayed, I felt not enough, I felt rejected, I felt sad, I felt alone, I felt misunderstood. It was like, you know, a waterfall of emotions that I was feeling. But all of it led to, I don't know how to communicate this, so I'm just kind of angry. And I'm going to react with something that's familiar, which is anger. And whether that's defending myself, or working harder, or proving my worth, whatever it might be, I'm going to use anger as the emotion to communicate my words and my energy in the situation.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  And it was very challenging to learn how to communicate. And I just feel really sad. I feel really hurt. I feel like alone. I feel like misunderstood. I feel betrayed by my friend, or whatever it might be. And it was challenging for me, because I lacked the tools on how to communicate those things. So I think what you're saying is really important, is like, specifically, I think, men who haven't learned the tools beyond anger, or numbness of emotion, on how to say what is really going on. And I think the reason why it was hard for me to communicate those things, I was kind of like a jock growing up in the Midwest. Um, that I didn't think communicating those things would be accepted. I think they'd be laughed at. And it's probably because they were laughed at.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  It would have been.

• 40:57Lewis Howes?

  In school with my like guy friends at thirteen to sixteen, you know, they were kind of like made fun of. And so when you enter a relationship in your late teens, twenties, it's like, okay, well, is this person gonna make? Is the girl gonna make fun of me that I'm dating if I say I'm sad or I'm lonely? Are they gonna think I'm weak? Is they gonna? So it's kind of a protection mechanism, I guess. At least it was for me and, and, and I had to really learn how to have self-esteem and self-confidence. Which when you're lonely, sad, or feeling not enough, it's hard to build that to where you can express emotion. And accept yourself either way if the person in front of you doesn't accept you.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  That's the challenging thing to be like, can I love myself and express it? If the other person's gonna laugh at me or make fun of me.

• 41:40Speaker 00

  Here's what also anger did, and this is why it's a go-to for many, many people. It actually saves you from having to deal with the more uncomfortable feelings. Of sadness, of disappointment, of betrayal, feeling misunderstood, all those things that you mentioned. In other words, anger, you know, it's, it's considered like a negative or a bad feeling, but it actually doesn't feel that bad.

• 42:01Lewis Howes?

  It feels good.

• 42:02Speaker 00

  It's quite activating. Yes. And so you go to a feeling that's externalizing and activating to avoid feeling sad, feeling vulnerable, feeling bereft, all the other feelings you had. So anger is not just, oh, it's my go-to. Instead, it prevents you from having to deal with the actual feelings that are going on, which is why it's, it's problematic.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  And when you have it, when you have an emotion like anger that prevents you from feeling what's actually going on, what happens to the brain and the body when you do that?

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Well, what I say to people, number one is like, be suspicious of anger. Because it's, it, there are very few situations. I mean, we respond with anger when we're hurt.

• 42:42Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  That's the, you know, like you stub your toe, everyone I know will smack the file cabinet.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  It's a falcon, isn't it? Didn't do it on purpose, that was your total interrupt, whatever. But my point is, that's our default response. And so that's why when you're hurt, you're gonna get angry. That's, that's, that is the default. That's, that's how, you know, we evolve. It's a protective mechanism because our brain doesn't distinguish that well, if at all, between emotional and physical pain. This is true in functional MRIs. They look incredibly, incredibly similar. Sometimes experts are like, I'm not quite sure which that is. And

• 43:13Lewis Howes?

  Between emotional trauma and physical trauma.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  Pain, emotional pain and physical pain.

• 43:19Lewis Howes?

  So like a head injury, like a physical head injury versus a psychological injury?

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Here's the experiment. They put heat, uh, um, conductive, uh, pads on people's forearms and just kept turning up the heat until they couldn't stand it for more than seven seconds. And then they rated how high the pain tolerance was. Then they took people who were just heartbroken and they had them bring an eight by 10 glossy of the person. Yes, it's gonna be that, yo, yeah.

• 43:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  And they stuck it to the top of the MRI, cause you're in this tube. And then they had them relive the breakup while looking at the picture.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  You know what I did when I saw that experiment?

• 44:01Lewis Howes?

  For what?

• 44:02Speaker 00

  I wanted to look up how much money they paid them.

• 44:03Lewis Howes?

  I know, right?

• 44:04Speaker 00

  Cause I was like,

• 44:05Lewis Howes?

  Imagine they stuck in a tube?

• 44:07Speaker 00

  That better not be a $10 experiment. Anyway.

• 44:10Lewis Howes?

  It's true.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  But then they compared the two functional MRIs, the, the, the pain from the thing and that, and, and experts have trouble telling them apart.

• 44:18Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Based on what they were seeing in the imagery of the brain?

• 44:20Speaker 00

  In the imagery of the brain, of how the brain is responding. I mean, some of the theories are that, that emotional pain literally is piggybacking on the pathways of physical pain. But the, the point about what you're saying is when you are hurt, you're gonna respond like you just got, like somebody physically hurt you, you're gonna be angry at them or shut down or get numb, like you said. But it's one of the two. That's the natural response. We have to learn how to overcome it.

• 44:44Lewis Howes?

  So when, before we go on to the next point, but when someone is reliving, uh, a heartbreak, right? They got broken up with three months ago, a year ago, two, whatever it is, and they relive it. They think about the person and look at the videos and the photos. They hear memories, they hear the person's name, and they relive that emotionally.

• 45:04Lewis Howes?

  Is the thought, the electrical charge in the brain or the mind creating a thought that is then creating physical pain on the body? Or is the memory creating an emotional pain first that's creating a ruminating sad thought?

• 45:20Speaker 00

  I'm gonna say something trite, but then forgive me because you've heard this as an athlete and it's gonna piss you off. But all pain is in the head, really.

