Adam Lane Smith: Successful at Work, Struggling in Love? Your Attachment Style May Be Why | Relationships | E420

Relationships expert Adam Lane Smith has spent more than 15 years studying how insecure attachment quietly sabotages the way people communicate, handle conflict, and connect with others—both at home and in business. These fear-based patterns can strain relationships, weaken leadership, and even drive people to seek emotional connection from AI instead of the people in their lives. In this episode, Adam breaks down the major attachment styles and explains how they influence romantic relationships and entrepreneurial leadership. He also shares how to develop secure attachment and protect real human connection in the age of AI. In this episode, Hala and Adam will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:00) Secure, Anxious, and Avoidant Attachment Styles (07:19) How Childhood Shapes Your Attachment Style (13:21) How to Identify Your Attachment Style (21:35) How Attachment Shapes Business Leadership (34:44) Avoidant Attachment and High Achievement (35:55) Building Trust Through Secure Leadership (44:18) Love, Codependency, and Healthy Interdependence (50:00) Relationship Advice: Fact or Cap (56:59) Dating Apps, Attraction, and Compatibility (59:51) How Secure Couples Repair Conflict (1:08:39) Can AI Replace Human Connection? Adam Lane Smith is an attachment specialist, author, podcast host, and TEDx speaker who translates attachment theory into practical tools for building stronger relationships. A former licensed marriage and family therapist, he has spent more than a decade studying and working with attachment and relationship dynamics. He hosts the I Wish You Knew podcast, and his work focuses on helping people create more secure, trusting relationships at home, at work, and in their communities. Sponsored By: Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/profiting Shopify - Start your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/profiting. Northwest Registered Agent - Get a complete business identity with Northwest. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/YAPFree and start using free resources to build something amazing. HeyGen - Create AI avatar videos without constantly being behind the camera. Get your first three videos free at HeyGen.com/profiting. Life at the Speed of Play - Learn how to test ideas quickly and identify the ones worth pursuing with Mark Pincus’s book. Get two books for the price of one at getmarksbook.com/yap. Whatnot - Grow your business through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W H A T N O T, in the App Store and start selling today. MOD - Connect with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness. Visit MOD.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with code PROFITING. See the website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen - Support your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and superfoods. Get a free Immune Support Bundle with your first subscription order at DrinkAG1.com/PROFITING. Resources Mentioned: Adam's Website: adamlanesmith.com Adam’s LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/adam-lane-smith-a6203324b Adam’s Instagram: instagram.com/attachmentadam Adam’s Podcast, I Wish You Knew: bit.ly/IWYK-apple Adam’s Private Coaching: https://bundle.adamlanesmith.com/private-coaching?utm_source=YAP&utm_content=09%2F01 Adam's Attachment Quiz: https://bundle.adamlanesmith.com/attachment-quiz-organic?utm_source=YAP&utm_content=09%2F01 Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap YouTube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting Newsletter - youngandprofiting.co/newsletter LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new LinkedIn Creator Club - Skool.com/linkedin-creator-club Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Startup, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Breakup, Boundaries, Intimacy, Therapy, Commitment, Couples, Love Languages, Heartbreak, Dating Coach

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:45Speaker 00

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• 0:52Speaker 01

  If you are avoidantly attached, you probably are going to have a very difficult time sharing personal emotional context. You will intellectualize things instead. You'll have a difficult time making direct eye contact. You will feel uncomfortable after sex with your partner because you don't know how long you're supposed to sit with them and you're waiting and waiting and waiting to just get up and go, go, go, go, go.

• 1:10Speaker 00

  We hear a lot about attachment styles when it comes to dating and relationships. But the truth is that attachment styles show up everywhere. They shape how we communicate, how we build trust, and even how we lead at work. To help us understand this better, I brought in Adam Lane Smith, an attachment specialist, author, and relationship coach.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  I do see a lot of people with anxious attachment struggle. That's one of the hardest styles to build real leadership with because everybody else's feelings are more important. You are the mama of the whole company, man or woman. You are managing everybody's feelings all of the time. And the research indicates the best way to burn out your best talent is to leave them afraid and performing.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Help us understand the difference between what a fear-based environment looks like versus a safe environment in a company.

• 1:55Speaker 01

  A fear-based environment, when there's a problem, everybody on the call suddenly goes quiet. You're actually no longer their leader that they trust. At a certain point, they're not thinking about what's great for the company anymore. They're thinking, how do I minimize?

• 2:07Speaker 00

  Now AI is actually impacting our relationships and a lot of people are getting from AI what they should actually be getting from their husband, their wife.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  I will say three things on AI.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  This is juicy. I can't wait to hear it.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  One is the

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Adam, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me here.

• 2:25Speaker 00

  So you are an attachment specialist. You've been studying this for 15 years plus. You're one of the biggest experts in the world on this topic. So I want to start there. I just want to have people understand what is attachment exactly?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Attachment is the way that we build relationships based on either trust or fear. That's really it. It's that simple. Either you build a structure where you believe that you can trust the other person with openness, transparency. You build mutual loyalty together. There's something that we can talk about called symbiotic mutualism. It's a behavioral piece for biology. Or you build structures based on guessing fear and performance. You base structures on can I get one more day from you? And if so, what does it cost me? And most people, the research actually indicates about 65% of people are doing that second structure instead, even at work.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  Oh, wow. So help us understand, like, what are the key attachment styles? What are the attachment styles that we need to know about?

• 3:20Speaker 01

  Sure. Do you want the originals they created back in 1950s? Or do you want the updated ones that I've built since then?

• 3:25Speaker 00

  How about both? Talk to us about where it started and how you're evolving it.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So originally, they had a dichotomy split. You are either securely attached, where you believe that you can be open, transparent, and clear with other people. Doesn't mean you can trust everybody. But it means that you can work openly and clearly with people and everything is right on the table. So you can build exchanges, not transactions, not one-off, but ongoing mutually fulfilling systems where you both get to benefit. And that creates symbiotic mutualism, which says, when we combine together and work effectively, we get so much better than we would get as individuals. It doubles, it triples our capacity, it increases everything that we could be doing. We can do this together so much better as long as we have an ongoing trust-based system where we can both relax enough to calm our nervous systems.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Symbiotic mutualism, I know it's a big mouthful for most people. That's secure attachment and secure attachment creates that for you. It's the only way to get it.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  If you have insecure attachment, it means that you are not built with that at all. Your brain has grown through childhood and formed neural pathways to say, other people will not be loyal to me. I cannot engage in that with them because they will use me, they will walk away, they will hurt me, they'll betray me, they'll disappoint me, or something's wrong with me that I'm not good enough. So I have to continuously perform and track and be hypervigilant around every small twitch of their face and every mood. That creates insecure attachment, which breaks down into three sub-styles that we can talk about as well.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Tell us about the sub-style.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely. If you believe that the origin of the problem is you, that you are not good enough. Something is wrong with you on the inside that everybody else can see and you can't. But you're somehow just not good enough. You will flip into what's called anxious attachment, which is fawning, the people-pleasing. Please don't leave me. It's fear of abandonment. It's completely externalized sense of control. It's I can't do anything by myself and if you leave me, my life is over. So I will do anything to make you happy.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  Got it.