• 45:29Lewis Howes?

  In the mind.

• 45:30Speaker 00

  In the mind. It's our interpretation of something. It's like, you know, if there are certain areas of the brain, if you shut them off, you won't feel pain.

• 45:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 45:39Speaker 00

  You'll have damage to tissue, cartilage, bone, what have you. You just won't feel that as pain. So it's all in the head. And so therefore, how it gets interpreted, where it actually happens, the fact that it happens in such similar regions, doesn't mean, I mean, you'll feel it in the same way you feel visceral distress, which can, we all feel a little bit differently, but it can be here in the chest or the this. That's why people say heartbreak, because it feels like something's going on viscerally in your chest, in your stomach, in this area. And that's how you experience it in that way. But it's a thought.

• 46:10Lewis Howes?

  When does the body start to respond positively to after a heartbreak? Like, what has to happen for the mind and the thought of a heartbreak in a person? And what happened and didn't happen until you feel more at peace? Is it the meaning you finally create that's different or positive? Is it moving on and being with another person so you don't have to think about it? Like, when does the heartbreak stop for someone? When is that like switch where they're like, okay, I did this and I finally feel better? And how can people get there faster? Is that even possible? Or does it just take time?

• 46:48Speaker 00

  First of all, that is the question that most heartbroken people ask most. They don't ask, how can I heal? They ask, how much longer will this hurt? Because it hurts so much. When you're in pain like that, you wanna know when it's gonna stop or get a little better. Why I wrote the book about how to fix a broken heart is because there is a lot you need to do to make it happen more quickly. There's a lot you can do to make it happen more quickly. Fundamentally, the general thing that you need to do is that heartbreak and loss leaves a lot of voids, and you have to fill them. You can't just white knuckle it. You can't just like, "No, I'm fine. I'm telling you, I'm fine." But half your closets

• 47:30Speaker 00

  are empty because she took all the stuff, and half the furniture is missing. You have nothing to do on weekends, and all her friends were the ones you hung out with, so you're not even in touch with your pals, you know, anymore. And you used to go to her gym, so that's awkward. You're not going there anymore. And suddenly, there are all these areas of your life, mostly your sense of identity of, "I was a we, I was part of a couple, that was who I was. Now who am I?" You know, and so there's a lot of rebuilding and replacing and refilling that needs to happen. It's an active process, but we don't know how to do it. That's why I wrote the book, is that people were like, "Oh, I don't know what to do." And I'm like, "Oh, there's so much you need to be doing."

• 48:07Lewis Howes?

  Right. So when you go through a breakup, there's a void, and we need to fill it.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  Voids.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  Voids. What are the things that people tend to fill it with that cause more pain? And what are the voids that they can fill it with that will support their healing journey?

• 48:23Speaker 00

  The things that people, I mean, I'm thinking, "Oh, what are those things? Oh, it's the key lights, ice cream. It's a lot of television." But it's numbing. You know, people tend to numb at the beginning, and I'm not necessarily opposed to numbing, because even if social support is very important, even if talking things out and getting perspective is quite important, even though there are all these things that are important, in the first throes of that pain, you're not going to be talking to friends 24/7. You just need to break from that, because every time you talk, you're hurting. You need to numb out every once in a while. So, you know, I'm not judging that, that's something you kind of have to do. But people tend to not know what to do. They think, "Well, time, it's just gonna take time, so I'm just gonna suffer."

• 49:08Speaker 00

  You know silently for however many weeks or months, but it's like it does take time. But there's a lot you can do to move that process along. So it's quicker. Primarily, the goal is get the person out of your thoughts. That's the symptom is how much you're thinking about them, the place they have in your thoughts. The symptom reduction is think about them less. It's useful if you have a job that you must concentrate in. It's useful when you have kids that you have to take care of. I mean, it's so difficult, but it's actually a decent enough distraction. So there'll be some moments that you're not hurting. There'll be some moments where you're not bereft, be some moments where your world hasn't ended. It would also remind you about the aspects of your life and yourself that are still there, no matter, no matter what.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  It's just gonna be very, very difficult, but there are, you know, but doing these things and thinking these things through and taking an active position when you are hurting emotionally from anything, whether it's grief, like heartbreak, or any other kind of loss or rejection, or, or, or, you know, a failure, or guilt, or loneliness.

• 50:08Lewis Howes?

  Thinking about it more will cause more pain.

• 50:11Speaker 00

  If it's not productive thinking.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  In other words, there are two kinds of thinking. There's useful and not useful. And the useful gets you something out of the thinking. In other words, there's a product at the end of it. You got perspective, you got support, you got some insight, you got a deeper understanding. You figured something out, there was an action item that you got. There's something, there was a product that came from it. You weren't just spinning.

• 50:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  And hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt. That's not useful.

• 50:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So I think we, there was two steps to building self-esteem and then we went on this.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, here's the second one, sorry, thank you. And I'm thrilled that I actually remember because I would have forgotten. But um, it's the emotional literacy, I started to say it. We need to be able to name our feelings. You rattled off that list after the pain and you were like misunderstood and disappointed and betrayed and trust. And you, you, you gave like six or seven words.

• 51:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  For distinct feelings that you had. That is a high level of difficulty that most people cannot do. What I do, and I literally use this myself at times, and I recommend it. It's gonna sound like I'm, I'm, I'm being condescending, I'm not. I truly have this and use it myself is the emotion wheel.

• 51:26Lewis Howes?

  The emotion wheel.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:27Lewis Howes?

  You have one?

• 51:29Speaker 00

  There are so many versions of them online.

• 51:31Lewis Howes?

  Oh, really?

• 51:31Speaker 00

  You can find them very easily.

• 51:32Lewis Howes?

  Twenty different emotions or how many emotions are there?

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 51:36Lewis Howes?

  I mean, how many are on the wheel?

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Oh, a couple hundred.

• 51:40Lewis Howes?

  Couple hundred?

• 51:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, no, dog, twenty here.

• 51:42Lewis Howes?

  Oh, geez, okay.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Right, because there are the, it's the good ones, too. It's the neutral ones, it's all of them. It's all of the feelings.

• 51:47Lewis Howes?

  So there's a wheel?

• 51:48Speaker 00

  So there's a wheel, and it's by category. All the anger ones here, all the pain ones there, all the joyful ones here, et cetera, et cetera. Sometimes color-coded, but for no real reason. Um, just difficult to, you know, just design purposes. Um, but I will say to people like, what are you feeling? Here's the wheel. I want at least seven of the challenging ones and two of the positive ones. And like, well, how can I have positive ones? I'm like, because when that friend betrayed you, there was also a bit of relief there because they were annoying. Sometimes, and there was also, you know, a little bit of validation there because you had that suspicion and da, da, da, like. They, and people, when they actually see it, oh, yes, there's this. And here's the thing, it's not what's at a ten. That's one or two things. Some of them can be at a three.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  Or, I mean, the relief part of when your friend betrays you is small, but it's there. But then you go, that one's a two, that one's a four, that one's, and find ten for each situation. That will teach you to find the language to express yourself more accurately. Because if you express yourself more accurately, the other person understands what you actually want to need and feel. Rather than some general, well, you're angry, I guess I hurt you in some way, but.

• 52:55Lewis Howes?

  I don't know why or what I need to do about it. That's interesting, the wheel of emotions. So we'll, you said they're online, like images of these things?

• 53:01Speaker 00

  Emotion, emotion wheel. Just emotion wheel, you'll find many.

• 53:05Lewis Howes?

  We'll put it up on this video on the screen right now. We'll have it up there so people can see it and link to one or two that we find. I think that's really interesting. I never heard of that, the emotion wheel, the, or wheel of emotions.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  You can get them, I mean, it's not my thing, but, you know, like, I literally bought a pillow on Etsy.

• 53:22Lewis Howes?

  That has the wheel of emotions?

• 53:23Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, there are many, and it's not just Etsy, you can get them anywhere.

• 53:26Lewis Howes?

  With all the emotions on it?

• 53:27Speaker 00

  With the wheel on it.

• 53:29Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 53:29Speaker 00

  Because you want to use it with kids, and you want it in the living room. So when the kid is having a meltdown, you're just going.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  Here, punch the wheel of emotions and then point at it. Yeah, yeah.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Tell me.

• 53:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's interesting. That's real, I think that's really fascinating.

• 53:40Speaker 00

  Blankets.

• 53:41Lewis Howes?

  And when we can point, and we can point to emotions and start to speak about it, what are we saying?

• 53:47Speaker 00

  You're being much, first of all, it's much bigger relief when you're actually expressing what you feel. You're trying to a lot of the times when people are trying to tell me how they feel or tell their loved one how they feel, they really want to convey it. They want to be understood very badly. But it's difficult to be understood if the words you're using are very general, generic and not really, you know, very, not very clear. Oh, I'm just, I'm just bummed. I'm just upset. I'm like, that's generic.

• 54:11Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 54:11Speaker 00

  But what, you know, what specifically, when you articulate, oh, this friend did something and I feel so betrayed and so disappointed and, you know, I've, I've lost my trust and I feel misunderstood and I'm questioning my own judgment and all of those things, it really helps the other people understand, okay, that's what you're going through. Now I know what kind of support, feedback, whatever it is you need.

• 54:30Lewis Howes?

  So what happens, I mean, this is fascinating. I don't know if I've heard of this, the wheel of emotions thing. It's almost like if you want to create the wheel of fortune, you need to be able to point out the wheel of emotions, what you're feeling.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  It's like a color wheel, but it's not, it's, it's not, because color wheels are very nuanced, right? And I'm a colorblind, so, you know, like I am with primary colors and like, people are like, well, that's future. And I'm like, I have no idea what that is.

• 54:50Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  Like I could maybe, whatever.

• 54:52Lewis Howes?

  Now, let's say we get to, we're, we're able to communicate our emotions, but the other person isn't able to receive them or just can't handle it. It's just like, ah, just figure out your own life. You know, I don't know what to do. What do you do in that situation when you're trying to communicate and you are, here are the seven things that I'm feeling and the other person's just can't receive those emotions?

• 55:12Speaker 00

  But the other person can say, um, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by your list of emotions. Maybe we can put that wheel aside for just a moment because I need guidance from you about what you want. Because I'm not sure what to say or it's a lot for me and I just not sure how to react. What would be helpful to you?

• 55:33Speaker 00

  And if the other person's not saying that and they're just like, look, you will know when the other person's shutting down because it happens a lot. And, you know, it's often you will, you know, you will come and have this conversation and you'll go on for too long. You'll mention too many things. It'll be so overwhelming. It won't be, this specific thing happened. This is how I felt about it. You always do this. You'll take a running start. Back in the nineties, you did it for the first time. Not necessary for the point you're making thirty years later, you know? And so, you know, when their eyes are glazing over and they're starting to do this.

• 56:03Lewis Howes?

  Back off on the emotions.

• 56:04Speaker 00

  Back off. They're getting overwhelmed. They're flooded now. So they're not going to be useful to you.

• 56:08Lewis Howes?