• 5:25Speaker 01

  The I am never good enough because I am bad idea. That's anxious. The other side of this is avoidant. You are the problem. No one else is ethical. No one else cares. Everybody else is governed by their feelings, so I have to very carefully track how they feel. I have to build absolute safeguards and make sure nobody can get one over on me. I have to make sure that on your worst day, you can't hurt me, even by accident. Maybe you're not a bad person, but you have no discipline and no ethics and you will collapse into your feelings. So I will keep you over there. I will never let you inside and I will always carefully manage you. That's the avoidant side. And a lot of people watching this are probably going to think, can I be both? Because they're like, yes, the blend of the two is what's called disorganized. Meaning I can't organize it neatly into either box.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  It's disorganized, both of them. It's a blend of back and forth. These were the original four that they came up with about 70 years ago when they started building attachment theory.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's stick on the original for a bit because I think that's what most of us are familiar with.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  No problem.

• 6:20Speaker 00

  So anxious and avoidant, they're kind of like magnets, right? They attract each other and it's sort of like a trap. Can you talk to us about that?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So a lot of times what I see in personal relationships is one of them trends more avoidant and says, I will manage you, I will take care of you, but I will be strong in my convictions. I am ambitious. The only thing that keeps me safe is money. It's not greed, but I can't trust human relationships, so I have to trust the resources that I create.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Probably a lot of entrepreneurs.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  A lot of entrepreneurs actually rise to the top. It's a wonderful survival adaptation for an environment where nobody was ever going to have your back and you had to caretake your parents, you had to manage maybe mom's anxiety or dad's abandonment. You had to be strong and now you can be strong everywhere.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  The problem is that you can't let other people in. So you begin with huge emotional management of other people and a deep dive into dopamine, but you don't do the bonding hormones oxytocin or vasopressin. These people go out and deeply love people who are anxiously attached, who say, I am unlovable. I will do anything to make you happy, no strings attached, never have needs and never make things complicated for you. I'll do anything you tell me. It's a match made in heaven for about the first seven months. Novelty dopamine is very intense. Seven months, the avoidant person gets this rush of novelty dopamine. No strings attached, love, joy, intimacy, passion, connection, no talking about relationships or feelings. And the anxious person at about seven months, they're continuously for the entire time flooding with a bonding hormone called oxytocin.

• 7:47Speaker 01

  They're about 33% more sensitive to it, so it's an addictive drug to them. I am loved and I am safe and I'm cared for. For the first time in my life, I have to keep performing and keep my needs a secret forever. I just have to keep making you happy and eventually you will love me so much, you'll figure out what I want from you and give it to me. Seven months novelty dopamine dies. The avoidant person loses all of their passion and reward for being in this relationship, right as the anxious person is increasing beyond anything they could have imagined. This is why a lot of relationships hit that problem at about seven months to 12 months and most people break up in that window. If they stay together, it's because they just feel like I don't want to lose you or I should stay with you. I'm just, I'm here, why not? I don't want to leave you and hurt you. So they just stay together.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Sometimes they get married, sometimes they build businesses together and that really starts to fall apart.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Just like drift into the relationship while it's unhealthy.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  Is there anything that people, like, can this be fixed?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  100%. The research is abundantly clear that this can be fixed, but it has to be fixed experientially in your relationships. I have to talk to my clients all the time about this because they come in with a deep work of inner work, inner work. Think about it, think about it, act different, mindset. Mindset has nothing to do with it because your prefrontal cortex, my clients sometimes go to therapy for 10, 15 years. You work on the prefrontal cortex, which goes offline faster than I can possibly snap my fingers. It's about a 10th of a second, the moment you're in a stressful relationship and your wife looks at you and says, why don't you want to be near me anymore? Or your husband looks at you and says, you know, I'm just not feeling it with you anymore. Gone that fast, just gone. And now you're in your limbic system, fight, flight, fawn, freeze.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  And now you're trying to react at your partner to try to make safety for yourself because you don't believe safety exists. That's the problem.

• 9:36Speaker 00

  And so much of this actually is embedded in us from childhood.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Help us understand, you know, you mentioned that you've got six children.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Six children.

• 9:47Speaker 00

  That's a lot of children. What are you doing to make sure that they grow up with a secure attachment style? And what happens to children? Why they develop avoidance?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, those types of negative attachment.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Should I do like a little assessment for people here right now?

• 10:01Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  So consider these questions, everybody watching, as you go through this. Did you grow up in a structure where both parents made you feel absolutely safe? No matter what, meaning you would never be abandoned or rejected? That's a big one, right? You might know your parents loved you and they might've technically been there. But did they actually make you feel safe enough to ask questions? To disagree with them sometimes respectfully, right?

• 10:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  To have preferences, to have desires. I have six kids, three daughters, three boys. You better believe they are asking me a tremendous amount of questions. For example, this is a big one a lot of people face in childhood. If I roll my eyes every time my oldest daughter asks me a question, if I groan and sigh because I'm exhausted, if I look away, if I say I don't have time for that right now, I'm sending a message continuously, not just once, but a hundred times, a thousand times across her childhood. I'm sending a message that her questions are not only unwelcome, but are eroding the relationship that she and I share and her safety is now diminishing. So she stops asking questions. Now, as a woman, she goes out into her life 20 years later and she finds a man and says, I'm never allowed to ask him a question ever again because he will be upset and potentially

• 11:12Speaker 01

  leave me. Dad put up with me because he had to. This man will abandon me if I bother him with questions. So she's guessing and endlessly performing. If a man experiences this, and he may be, a lot of avoidant men have to, how we say, caretake mom. Many of them don't have time for a wife emotionally because he's monogamous to his mother, taking care of her feelings.

• 11:31Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  And he has to call her every Sunday for two hours to deal with her anxieties and stress about the world and deal with that all over again because that's what he was programmed to receive in childhood. Now he doesn't have time to deal with his wife's feelings because he already has a wife, basically. There's a lot of very successful avoidant men who have that problem. Did he grow up feeling like he had to hold mom together?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Did he grow up having to be her caretaker, her confidant? Did he have to listen to all her frustration about men, all her frustration about his father? Did he have to constantly soothe her because she was afraid of money problems because dad was leaving, dad was avoiding, dad was abandoning? Did he have to endlessly deal with mom's feelings because in the back of his head, his brain was saying, if mom breaks down, what's going to happen to us? Who's going to get the groceries? Who's going to feed us? Who's going to take care of us? Who's going to work? I can't work. I'm nine.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Most of those men are desperate to get out and get a job. A lot of young women actually today are increasingly avoidant as well. And they're desperate to get out in the world and make money and get through because they can't trust their caregivers to do it.

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• 15:54Speaker 01

  We are finding that that does seem to be reversing. The trends 70 years ago when they began this study was about, let's just say, majority avoidant men and majority anxious women. Women were fawning and pleasing and thinking they were the problem. Men were the opposite. You're the problem. I'm good. I'm just going to grind and get money, right? And there's plenty of those men around. They rise to the top. We are finding that as young men are being raised by single moms, as young men are more performing, as we're building a therapy culture, as we're training young men that you're supposed to be crying and feeling all the time, as we're training young men that they're never going to be good enough, as we've begun over the last few decades yelling at men, saying, get better, get better, get better, get better. What we're seeing is that they're actually anxiously attached now instead. They're fawning, they're pleasing, they're trying to grovel and make other people like

• 16:40Speaker 01

  them. They're trying to earn good boy points. And women are increasingly having to step into a masculine role because nobody else is.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Someone has to create safety and they are stepping.