  This may be a controversial thing to say, but it seems like, and you've been in this work for three decades, right? Thirty years? It seems like, you know, when I was growing up, at least in the Midwest, there were different, I guess, roles for men and women, right? Or at least cultural standards, let's say. And it almost feels like now, and again, I'm generalizing this, but I feel like I'm seeing this more and more in movies and media and just what I'm seeing online, people talk about. The roles are blending or changing or shifting, evolving, where there used to be more masculine, yeah, I guess, figures in media and TV. Now it's like the men are skinnier and more feminine as like kind of the main roles, right?

• 56:53Lewis Howes?

  On in movie and TV, some of these big movies. And it seems like that is also translated in the younger generation in society, like the skinnier men or things like that. And then you see some women becoming either less feminine acting or more, less emotions and more like anger. I don't know if I'm communicating this right, but it seems like the roles have been shifting in some ways around cultural standards. And I don't know if that's just what I'm seeing online versus what's actually happening. But do you feel like roles are shifting between men and women in relationships from when you started 30 years ago?

• 57:31Speaker 00

  I think the younger generation, Gen Z, is one of their strengths is that they feel much less bound by labels, by roles, by expectations of what they should feel, say or do, and what they feel like saying or doing. That has its downside, you know, in some ways. But the upside is you're much more likely to see young men be actually quite thoughtful or articulate about their feelings and young women being more assertive than you might have expected their grandmothers perhaps to be or, you know, feeling less restrained in terms of what their narrow role should be, because it's not narrow and should never have been. So they're, they're, they're less constrained. And so that's what you're seeing.

• 58:16Speaker 00

  You're seeing a more natural, uh, because, you know, those, those, um, divisions between agendas were very cultural and, and, and, um, and enforced. And the expectations were, were rigid. And so it's like, as you said, if you had expressed emotion when you were on the field, that would not have gone well in the locker room. But we're like, what's wrong with him? We used to, we still do, um, have a

• 58:43Speaker 00

  Way of confusing muscles with emotional resilience and emotional strength.

• 58:49Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 58:49Speaker 00

  Uh, muscles don't have anything to do with resilience necessarily, and somebody can be

• 58:54Lewis Howes?

  Emotional resilience or?

• 58:55Speaker 00

  With emotional resilience, you know, and physical resilience, yes, you have more layers of protection. So if you get hit by a car, the muscled person will fare better. That's about the end of their advantage, you know, and also puts, you know, more of a cardiovascular burden on them. But that aside for a minute, it's, it's when, it has nothing to do with resilience because resilience actually is very context specific. You can take the biggest war hero and put them in an argument with their wife and they will melt into tears because they, that's not where they're resilient. That's not where they're strong.

• 59:27Lewis Howes?

  Unless they've developed that muscle.

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Unless coincidentally they have, but if they've been a war hero all their life, I'm not sure when they would have had the chance to do it. I'm not saying all of them, but I'm just saying like, you know, you, you develop the, the resilience is for, resilience is an adaptive evolutionary thing. You develop it for the context you are in. So the context you are not familiar with, you're going to be less resilient in, some of them will lend, but most not. And, and the ones you're familiar with, you hopefully have built much more resilience within that sphere. So resilience is not even a general thing. It's context specific.

• 1:00:02Lewis Howes?

  In 2025 and beyond, if someone is a, a new parent and they have young kids who are developing, um, what are the three skills that you would wish every parent could learn themselves or at least try to teach their kids to grow up being the healthiest, happiest versions of themselves with all this to come in the world for them? What would you suggest to parents?

• 1:00:30Speaker 00

  The most important thing, I think, well, they said three, I'm going to mention all three. One of the most important things I think a parent can do is teach their kid that whatever they feel is entirely normative and natural and anyone else in that situation would feel the same thing whether they showed it. Or not. So to teach them that their feelings are to be accepted, those are natural. What you do with those feelings, behavior wise, how you manage them in terms of how you manage your emotions. Cause we can actively manage our emotions in, in, in all kinds of different ways and contexts. That's on you and the parent should teach them those skill sets. Parents don't usually know them, so it's hard to teach them.

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  But the idea that nothing the kid feels is wrong per se. Feelings are not, the feelings are not wrong, only what they do with them.

• 1:01:21Lewis Howes?

  Their actions or behaviors.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  Yes, and all their interpretation of it might be wrong, you know, like what it says about them might be wrong. But the fact that they're having the feeling is a default. And if they're having it, ninety something percent of other people would have it. They might have it less, maybe that kid's sensitive to this or that, but they will have a version of it. If you look at the wheel, that'll be a three rather than a seven, but it'll be a three.

• 1:01:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:41Speaker 00

  You know, so that's, you know, the one thing.

• 1:01:43Lewis Howes?

  So have your emotions, those are okay. It's okay to have all the range of emotions.

• 1:01:47Speaker 00

  Never shame a kid for having emotions and always validate that what you're feeling is completely reasonable. Now let's talk about what you can do with it or what's going on.

• 1:01:56Lewis Howes?

  What if a kid is feeling, again, I'm not a parent yet, so, uh, you know, I can't start to begin to talk about how I'm gonna navigate the, the emotions of a child and their reactions and things like that. But if someone's, if a child is having an emotion or reaction to something, an emotion, and then it's followed by a negative behavior, um, do you allow the behavior to? Cause it's part of the emotion or how do you communicate that to a child like, hey, you can feel all these things, but this behavior does not work? How do you navigate that?

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  It depends on the age. You can say something like that, or you can say something like, look, if you're doing this and you're still upset, let's talk a little bit more. Or do you need some time to yourself because, you know, you were upset before, it sounds like you still are, that's completely okay. But that's not okay to do. So let's talk about what's the best thing for you right now.

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  But the second thing a parent has to do, and, and, and this is the goal of parenting. The goal of parenting is to prepare your child to manage the world they will be in. Not the world they grew up in.

• 1:02:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  They grew up in a sheltered world, not the world they're emerging to.

• 1:03:03Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 1:03:03Speaker 00

  So you want to start as protective as you can possibly be, and then you want to loosen that as the child grows, because you would much rather they went through hardships while you were still around to help them cope, learn from it, change things, evolve and grow from it, develop their resilience from it, than shelter them so then they go into the world and when the bad stuff happens, they're gonna crumble because they never developed the resilience or the skills or the coping mechanisms or the way to communicate it or the expectations. So your goal, you know, I, I see people like sheltering these seventeen, eighteen year old kids, and I'm like, they're leaving home soon.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Speaker 00

  You, you, you're putting them back into the wild and you haven't let them hunt?

• 1:03:50Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  Stop hunting for them.

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what could, what could parents do to where they feel like, okay, they're gonna be safe, but I need them to take some risk in their own too? And what ages should they start to really let them go more?

• 1:04:04Speaker 00

  Look, I, I joke about it with people who are my age, because we, and, and

• 1:04:08Lewis Howes?

  Forty-five?

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  Ish. And, and so, because people my age, we joke, and it's not a joke, that if every parent, mine and everyone else's would have been arrested such a long time ago for neglect. Because, for neglect, because I was unsupervised from age eight or nine, most of the afternoon, many hours of the day, outside and unsupervised.

• 1:04:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Speaker 00

  I was a latchkey kid. I came home with my brother, we were ten years old, we had to make lunch, knives, oil, gas. We're making french fries. What did you think we would make? We're ten, you know, like.

• 1:04:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:45Speaker 00

  You know, today, if you come home and there's a ten year old with a bunch of other ten year olds crowding around her, popping, and everyone was like, oh, the oil, oh, like, it was just like, today, that would be, oh, they disappeared for four hours. Well, they'll be back for dinner. But where are they? Oh, we don't know. You know, like, that would not fly. And so.

• 1:05:03Lewis Howes?

  It's a different world.

• 1:05:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:05:04Lewis Howes?

  Do we need to go back to that, you think, or no?

• 1:05:06Speaker 00

  No, not exactly there, because that was maybe a bit much. But something in the middle. In other words, if your kid is going to the party and you know there's going to be drinking at the party and they're seventeen, do you want them to learn how to manage the fact there's going to be drinking around them or drugs around them or not?

• 1:05:21Lewis Howes?

  You want that, yes.

• 1:05:22Speaker 00

  Well, right, but if you don't let them go, then they won't.

• 1:05:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  And if you don't have a big talking about it about, you know, and people go, parents say this, well, what happens if you're fifteen? What happens if your friends start drinking or, you know, doing weed? Will you do it? And they, and all the kids are going to say, no. And then it's the end of the conversation. Let's start the conversation. The conversation is going to be, you're going to be sitting there and everyone else is going to be doing it and looking like they're having the best, best time.

• 1:05:48Lewis Howes?

  And pressuring you.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  And looking at you like you're an idiot.

• 1:05:51Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:05:52Speaker 00

  Why wouldn't you do this? There's no adults around. What do you need to do then? That's the question. But that's the conversation the parents need to have, like the real, like how do, not, bad things won't happen. How will you deal with them when they will?

• 1:06:06Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, okay, that's the second thing. Well, did you have a third thing or not?

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  Yes, relationships. You said it, right? We could, we should be teaching this stuff in, in schools, but we know so much about relationships, relationship skills, you had to evolve them over the past ten years. You could have done it as a teenager if somebody would have taught you and saved yourself a lot of heartache, a lot of aggravation, a lot of broken up relationships, not you, everyone I'm talking about, right? Like the divorce rate is so high and people are so unhappy in relationships because we have actually such great knowledge about it and it is not disseminated in any way, shape or form. This can be a two week class in high school, for goodness sake, it's not that complicated.

• 1:06:49Speaker 00

  But at least tell people the facts and so they don't, you know, because people say to me things about relationships when they're young and I'm like, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.

• 1:06:57Lewis Howes?

  What are they saying about it?

• 1:06:58Speaker 00

  Well, um, I'm not going to talk to them. If it was meant to be, it'll work out.

• 1:07:03Speaker 00

  And I'm like.

• 1:07:05Lewis Howes?

  Good luck.

• 1:07:06Speaker 00

  Relationships are an active formation process, not a passive, let's see what happens and you know, like that, that, no, that's absolutely incorrect. You should be forming. I mean, we just spoke about how much work.

• 1:07:19Lewis Howes?

  So much work.

• 1:07:20Speaker 00

  You both put into creating that, to creating the foundation of the relationship. So much work. So no, if it's meant to be, it won't just work out or not.

• 1:07:28Lewis Howes?

  No. And it was, you know, it was intentional effort. Um, I wouldn't say it was, it was, I don't want to say it's hard work, but it was intentional effort.

• 1:07:40Speaker 00

  It's effortful.

• 1:07:41Lewis Howes?

  It's effortful.

• 1:07:42Speaker 00

  It doesn't mean it's hard or unpleasant. I mean, it can be moments, maybe.

• 1:07:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And it's, and it, it was a consistent conversation of what are we building? What are we creating? What works for you? What doesn't work for you? What do you like? What do you don't like? It was a constant conversation of being in the present, but also thinking about the future. Um, and when you've gone through challenging relationships in the past, for me, I was like, I don't want to repeat that. I don't want to repeat what my parents did by them having a horrible relationship and getting divorced. And essentially, when you go through, I mean, for me, when I look back on it, when parents get divorced, and maybe you can correct me on this, but as a child, they're breaking up the family one way or another. It's a psychological and physical break. It's like

• 1:08:27Lewis Howes?

  jackhammering the road and there needs to be some type of bridge somewhere. But sometimes you don't create a bridge. There's just dis-ease, discomfort, stress for years until you psychologically and physically create your own bridge on however you view your parents, their relationship and relationships in the world. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's kind of what it felt like for me. And it took a long time with a lot of fear, stress and anxiety to say, I don't want to recreate what my parents did. I don't want to feel trapped and not loved like they felt. And I don't want to recreate that. And I don't want to have that for my future kids. So I was terrified in relationships to commit to the next level.