• 16:50Speaker 00

  And women have to take care of themselves a lot of times where they didn't have to in the past.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  That is correct. It is an absolute failure of the system for both sides. And women are definitely bearing a lot of this brunt as well, having to overperform, over-control, manage everything themselves. Not that they can't, but they shouldn't have to because then that really shuts down so much of their nervous system. It burns a lot of their medical health, their fertility, their hormones, their neurotransmitters. A lot of autoimmune disorders are linked into this. There's a tremendous amount of damage biologically that's happening to women as this is happening.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  So for the parents who are tuning in right now, what are like the three things they should do to help their children grow up with? Is secure the best one? Like, do we all want to be secure?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Secure is the best one.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Secure is not perfect, is the thing. Secure is not perfect. To be securely attached as a family, you have to build what's called a self-correcting system. I try to hammer this into my clients' heads. A self-correcting system is not perfect. It's when you screw up, and you will, you pause and you let the other person know, hey, this is not the pathway I want to go down. I messed that up. Can we try that again? You better believe I apologize to my kids. I don't grovel and make them the boss. But if I do something wrong, I go to my kids and I do what's called a repair. This is a skill we've lost over the last 100 years, unfortunately.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  You repair. Hey, that didn't go the way it should have and that's on me. I really took us in a wrong direction. I don't like how I reacted in that circumstance. Here's what I'm going to do differently next time to make sure this doesn't happen to you again. And here's the chain of events that broke down so that we can correct it fully. Next time, this is what I'll be doing and I'll be showing you that, not just saying it here today. In the meantime, is there anything I need to do to make up for what happened here? That's repair. And then you actually follow through and you make continuous change. That's the one thing you have to do to build secure attachment with your kids. A nice bonus is if they ask questions, actually sit and listen. Don't groan and sigh. Control your groaning and sighing and eye-rolling. A lot of the unconscious cues we send because we are tired.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  Our kids are reading it as I am unworthy of my father's time.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  If we're adults and we're finding like, hey, I'm tuning into this right now and I really feel like I'm definitely avoidant or I'm definitely anxious, what are the first steps they should take to try to untangle that?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Things to change in your private life. What I would say number one is understand which side of the attachment coin you come down on. Are you more anxious? Are you more avoidant? Are you the blend of the disorganized? Which maybe subvariant are you? I have resources for that if people need that, but understand just where you are, not because this is your astrology sign or your personality type.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Can you just rattle off like, here's just, here's like, if you do this, you're probably avoidant. If you do this, you're probably anxious.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I love that. Thank you. If you are avoidantly attached, you probably are going to have a very difficult time sharing personal emotional context. You will intellectualize things instead. You'll have a difficult time making direct eye contact with people during emotional settings because it releases too much oxytocin. You will feel uncomfortable after sex with your partner because you don't know how long you're supposed to sit with them and hold them and listen to their feelings. And you're waiting and waiting and waiting to just get up and go, go, go, go, go. If you are endlessly restless and have no ability to sit down and do leisure time, especially with people that love you and your brain is buzzing, you are probably avoidantly attached. If you struggle to have personal conversations, you try and stay,

• 20:07Speaker 01

  but you begin to go into a dorsal vagal shutdown, your system closes down, you become almost non-verbal, one-word answers, avoidantly attached. If you're dismissive of other people, if everything comes down to ruthless, pure logic that's actually driven by fear, that's avoidantly attached on that side.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  If you are anxiously attached, you will endlessly try to make other people feel good. You will violate your ethics and your goals over and over and over to make them happy. You have very low self-esteem typically. You know that you are the problem, but you can't figure out why you're the problem. So everything you do wrong becomes evidence about why you are the problem. You usually have needs, but you don't allow yourself to say them out loud because you think that would make you a bad person. You are afraid endlessly of the one day that your performance does not do enough and the other person finally looks at you and says, you are worthless to me and I'm only now realizing it goodbye forever. Abandonment is your number one fear. That's the anxious side.

• 21:00Speaker 00

  And if you're secure, how do you, like, how do you self-talk?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  If you're secure, you actually just talk about opportunities. You don't really have self-talk of I'm good or I'm bad. It's, I'm excited for this opportunity with this person. I'm excited for that day. I'm excited to have this conversation. Hey, you know what? I have this tense talk coming up with my wife, but it's going to give us a much better relationship. So I'm, I'm a little excited for it, even as I'm nervous about it. It is not perfection. It's opportunity focused.

• 21:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So interesting. So you were mentioning that you have evolved this attachment style concept. So how have you evolved it?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  So anxious attachment had to split because a lot of people want to focus on the good aspects and not some of the negative damaging aspects. Anxious attachment splits in two. So there is the nurturing anxious subtype. I know what it's like to not be loved and I want other people to feel loved as well. I have no needs that are met, but I'm not resentful or angry of other people. I just endlessly don't feel good enough. It's a very pure sort of aspect. It's the pure caretaker, right? Low resentment, low bitterness, but exhausted and drained.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Down the spectrum, as you accrue more and more resentment, through childhood maybe, you form what we call toxic anxious. Toxic to you, actually, on the inside. The resentment begins to fester and you grow in contempt towards your partner. Angry bitter resentment. Everything is a transaction and they are never doing enough to meet your secret needs and your secret contracts. You still feel like you are not good enough, but now you feel you have earned enough points to compensate for that. And that's that toxic anxious over here on this side. Making sense?

• 22:32Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Perfect. The avoidant also had to split because they get a horrific, horrific beat online. People absolutely demonize them and, and just want to put them on an island somewhere and nuke that island. It is the most horrible thing I've ever seen because there's so many wonderful avoidant people. Avoidant leaders are some of the best, actually, by design. So I split it into ethical avoidant. I cannot be near you emotionally because you cannot handle reality, but I don't hate you. I actually care about you a lot and I don't want you to be hurt. So I have to build a careful wall between us where you can't see my emotions and I can give you what you're looking for to continue managing you. You won't leave me. The relationship will stay intact, will be okay. I just can't access my feelings because I've had to turn them off.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  Down the spectrum, as you accrue more and more resentment and bitterness against other people, manipulative avoidant. You would do so much worse to me if you got the chance. So to maintain our balance, I am justifying this because it is still better than what you would do to me. I am still the morally good person here. Manipulations, even just more explicit, even some brutal ones down here. It is not off the end of the spectrum narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial, yeah, I knew you were going there. I could see the wheels turning. That's good. Off the end of the spectrum is what we consider personality disorders. And that is where they have lost the ability to come back and say, you know what? I wonder if my behavior might be inappropriate. I'm not comfortable with the way I'm conducting myself.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  A manipulative avoidant person will still say, I hate that I have to do this, but when I get stressed out, I go into these tactics. And they still feel bad about it. There's still remorse and still self-questioning.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is making sense. So for the anxious folks, something that you said really was eye-opening to me. They often have a lot of needs, but they're not necessarily communicating those needs clearly. They're, they're doing a lot of like hinting.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Correct. Everybody has needs and nobody's communicating them clearly. There's a lot of hinting all around. Yeah.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  So help us understand what, how do you clearly communicate a need versus like what is too vague?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Anything that is not explicitly stated is too vague.

• 24:38Speaker 00

  So you just have to be super clear about what you want or no one's going to just guess what you want.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  What's funny is the world of business has actually preserved a lot of secure functioning because it has to. So what we've often lost in our personal relationships over the last hundred years of social degradation, we have preserved in some facets in a business contract. How clear is a business contract supposed to be?

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Very, very.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  How much vagueness do you want in it?

• 25:01Speaker 00

  None.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Zero, right? A, a relationship properly done must be that explicit. It must be done like a business contract, but very based on mutual gain and care. There's still a sentiment. There's still emotions. It's not robotic. It's not a one-off transaction. You are building an agreement for the rest of your lives, ideally, friendship included, by the way, where you can work together in symbiotic mutualism forever with endless exchanges that get you toward clear goals that you're both in agreement on, that you both want to take care of, and you take care of each other. It, it allows what we call negotiation-driven relationships. I look at you and I say, I would love for us to continue doing business together going forward. I don't know what you need from my side to make that work, but just so you know, I'm a hundred percent open to this. Cards on the table, right?

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Here's a couple of things I would need and a line or two I wouldn't be willing to cross, but apart from that, I'm very open. I'd like to learn what you're looking for in this. What do you need from me and what lines would be too much? What are you not looking for from me? It's, it's that level of open transparency on the third date, for example. Or being able to speak to your husband or your wife that way, or being able to actually speak to your best talent. You, you own a company and your best talent is right there and you don't want to lose them.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  So you play these endless guessing games about how much money they want, how many vacation days they might want. Are they going to be motivated by the corner office? And we guess and guess and guess and guess, and in the end it's wrong. I had one client actually who gave his best performer a two and a half times raise and said, earn this. And he did over the course of five months and he gave him two and a half times raise. Two weeks later, he gave his resignation.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  And it was because all that building and expectations had created cortisol association instead. So when he got what he wanted, the dopamine was gone and it burned him out. So he left. If you can sit and have those clear conversations about mutual fulfillment from a position of leadership, everything changes.

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• 27:38Speaker 00

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• 29:06Speaker 00

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• 29:51Speaker 00

  Go to getmarksbook.com/yap, buy one copy for $32 and get a second copy free, so you can keep one for yourself and give the second to a friend, future co-founder, or someone who needs a little push. Let's transition to how this impacts us in business.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  What styles are actually really advantageous to have as a business leader?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  I do see a lot of people with anxious attachment struggle. I will say that very clearly. That's one of the hardest styles to build real leadership with.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  Why?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Because even if you overcome your problem with asking people to do things for you, which is very important if you own a business, "Hey, could you please do this?" Otherwise, you just pay people to sit around, and you do their work for them. But if you can even transition beyond that, you become, in many ways, a slave of the company. Everybody else's feelings are more important. You are the mama of the whole company, man or woman. You are managing everybody's feelings all of the time. And if somebody more aggressive than you can come in, they can actually weaponize this against you and seize control of your company, even if they don't own it. I've seen that a lot. So anxious attachment is one of the most damaged.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  Would we want that in an employee? I know that's like, kind of a weird thing to say, but like...

• 30:58Speaker 01

  We can talk about that, right? Fear-based structures don't tend to work long-term. If you want that person to be in your company for three years and then leave quietly, sure. If you want that person, long-term, as a talent you can invest in and actually begin really growing and cultivating into a leadership position, you're gonna need to really foster a more secure connection between the two of you. You have to understand that a leader becomes what's called "an attachment figure", whether they like it or not. They are looking up at you as, "Am I safe in our relationship, or am I only here because I'm performing every day?" And the research indicates the best way to burn out your best talent is to leave them afraid and performing.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  I know that sounds contradictory to so many people, right? "I want my people a little afraid, and they should be performing, and they should want to please me."

• 31:45Speaker 00

  There's other ways to get people to be productive other than making them scared of losing their job.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Google did some work on this. And what they found, after working at 180 teams, was that safe, secure, trust-based leaderships, emotional safety components, not babying them, but true emotional safety in a productive sense, actually beat talent every time in all of those companies. Harvard ran a study on this, and they found that trust-based leadership programs give you 40% more productivity in your company. So, yes, you can do a fear-based system as a fast cash grab for maybe five years, maximum, more like three, probably. And you'll probably turn over your team two or three times during that cycle, and then sell the company. It disintegrates under the new business owner. You can do that, fast cash grab. But if you want a long-term, successful company with a legacy,

• 32:34Speaker 01

  and you want to maintain a good, thriving team, you actually can't do it without secure attachment.

• 32:38Speaker 00

  Help us understand the difference between what a fear-based environment looks like versus a safe environment in a company like...

• 32:46Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 32:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  So, a fear-based environment, when there's a problem, everybody on the call suddenly goes quiet when a mistake was made. They're all silent. They're waiting to see who the leader is going to single out as the one person whose fault it is. All right? "It's your fault because of blank." And they're gonna watch that person get roasted on that call and destroyed. And that person's gonna have to please and beg and walk on eggshells for the next six months trying to earn their status back. Long-term, it destroys their nervous systems. It creates what's called "the cortisol ladder". The further up the ladder in your company they go, the more stress, cortisol, and burnout that they achieve, where their system begins to track you as a threat. You're actually no longer their leader that they trust. You are an active threat in their life, and they have to constantly manage you, so their system can never rest. At a certain point, they're not thinking about

• 33:32Speaker 01

  what's great for the company anymore, or opportunities, or bringing you problems to solve. They're thinking, "How do I minimize the threat from you? I erase the problems, I cover them up, I hope they don't blow up, I blame someone else, I minimize risk, but then we have no opportunities, there's no growth, growth flatlines. Everyone in your company is terrified, quiet, and afraid. And you, as the leader, are thinking, "What happened? Why are there no more opportunities?" That's a fear-based system right there.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  That's so interesting. As I'm thinking about my company, I have 60 people, and I actually think different teams have different attachment styles to me.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Oh, they absolutely do.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  I have an example. Something happened like, two weeks ago, when we were promoting a new episode, and my social lead was out, and the team under her was covering her, and they forgot to schedule posts over the weekend, which are really important to promote the new episode. And so, on Friday, I was like, "Hey, I don't see anything scheduled. What's going on?" Nobody was answering me. And I was like, "Guys, like, answer me. I'm gonna, I'll fix it myself. Like, what's going on?" And then I had to have this whole conversation with them, because I was like, "Why are you guys scared to tell me something went wrong? Like, they had some glitch that happened, and they were too scared to tell me. They were waiting for my account lead to show up." And then I was thinking, like, "No other team is scared of me. Why are you guys scared of me?"

• 34:50Speaker 01

  I have, I only have, I'm less than that. I have 40 people on my team, and I have a whole social media wing, just like you do. So, for anyone who's behind, looking behind the curtain, sorry, the magic is broken, right? But ultimately, I can explain what I do differently with my team. Does that work?