• 1:09:09Lewis Howes?

  And, but I was afraid to be alone. And it's just like, so I stayed in places I was not happy. And I didn't have the courage or the tools. And those models, that model created challenges for me. Now there's, I've created beautiful meaning from them now. And I've, you know, I see the benefit of it now, but it's. It's painful. And like you said, the divorce rate, what, 50% of marriages are probably still getting divorced right now. So a lot of kids are having psychological and physical breakups within their own family dynamics and relationship dynamics. And it's it's, this is more needed now than ever, this information.

• 1:09:46Speaker 00

  I completely agree. Look, divorce is incredibly destabilizing for kids because that's the family unit, the thing that you, you know, that's supposedly forever. And I guess you can't trust that people who love each other will always love each other. And it's very difficult for a child not to go, what does that mean about people who love me then? Whether it's mom or dad, I'm, you know, like, sometimes parents handle divorce very, very well. It's a minority who do. I've seen parents handle it beautifully. I mean, as well, as best as one can, I've seen parents truly go into it, saying, we're going to do everything we can to make this less damaging to our kids and put themselves in significant discomfort. In order to do that, I feel like applauding them whenever I see it. And if it's in a session, I will, I'll literally clap.

• 1:10:31Speaker 00

  I'll be like, I can't tell you how impressed I am that you would put yourself both into this level of discomfort when you're probably hating each other right now, for the sake of your children, but bravo. You're doing an exquisite job. I mean, I see it and I love it. But most don't, because it's very, very difficult, obviously, and they don't have the tools and they don't have the know-how and they don't have, they've gotten, you know, they waited too long, so they just cannot stand aside of each other and it's, and it's too difficult, one feels victimized, whatever, you know, you know, the story, but it's very destabilizing for a kid. So that has to be mended. Where does your faith come in? But you, by definition, have healed from that. Because if you hadn't, you would not be able to put in the investment you did into creating the relationship you do now, because that would not have seemed like a wise investment for you,

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  because you can't count on it. So that's the proof of your healing from that specific thing, that you would put that much work in.

• 1:11:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And I almost got to the place of myself where I'd built.

• 1:11:25Lewis Howes?

  So much self-esteem, I guess in a humble way where I was like, I'm gonna vest so much into over-communicating, not from a traumatized place of like anxious over-communicating, but over-communicating my values, my vision, my lifestyle, what I want.

• 1:11:43Lewis Howes?

  And if it works out, great. And if it doesn't, I'm happy to be alone. Like, I'm happy to be alone and live my life for as long as it takes until I can create that with the values, the vision and the lifestyle in alignment, not perfect, but aligned. And truly accept the person in front of me after getting to know them, accept myself and make sure that we're both willing to be doing the work individually and together.

• 1:12:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:12:06Lewis Howes?

  That's something that Martha did really beautifully. She was doing her own work. I was doing my own work and I said, I want to do it together too. Like, relationships can be very challenging as, you know, even when everything is good, it's eventually kids, money, challenges, death from parents, like, stuff happens. Let's keep intentionally putting effort into this together and individually if we want it to work. Otherwise, you know, we're gonna have to do damage control in the future. And that's what most people do.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 1:12:33Lewis Howes?

  Or they have affairs, or they cheat, or they lie, or they, whatever it is, like, you're doing something to numb the pain as opposed to intentionally going through the pain to creating peace.

• 1:12:43Speaker 00

  It's a very, very important lesson. I'm so glad you're sharing it with people because this idea of you actually have to work really hard on yourself to get to know yourself, to be happy enough with yourself so that you have a complete self to offer

• 1:12:55Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  the other person. And then you have to work just as hard on the relationship. It doesn't, doesn't, and I am certain there were moments where you felt like, I just don't, not right now.

• 1:13:05Lewis Howes?

  Why am I spending a Saturday afternoon with a therapist?

• 1:13:09Speaker 00

  But because, you know, it's good for you.

• 1:13:11Lewis Howes?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:13:12Speaker 00

  Because you know, it will, it'll pay a lot of dividends and because you know, it'll prevent a lot of heartache later on.

• 1:13:16Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. And I think of, you know, my parents who got divorced and they're They were married for, I think, thirty years, something like that. Thirty? I think it was thirty, like twenty-eight to thirty years. They got married when they were like twenty, right? They had my brother when they were nineteen, right? So I think they got divorced around late forties or like fifty, maybe it was around fifty. But all I remember, my earliest memories were when I was like four and a half, five, right? All I remember is uneasiness, tension, stress, screaming, slamming up doors. You know, you just didn't know when it was gonna be peaceful. So it was this uncertainty every few days. And my brother, uh, when I was eight, my brother was in prison.

• 1:13:58Lewis Howes?

  And a lot of that had to do with the family dynamics of just like, you know, how they raised him.

• 1:14:04Lewis Howes?

  You know, my sisters both struggled with suicide attempts when they were teenagers. So it's just like a lot of uncertainty and just like, there was, there was love, like I knew my parents loved me and cared for me, but they didn't love each other. And therefore that just shook the energy consistently and it didn't feel safe consistently. And so my early memories are thinking, I wish my parents weren't together, right? Like they shouldn't be together. It's just kind of this innate feeling like there's not love there. There's something that's off. But they stayed because of the kids and religion or whatever it is, right? And um, when they got divorced, there was a relief, but there was also a lot of anger and like frustration and sadness, like what they had put us through as kids.

• 1:14:50Lewis Howes?

  So it was hard to really love them. Like, I wanted to be around them, but I didn't want to be around them. You know, it was like hard to really love them in that sixteen to twenty-four kind of timeframe because I was so angry at them. And I think a lot of kids have that feeling of like anger that the parents either couldn't figure out how to communicate and love each other and breaking up the relationship. I think a lot of kids feel that.

• 1:15:13Speaker 00

  Look, it's feel that because parenting is the hardest job in the world.

• 1:15:17Lewis Howes?

  It's always so hard.

• 1:15:17Speaker 00

  And no one teaches you anything about it, nothing, nothing. Like, you know, you, you, you come home with a baby, there's, there's, and that's it. And, and, and most, most mothers, when they feel like, like, wait, you, you can't just leave me here with this. I, I, I didn't know what I'm doing.

• 1:15:34Lewis Howes?

  I know.

• 1:15:35Speaker 00

  And parents get panicked and it's so difficult. So I feel bad for parents because no one's telling them how to do it. And, you know, and there's much less information available when your parents were, you know, growing up and parenting you than there is today. There's so much online, like even just people who are watching your, you know, uh, your, your podcast can just, you know, like, there's so much information there that they can just glean. So it's free, it's available, go get it, you know, that kind of thing. But it's very difficult to do.

• 1:16:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Couple of final questions for you before I get into them. A lot of great content we've shared today, but if you've dealt with a broken heart, uh, your book, How to Fix a Broken Heart is extremely powerful. Uh, came out many years ago, but it's, uh, still really relevant and powerful today. So make sure to check this out or get it for a friend who's been through a breakup or any type of broken heart. Uh, this other book here, Emotional First Aid, Healing Rejection, Guilt, Failure, and Other Everyday Hurts, I think is a must read for, for everyone because emotional injuries are something that, uh, we don't, um, evaluate. We don't, um, diagnose, right?

• 1:16:38Lewis Howes?

  We just say, ah, I'm angry, let me just numb it or drink or take substances or have sex or watch porn or whatever it is to numb the feeling. And the more we numb things, the more pain we're going to feel long-term and it's going to be harder to emotionally unwind those kind of wounds. And you'd say that we all sustain emotional wounds, these, these feelings. I've felt a lot of these as a child growing up, almost like weekly. It was like something else happened in school where I felt an emotional wound, but I didn't know how to react or respond to them. So if you're an individual who doesn't know how to do that yet, get this book. Um, and you also have this other one, which is, um, which one is this about complaining the right way?

• 1:17:17Speaker 00

  This is about the psychology of complaining. This is my first book that I wrote. Um, it, it, I, I, there was no book out there about that talks about the, the science of, of complaining and then what we know and what we do well and what we do poorly and how it impacts us in relationships and self-esteem and all kinds of other ways. And so there, there's actually a right way to do things and, um, That's what that book.

• 1:17:40Lewis Howes?

  And how to complain the right way to get the benefit out of it. Before I ask the final two questions, Guy, where can we follow and support you online? You've got a podcast, you've got the books. Where can we follow you?

• 1:17:51Speaker 00

  So guywinch.com will be where you can get most of the information. I have a newsletter, you can subscribe to it. I'm working on a new book, it should be out in a year or so, and you'll find information about there. That's a book about the workplace. It's called Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. Because our work actually hijacks our life in many ways that we're aware of and many that we're not. And ceding control in those ways is actually costing us in all kinds of really important ways. And our loved ones, it's costing them too, our families, our spouses. And so you need to get a handle on that, or at least be aware of the damage that might be going on. So that will be in a year or so.

• 1:18:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. Guywinch.com for all the stuff, social media as well. Powerful stuff. I've got, I've got a couple of final questions for you.

• 1:18:43Lewis Howes?

  For Gen Z, the Gen Z world right now, which seems like probably has the most confusion of all, because they kind of grew up in social media. They didn't really have the lifestyle we did where we're, you know, going out until dark and then coming back and, you know, just playing games outside.

• 1:19:02Lewis Howes?

  They're kind of growing up on the phone, social media, more connected to the world and disconnected to the world at the same time, more, more friends than ever, but feeling lonelier than ever, all these different things.

• 1:19:13Lewis Howes?

  If you could give them one piece of advice on how to set them up for success for the rest of their life with the world they grew up in, what would you say they really need to focus on developing more?

• 1:19:24Speaker 00

  I think with, with Gen Z, they, I mean, it's a very difficult thing when you grow up with a phone. The phone is this device that I, this might sound extreme, but here's how I think of Marie Curie. When, when she was, you know, was it uranium? What did she find? Whatever the, the, the material that she found, she died from radioactivity because she was dealing with something that was extraordinarily toxic. I hope I'm not getting that wrong. I don't get all these physicists going like, don't you know your history? And I'm like, no, not that physics. I'm, but anyway, but my point being, this is a very damaging device. It's very, very problematic. It has amazing things in it. It has, can do a ton of good, but it's dangerous in all kinds of ways.

• 1:20:08Speaker 00

  The fact that we don't regulate that now, the fact that there's no, you know, I mean, there's a lot of clarity about all the ways that it's damaging, but we just tend to ignore them. You have to look at that device and like, look at your relationship with it. And be honest with yourself about where, where it's helping and where it's not. Where it's not is when you're feeling, if you're Gen Z and truly of everyone, but especially if you're Gen Z, if you're feeling bad, down, disconnected, lonely, you're gonna go there to get comfort and it's gonna make you feel worse.