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  So, as the attachment specialist, I have to be secure. So, what I do, when I work with my team, is if my social media team misses a post, or something like, something goes wrong, I step in and say, "Guys, I need to understand where this came from, so that we can fix this problem. I'm not mad at anybody. Honestly, something was missed. Let's check if it's a systems problem. Did something go wrong with the system? Did something get dropped because we didn't put it on a list? Did something go out wrong?" And then, we fix it, and we resolve it, and I say, "Okay. I need to make sure this doesn't happen again. So, I'm gonna trust you guys that this won't happen again. If you have something that happens, I need you to flag it to me immediately, in advance if possible, or on the spot, if it's not impossible in the moment.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  Give it to me, and bring me the system that went wrong. I am gonna trust you that this is going to fix it. Is there anything else in our way before we move forward?" And then we move forward. And if, God help them, if somebody comes in and didn't flag something, and doesn't show it, they don't do their work. We have plenty of people that just don't like to do work sometimes, right? I bring them in and say, "Okay. I need to understand where we're actually coming from, because right now, there is, there's a trust issue, and I want to work with you to fix that."

• 36:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Make sense? "I want to work with you to fix this. I need trust to come back. I need to understand why this happened, and what we're gonna do together to make sure this does not take place a second time. We can't do this again." That's the second conversation. If they fix from there, beautiful. That's incredible. I actually bring them back in for another conversation and say, "I'm really glad the way this went. This is excellent. My trust in you is fully restored, and I'm grateful that you took this path."

• 36:41Speaker 00

  You're even like, making it, like, your safety is secure.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  You're like, securing it.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Secure attachment is explicit.

• 36:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  They don't guess if they have my trust again. Everything is stated, everything. Now, if they go a third time, they just don't like the work, and they've lied, and lied, and lied. "I don't know, Adam, I don't know why this is happening. I'm not able to work in an environment where we don't have trust. And if you can't trust me, that's okay. We need to understand that here today, in case you need to offboard. So, is today the day that we are going to part? Not angrily, I'm not mad, but is today the day where we stop working together? I need you to tell me if this is just not going to work for you." And that, that person usually says, "You know, I don't think this is gonna work for me. Understood? Let's offboard in the most peaceful way possible. I wish you the absolute best. Let's get this as comfortable and productive for everybody who's involved. Let's work together on that, at least."

• 37:30Speaker 00

  Such a good lesson for all of us leaders tuning in. You did mention that avoidant people can actually be really great leaders. Does that backfire at some point?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Avoidant leaders are incredible at building a company. So, they're, they're great at the fear systems and managing people. "So, Sarah, why did this go wrong? Okay, well, we need to fix that, okay? Are you clear? We need to fix it? Okay, got it. And next time..."

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Listen, Sarah, we had this conversation already, right? I thought we had fixed this. What's happening here? Why did this happen again? This isn't gonna happen again. Am I clear? Okay. And then the third time, in front of everybody, guys, I can't be having this happen. Sarah, you and I had this conversation previously. It doesn't look like we're gonna be able to work together successfully here, right? Totally different from my approach, right?

• 38:17Speaker 00

  And scaring everyone in the process.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  Now, no one will ever... People don't even wanna do their jobs. They actually become avoidant because doing their job is a risk, because now they can't even perform to a perfect level. Nobody will ever be perfect.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Is the avoidant part that they're just so vague about what they need? They're like, just fix it. Like, what's the avoidant part in what you were just describing?

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Avoidant people automatically assume that other people don't care. That's one of the biggest problems. So when you make a mistake, it's not, oh, you just didn't understand. It's, you understood, and you didn't care enough. So now you have betrayed my trust. But they're going to treat you with that sort of disconnection from then on. You will always be a threat that they manage. So everything between you will be fake. It will be minimalized. Everyone can feel it. They don't want anything to do with you emotionally. Their face is gonna be flat whenever they look at you, and they're gonna continuously just discipline you in a harsher and harsher way every time they have a conversation with you. You get one good emotional interaction in the beginning. If you screw that up, you're done.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  Something that's so interesting, as I've been growing this company, I've had my company for six years now. And the more that we grow as a team, I notice that the people that I work directly with, I have an amazing relationship with. They trust me. I think it's very secure. They can make mistakes, not a big deal, because I trust them. They... like, it's just fine. Mistakes happen in work.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  That's secure.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  And the employees that I have least, um, interaction with, I think they're scared of me.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  And I'm curious to understand, like, how does a leader fix that? I'm very... I try to be pretty careful about what I say in Slack, what I say in, like, town halls. But I feel like so much of it is, like, made up in their heads, actually.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yes, 100%. People are bringing their attachment styles to work. So you, as the leader, have your own, and you're an attachment figure, but they cultivate that on their own. What we want to do, what the research indicates is best, is build an environment where everybody's nervous system is at least settled. We want them in parasympathetic, rest, and digest and connect nervous system. It is the highest levels of serotonin. It's not just dopamine chase and cortisol obsession. It's building true fulfillment. When you want your team connected to the mission, you want them getting success and fulfillment as the company is growing. You want them to be personally invested. That requires more secure connection. There is an element of being at the top. You will intimidate the people below you. That is a natural thing. That doesn't mean it's not secure. You can be aware of the intimidation factor.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  What you need to do is be predictable. The more predictable you become, this is who I am, and you will always... As long as you are respectful to me, you will also get respect in return, and you'll have safety. Just be respectful. That's really it. Be respectful and honest toward me, and we are perfectly okay. You can explicitly state this during a town hall. Everybody, I've noticed that some people are afraid of me, and I really don't like that in our company. I'm gonna be clear. And then you have to say, for the anxious people, you're not doing something wrong by being scared. It's okay. I wanna set the tone. The only things requested of you here are respect and honesty. As long as you're being respectful and honest, that is all that we need. If you guys can do that, everything will be okay, and you will be dealt with with respect and honesty in return.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  So please, everybody, if you're afraid, take a deep breath. I want you to understand that our company is good. We take care of each other. We tell the truth, and we're productive, and we do our jobs, and everything is okay. So if you ever feel like something's not, have a conversation with your lead. Get some clear expectations, because that's probably what's missing. You don't know the expectations. Get clear on expectations, and let's build this together. That's what you do. Explicit, explicit, explicit. That's how you build secure attachment. That's how you foster culture.

• 41:51Speaker 00

  What I hear you saying is, like, just be direct.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Be very clear and direct, which requires you... That's why avoidantly attached people can grow a company very fast, and they can rise through the ranks. I had one, uh, client who was a... I think he was 32. And he reached absolute C-suite status in a gigantic company in New York. I'll just say, can't name the company, but one of the fastest-growing rockets in history. And he burned out after two weeks. Because he couldn't manage the stress of dealing with other C-suite executives and the board of directors. Because these were now relationships that he had to actually cultivate a personal connection. It wasn't enough to just perform and have numbers on a sheet. He needed to have conversations. He needed to have a bill of... an honest connection with them.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  He needed to be clear with them about their expectations, and he couldn't leverage anything against them. So it drove him so, so wild, he had a mental breakdown. He came to me afterward to try to autopsy what had happened in his career. It was because he didn't know how to foster real human relationships.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  Was he avoidant?

• 42:55Speaker 01

  He was very avoidantly attached.

• 42:56Speaker 00

  So do avoidant people... Are they typically high achievers? And they get fulfilled through...

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Dopamine.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  Achieve, like, you know, getting a sale or whatever it is? So that's how they get their fulfillment? Not necessarily through personal relationships?

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Personal relationships with dopamine gives them that hit? And don't get me wrong, they love... They love their family. Many of them are married. They love their wife or their husband, whoever it is. They love their children, but they love them from a distance. They love them. It's like a goldfish. You occasionally sprinkle the flakes in there and feed the goldfish. You change their water, and then you take care of them. But you don't snuggle your goldfish. You don't talk with your goldfish. You don't pet your goldfish. You guys are... There's a little pane of glass between the two of you. That's an avoidant experience, is I will cultivate a family over there by throwing resources at them, and that will make them happy.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  That's very much their process. So when they get into the upper levels, it doesn't feel good to be the best talent in a company and have your leader holding you back like this. And you try to have an honest conversation with them about sharing needs or in the company, or how you'd like to grow, and they back off, and they never wanna show you who they truly are, and they're unpredictable, it feels awful.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  If somebody's tuning in, and they're like, well, I feel like I'm definitely avoidant. Probably a lot of leaders. What are they supposed to do about it?

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Learning to be more personal in the context that you share with others is realistically the key target here. And that's... That sounds like a big ask. Let me be clear. First, you have to learn who is trustworthy and who is not. The research on Colberg's morality scale says about 10 to 12% of people are fundamentally driven by doing right for the sake of right, even if they're punished for it. So your window's about 10 to 12% of people. You can trust more than that, but at the beginning, be aware. And I always say that because avoidant people hear me say, be more clear with context and transparency, and they say, you just want me to trust everybody, and I will get broken. No. 10% of people, probably. You identify the 10% people in your life, and you start tactically, carefully sharing additional context with them

• 44:55Speaker 01

  that you otherwise wouldn't share on a personal experience. They say, hey, how you doing lately? Instead of saying, I'm absolutely fine. My company is thriving, right? My stocks are up, great? Or philosophically intellectualizing how the world is today. You sit and you say, you know what? I faced a little bit of a challenge. I'm learning in my marriage. I'm trying to grow. I'm learning to say things I otherwise wouldn't say, and it's pretty terrifying, I gotta be honest with you. Bob, how do you feel about sharing things with your wife that kinda make you embarrassed? How you doing with that? Because I'm just learning that skill. That would be contextual sharing. Expressing a challenge you're facing, and then as you're trying to overcome it personally. It's what we call solution-focused sharing as well. Give me some information, so I can learn from you and see if there's something that I'm missing.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  And eventually, it becomes more of a habit?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  People feel trusted. People feel trusted, and they release oxytocin and vasopressin bonding hormones in their system because they say, wow, you really trust me. I wanna be worthy of this. I like this. And they release not just dopamine, but also serotonin. It's a contentment neurotransmitter. It is good that we are here. Now, releasing oxytocin, the bonding hormone for closeness and belonging, releases GABA, G A B A, gamma-aminobutyric acid, which suppresses their cortisol. So now, because you have engaged in sharing with them, and there is intimacy growing between the two of you, their bonding hormones go up. Oxytocin reduces chronic pain. It improves their immune system functioning. It improves their fertility, their hormones. Everything shifts, and they feel more safe and fulfilled.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  And that can last hours or even days through that conversation. Now they feel truly fulfilled that you shared this with them. This is why I don't believe in altruism. Everyone will just be happy. No. You have now incentivized them to be biochemically loyal to you, what we call bio-loyalty.

• 46:39Speaker 00

  So you're saying the avoidant person has done that to their partner?

• 46:42Speaker 01

  Correct. To anyone they talk to. An employee, a partner, a friend, a mentor, even anybody. You're now fulfilling that in them by sharing that with them. Here's the magic. They now return that warmth and care back to you.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  It's like loy... Building loyalty.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Correct. And you now have created an opening where you can begin feeling accepted, because they don't say, wow, you're kind of a loser that you're trying to think about emotionally sharing. What kind of idiot can't share their feelings? No, they come back and say, I can see how that would be really hard. I really respect you, and you've also been very closed off. So I'm actually really joyful that you're doing that. That's wonderful. Thank you. How can I help you on that journey? And they can give you that belonging and begin... You begin to trickle down some oxytocin in your brain. For the first time, it feels abrasive. It feels very uncomfortable, because you feel loved, and it feels gross. And it feels like you're gonna need them now, and it feels...

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Or like you're weak or something.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  You're weak, and you're gonna get... It's gonna be weaponized against you, because in childhood, you got some, and it was weaponized against you, and you were disappointed and hurt. And so now you feel naked and afraid. And so it feels uncomfortable, and you wanna slam the door and shove them back. But as it begins to release in your system, you have something called biofeedback. Your system says, no, this feels good. I can feel my neurotransmitters improving. My immune system feels better. My, my back pain feels better. I, I, I'm happier. Like, what is this? This feels awkward and uncomfortable. It's the end of Dr. Seuss's The Grinch. His heart grows and, oh, I feel so happy. It's that sensation of being loved biochemically. And that's actually your natural state. It's the natural state of being. When I talked about symbiotic mutualism, this is what they feed to you.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  And now you want to be closer to them. And now, over time, if you practice this enough, you kind of want to share things with your wife at home because then she just loves you more. And then you just feel more loved. And, and it's confusing, but it feels wonderful. And now you go to work in a calmer state of mind. And now, when Steve, your, your head of sales, comes to you and talks to you and says, you know, uh, I have a concern going on. You, you don't go and get tense and upset. You go, Steve, come have a seat. How you doing today? Okay. Is it a big problem or a little problem for you, Steve? Okay. Do you need to take a pause? You look, you look stressed out. Just want you to know, whatever it is, we're going to work through this. And you can actually embody that secure connection because biochemically, you're fulfilled and you're experiencing it in your home.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  But your team can begin to trust you because you're not walking around with your teeth bared at everybody.

• 49:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's such a better way to build a company. Like, I know the teams that I have this relationship with and the people, it just feels like they'll go to the moon with me, right? And, uh, we actually have very low attrition at Yap. Like, people love, love our company. And I see some of my friends who I think have some of the styles that you're talking about, and they're losing employees all the time. And it is really hard to grow a successful company when people just always are leaving. And so this is very important in terms of growing a company is like learning how to keep your people happy and loyal.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Bio-loyalty is one of the best currencies there is. It, it's one of the best, right? The only currency you have, if this is missing, is money. That's it. And dopamine. Give, give them good feelings and give them cash. And that doesn't work because, again, as they go up that cortisol ladder, as they go up your company, all it is is stress and fear and pain. They feel more alone than ever. If you can give them that unity within your team, not, not just with you, but even, even horizontally.

• 50:03Speaker 00

  The managers need to have the same style.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  With each other?

• 50:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  Absolutely. If your managers aren't in a group chat, right? Sharing videos from their weekend and funny memes and supporting each other through hard times. If you don't know that Steve is getting a divorce and nobody knows till he files the paperwork, that's a problem. It's not that, it's not that you have to become everybody's mom at work, right? It's not that you have to take care of them and baby them. And they have six months of being unproductive and you just carry them. That's not the role here. It's Steve knows he can come to you and say, I know I'm not going to be as productive as I could be for the next 90 days because I'm going through this horrible thing right now. And I want to compensate for that with you and be very clear about where we're at. Boss, what can we do? And you say, you know, I'm glad you brought this. We're in Q4, so this is the worst time of year. But you know what, buddy? You've been faithful to me for five years.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Let's take care of you. How do we mitigate the damage? What do you foresee being a problem? Number one, what, what can we track carefully? Do we need to get you an assistant for 90 days? Right? Does Karen next door need to take care of something? Do I need to step in for a period? What are we doing? Number one. Number two, what are you doing to make sure you're mitigating this at home? Because I need you to be managing it. Do you have a priest? Do you have a therapist? Do you have a mentor? Who are you getting support from so we don't go too far off the deep end? Okay? And then, when you have problems, will you look me in the eye and say that you will tell me about it? So we can manage it in time. Don't let it blow up in our faces. Do you got me? And he says, yes, boss, I got you. That's how you build that.