• 1:20:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Speaker 00

  Especially on social media. And so you have to know when to use it, when to not, how to use it and how to not. Gen Z has substituted a huge, significant chunk of their relationships from virtual, from in-person to virtual. They have much less face-to-face time and it's costing them, not just in terms of loneliness, but in terms of social skills, social anxiety, self-esteem, all of those things. So try, and when you're with friends and you're having dinner, put the phones aside, and I don't mean down because you'll glance, I mean away.

• 1:21:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  Like create phone-free zones when you're interacting in person. The temptation is too great. Otherwise, whenever I see young people, they're all together on their phones and it's like, it's a miss. You know, so that would be my advice. Like, like it's gonna be extraordinarily tempting, but police yourself.

• 1:21:30Lewis Howes?

  Police yourself, yeah.

• 1:21:31Speaker 00

  In that way.

• 1:21:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Um, I think I've asked you this before, but I want to ask you your three truths again and see if anything shifted here. So at the end of the conversations, I ask people, if you, um, you get to live as long as you want in this life and you get to accomplish everything you dream of, but on the last day, you've got to take everything with you. All your books, this conversation, no one has access to anything you've shared in your lifetime, hypothetically. But you get to leave behind three lessons or three things you know to be true. And that's all we would have to kind of remember you by are these three truths. What would those be for you?

• 1:22:04Speaker 00

  Caring.

• 1:22:07Speaker 00

  To care for other people is free.

• 1:22:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:11Speaker 00

  It can only pay benefits. Yes, it can disappoint you if you don't get cared back, but it really should disappoint you once. Because if that person's not caring back, you don't need to keep at it.

• 1:22:23Speaker 00

  But the benefits are immense, you know, in the workplace. It's part of the book I'm writing now, but in the workplace, the toxic cultures we have are very, you know, people leave jobs not because they feel uncared for. That's really the ultimate truth about things and people who feel cared for in their work and in their lives thrive more. It's free. We should be giving this to other people, not hoarding it. You know, so just having this idea of kindness, of caring, I think is super important. In the similar vein, I practice gratitude extraordinarily regularly, like daily. And gratitude is incredibly powerful. And so you're like, okay, fine, yeah, I'm grateful for the sun. And I'm like, then you don't understand what gratitude exercises are because it's not,

• 1:23:08Speaker 00

  I'm grateful for the sun. You might be grateful for the sun, but why? The gratitude exercise is like, oh, my goodness, it's been cloudy for five days. It's finally sunny. It improves my mood. I feel like going out. It just, I see everything in a more bright way. I'm so glad it's sunny today. That's a grateful reflection and especially powerful if it's interpersonal. If you're thinking about someone in your life that was meaningful to you many years ago, but you never expressed it, a friend you have now perhaps, writing something, picking up the phone and saying it will lift your spirits for days, for days. It is the most powerful thing we can do for ourselves. It improves optimism. It changes our perspective on life.

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  It makes us find, you know, the silver linings. It's such a potent, healthy thing to do. Again, free.

• 1:23:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:59Speaker 00

  Anyone can do it. I really recommend that. And that's something that I do and that I, and I practice. And the third one, I'm gonna say, and I have no recollection what I said last time. So for anyone that feels like doing the research, humor. Now, that's my bias because I, I like humor. I find it to be a great way to dissolve tensions. I find it, you know, a great way to, to connect with people. I find it a great way to, to offer a perspective, to get emotional distance from something that's painful. Using humor gives you emotional distance. If you're upset about something, writing jokes, that's what standup comics do, right? I mean, the, the real ones, they talk about their pain, but it's therapeutic for them.

• 1:24:44Speaker 00

  They, they work it out because if you can laugh at something, you are by definition distant from it. And by definition, you added a layer of protection. So that would be the third.

• 1:24:54Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful. Guy, I'm always grateful for you. I appreciate you and acknowledge you for your three plus decades of research in the science of self-help and personal development and healing and understanding emotions. I, I truly believe that the most powerful skill that any human can develop is

• 1:25:15Lewis Howes?

  really an understanding of their own emotional intelligence, emotional resilience, so that they can handle the world in front of them. Because there's going to be a lot of ups and downs for people. And if they're not emotionally fit or resilient, they will have a lot of pain, a lot of suffering, a lot of pain. So we need more people like you, Guy. I appreciate you. Final question, what's your definition of great, greatness?

• 1:25:41Speaker 00

  Did you ask me that one before? I'm trying to remember. You did, I have no recollection what I said about that one. Uh, before I said that, I'm just gonna say, I love talking with you because you, you, you ask such interesting questions and I think they're so grounded and I think they're so relevant for people. I think that's why you have such a big following because it's actually very practical. It's very, you know, people can relate to what you talk about in terms of your own experiences and the questions you ask come from that. So they're always, for me, they're always very, very interesting and, and different. And, and that's why I have to do things like buy time when you ask me about how I define greatness.

• 1:26:20Speaker 00

  I guess my, look, my, my, my definition, if I'm thinking about myself, like what would make me feel that I've achieved some kind of greatness, and it's not a hubris thing, because I don't believe in greatness in terms of stature, I believe in greatness in terms of how you're meeting your own goals and expectations. To me greatness is a little bit of what you laid out earlier. You have articulated for yourself, which is, by the way, a step ahead of a lot of people, what your vision is of what you want your life to be about, where you want to go, where you want to develop as a person, and in what, and in the work you do in the world. I, I, and this might be your definition of greatness, but I do think greatness is articulating that and working toward it, and the greatness comes from the journey, not from reaching some kind of artificial milestone. Yeah, there you go. Good. I wish, thank you, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you. Amazing.

• 1:27:04Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And

• 1:27:48Lewis Howes?

  now it's time to go out there and do something great.