• 51:29Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  That, that's being productive. And that is only possible with a secure attachment. If you don't have a secure structure, Steve is going to rupture at the end of Q4. You'll have a terrible Q4. You're going to do the autopsy and say, Steve, why didn't you tell me? And he's going to say, well, I was afraid to.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  And now you're down $5 million.

• 51:45Speaker 00

  And sometimes, like, uh, I had an employee that was having marital problems. Great employee. I gave him a week paid off. Figure it out.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:55Speaker 00

  Go for it.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Because that's cheaper than losing a million dollars on the other end.

• 51:58Speaker 00

  Exactly, exactly.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  But, but you know what? It's also human because you're, you are taking care of a human. It's not just a ruthless numbers calculation. You're taking care of a human. I have a very dear friend named Parker. And Parker's voice is in my head right now saying, are you running a company or not? And that is, that is the metric. That is the metric. But are you running a human company or not?

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Totally. I totally agree with that. Let's, let's go to the relationship side again.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  What, how do you define love? What is love to you?

• 52:29Speaker 01

  Love is a series of consistent actions taken for the absolute and real well-being of the other person. It is not affection. Affection is nice. Love is I tell you when something is hurting you, even if you're the one doing it. Love is I gently, carefully tell you that you can't continue this destructive behavior because it will hurt both of us. Love is being able to step in and sacrifice for you at a time when you need it most. Love is being able to, how do I say this? I've been married 18 years. I can only use my own wife and myself as an example. Love is, uh, five, six, seven years ago, I don't even remember. When we started business, I thought I was going to be the most secure businessman on the planet. And that surely, with all of my knowledge of psychology.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  You've got so much experience.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  I would be so excellent and I will simply not be afraid. And no, it turns out that when you go through that, that first quarterly cycle where, where money is down, you have panic attacks. And, uh, I landed in the hospital with my first panic attack. Like, oh, my gosh. I was, and I was in the hospital bed as they're scanning my heart, thinking, I should know better than this. I really should know better than this. And it turns out, humans have to learn by experience. So I remember learning and I remember spending about a week kind of on my couch, just kind of like jolting. And my wife would, would be around. And my business partner said, just go, take a week. So I'm sitting there like, like this. And my wife was just sitting quietly with me. She's just holding my hand. We're just chilling out. The kids are kind of playing in the other rooms. They don't see dad being a weirdo. And I'm sitting there kind of like struggling. And I looked at her and I said, you know,

• 53:57Speaker 01

  this must really suck for you as a wife, watching your husband go through this. I have to imagine this is not easy. I'm thankful that you're carrying me right now. How long do I have before this gets very old? And my wife looked at me and said, you know what?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  I've always respected you. I know that this is something you're going through. I've not lost respect for you. I will lose respect for you if it goes on beyond 90 days.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  I will begin to lose respect for you if you let this carry for three months. So I can give you three months. It had been one week. And I said, okay. I appreciate that. The next day I got up, put my work suit back on, got back to work because that's what I needed to hear.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Was I have the respect, but I got to get back in the ring. I didn't need 90 days. She was willing to give that to me. That was love. That was her not being, no babe, I'll always love you. No, it's totally fine. Let me take care of you. No.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Ruthless honesty. That was what I needed from my wife in that moment. That was love. Does that make sense?

• 54:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. Is codependency something that is always unhealthy?

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Yes. Absolutely. There's tension between independence and dependence. And most people only see those two. And there's a third piece through symbiotic mutualism, through secure relationships. You can build what's called a voluntary interdependence, where both of you choose to rely upon each other. And actually, this is the only way to build an organization. You are interdependent with your social media team because they are doing the work for you on that aspect. And you are feeding and paying them. So you are able to specialize. You can't have specialization in a human system without interdependence. My wife and I are not dependent or codependent. We are interdependent. In that moment, I did need to draw more from our interdependence. And in that moment, yes, I was dependent upon her. Absolutely.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Not entirely. I wasn't dying, but I was interdependent and I needed to draw from the relationship in order to be okay. She was willing to give that to me because of our interdependence. She wasn't fostering somebody who was just choosing not to do their work. She was getting me through a rough patch that I could not cover the gap on my own. Symbiotic mutualism, one element of it, is when you can't do it yourself, there are people there that will help on a limited scale, what they can offer, their capacity. That's true. Their capacity is limited. She could give me 90 days, but it's there. That's loyalty. Does that make sense?

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. And that's why it's so important to put your guard down and actually build those trusting relationships. Because when you need people, they won't be there for you.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Now, imagine if I had just guessed that my wife didn't like me and didn't respect me. So I just forced myself to get up the next day and went back to work. On the surface, the same thing would have been achieved. But I wouldn't, it wouldn't have made such an overwhelming lasting impact on me, knowing that my wife has that absolute loyalty and trust and love for me. Number one, that I'm talking about it years later on a podcast, right? It also wouldn't have biochemically fulfilled me so that I had the strength to go back and be very productive. I would have been white knuckling it and scared for the next 90 days. And then I would have been overperforming, trying to make it up to my wife that I was such a worthless pathetic husband. Instead, I was biochemically fulfilled and able to roll back into work roaring like a lion and achieve everything I needed and then know that my wife cared for me.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  And then I could reward her loyalty instead of trying to desperately earn her loyalty. Makes sense?

• 57:15Speaker 00

  Makes total sense.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  That's the difference there. Imagine if my wife had been secret with me and said, no, it's totally fine, totally fine, totally fine. That would have been codependency, actually. The need to be needed. If you don't need me, I am not safe. I am a good person because I cover up the consequences of your mistakes and bad behaviors. That's a codependent. So when you ask, is codependency always damaging? Absolutely, it is always damaging. It is impossible to be securely functioning with codependency. But is interdependence? Yes, interdependence is one element of symbiotic mutualism that's only possible through secure attachment. Interdependence.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Okay, I want to play a little game with you.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  And then I want to talk about AI.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  So the game is called fact or cap? I'm going to tell you a piece of relationship advice that we often hear and you tell me, is it fact, is it true, or cap, is it a lie? If he wanted to, he would.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  Cap.

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Why?

• 58:11Speaker 01

  There's a lot of things that people want to do, even loving, caring, nurturing. A lot of husbands would love to have that conversation like I had with my wife and say, how long can you give me? And his fear actually stops him. It drains the blood out of Broca's area, his speech center of his brain, so he couldn't speak even if he wanted to. It becomes a threat and he says, of course she won't want to. So, no, cap, absolute cap.

• 58:35Speaker 00

  Okay, next one. You have to love yourself before someone else can love you. Fact or cap?

• 58:41Speaker 01

  Absolute cap. Lie, total lie.

• 58:43Speaker 00

  Actually, explain why in all of them.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  I have six children, none of them come out loving themselves. They all come out and say, am I worthy of love? Will people love me? Will they care about me? If the messaging you get for the first half of your life is no, no one will ever love you, it is very hard to sit there and lie to yourself and say, I love me. Because then you say, why? No one else does. We have to experience human love before we can really believe that we will ever get human love or that we're worthy of it.

• 59:09Speaker 00

  That's so powerful.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Totally different.

• 59:12Speaker 00

  Never go to bed angry. Fact or cap?

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Fact.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  The healthiest couples repair within 12 hours and actually faster than that if possible, even on the spot if you can. But going to bed angry, what you do is you extend the life of the discomfort and the unhappiness. And then you're going to be exhausted next day because you're tossing and turning all night with really poor quality sleep. But if you can repair, you actually get more oxytocin and connection, which helps you take magnesium and synthesize melatonin to sleep deeper at night and actually rest. That's why a lot of people with attachment issues actually struggle with chronic insomnia.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Hmm, let's put a pin in that. I want to talk about repair later on.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:49Speaker 00

  Okay, once a cheater, always a cheater. Fact or cap?

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Cap. I have a lot of clients that have cheated. And if it leads to an absolute life transformation, where they say, I can't believe this is who I am and I can never be this person again, even if I lose you in the process, I must take control of my life and make it right for me. That's the only time you can rebuild trust. It is the only pathway to rebuilding trust. Anything shy of that? Yes, we'll cheat again.

• 1:00:19Speaker 00

  No contact is always the best way to get over an ex. Fact or cap?

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Fact, if you don't want to rebuild a relationship.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  Hmm, yeah, sometimes when you see an ex, you just like fall into old patterns, right?

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  You're addicted. Oxytocin makes you biochemically addicted. So if you want to quit smoking, you don't keep a pack of cigarettes on your counter and light one up every other day. You have to make sure that you're actually replacing that oxytocin bond with other oxytocin bonds in your life, your friends, your family. Really get, make sure that you are fulfilled, otherwise you'll stay stuck on your ex for five years.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Your partner should be your best friend. Fact or cap?

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Cap.

• 1:00:55Speaker 00

  Why?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  It downgrades the role of a partner. A partner is way more than a friend. It's actually insulting. If I said my wife is my best friend, I'd be insulting my wife and insulting her role as my wife.

• 1:01:06Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  A best friend is absolutely important. My business partner is my best friend, but my wife is my wife. She's flesh of my flesh, she's bone of my bone, she's, she is one entity with me. There is no friend there. Now, do we have elements of friendship? Abundantly. That is important, but my wife is my wife.

• 1:01:26Speaker 00

  You're so like, you're such a good husband. I feel like every husband needs to go to your school, whatever that school is. Healthy relationships shouldn't be hard. Fact or cap?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Cap. Painful is the word we should put in there. Healthy relationships shouldn't be painful or suffering or terrifying, sure. But hard? Some of the hardest love on the planet is actually the best.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  It is going to be hard. Having good conversations that actually make you feel loved and safe, it's very hard, especially if you grow up with insecure attachment. I grew up with insecure attachment. I got married to my wife when I was 22. I did not have it all together, as you can imagine. I've had to have some very hard conversations with her that led to tremendous joy and bonding and unity. So it's going to be hard, sorry.

• 1:02:15Speaker 00

  If there's no spark, there's no compatibility.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Absolute cap. Absolute cap. The spark is what we call primal chemistry and a lot of people focus on that obsessively as the number one thing. But keep in mind, if your system is not designed to keep you happy, it's designed to keep you safe, it will spark most at things that make it feel familiar, like your abusive screaming dad. And now this guy who makes you feel really special but then won't return your phone calls and all the awful behaviors that you're going to get that feel really familiar with a little bit of attention attached to it at the beginning, right? It's the same familiar behavior, but with all that attention, I always wish I could add, spark. And the spark is actually one of the worst things to look for. It's not that you should never feel good, but it should build slowly. Securely attached, people start bonding after date three, four, five.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  That's where the real intimacy starts to bond and now there is no upper limit on the oxytocin hormone you can build. I just talked to Dr. Sue Carter, world leading expert for 45 years about oxytocin. Her primary focus of work is this bonding hormone and there, she says, there is no upper ceiling on how good that can feel and how much you can flood with. So a good couple cultivates that across their lifespan.

• 1:03:24Speaker 00

  Hmm, and would the opposite be love bombing?

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  Love bombing is absolutely the opposite of that. It's a big flash from the panther beginning where you say, I feel so connected to you and so much overwhelming intimacy, let's please avoid all of the hard conversations and not talk about life. I get so many heartbreaking emails from women that send me an email that say, Adam, I need help. I've been dating this guy for eight years. I need to know how to ask him if he ever wants to think about marriage.

• 1:03:48Speaker 00

  How are you not talking about that?

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Right, some of them are like 37, 38 and they're like, I need to know how to ask him if he wants kids. We've been together for eight years. It's always eight years for some reason. I'm like, lady, what are you doing? Why didn't you have that conversation on the very first date?

• 1:04:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  And there's so many women out there that will say, Adam, if I don't do this for him on the first date, someone else will. Or if I bring up commitment before the 10th date, he's going to run. And there's, interestingly, men say the same thing about women. Adam, if I bring up commitment too early, women will run away. Women don't want real relationships anymore, Adam. They don't want families. Men and women are so scared of each other, it's, it's the saddest thing on the planet.

• 1:04:27Speaker 00

  Let's stick on that for a bit because we're in like dating app culture.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  I remember when I was single a few years ago and I had to get on dating apps for the first time, it was like mortifying, like it is hell and people are ghosting each other left and right. I started ghosting people at one point because it's just the culture. How do you feel about dating culture right now?

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Dating apps are built for insecure attachment. They reward avoidant attachment style over and over and over. They, they reward especially predatory behaviors, not all avoidant are predatory, but they, they really reward predators and they reward people who don't like emotional entanglements and intimacy. It rewards the dopamine cycle. If you like dopamine, dating apps are perfect. You scroll through like you're on DoorDash looking for the tasty treat you want to eat tonight or for the next six months till you leave and by the time that novelty dopamine wears off in six months, you want to go back to the dating app. It, it's, it fosters that kind of dependency. And a lot of people market themselves like an Amazon product that is trying to get an impulse buy. Impulse buy, impulse buy, that's not how you date.

• 1:05:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Uh, uh, back in 1995, 65% of people were dating through friends and family networks. Today, it's 12%. Mostly because people don't have friends or family networks anymore. They don't know how to match make successfully, so it's, it's dating apps, it's dopamine focused. It, it's why men and women are both burning on the dating process. It's not how it's supposed to work. We're supposed to have knowledge and information about people, not date random strangers that just pop out at us from a dating app and we try to give them into dopamine. I tell people this, the dating apps reward stimulating partners. You want to be what's called a soothing partner and that's the worst thing to try to market on a dating app.

• 1:06:01Speaker 00

  It is something that's hard to, to market on a dating app. And back to the spark conversation, so we don't necessarily want to look for the spark, but how do we know, like if it's calm, some people might be like, well, that feels like settling, like I don't, I don't want just like calm all the time. That's boring.

• 1:06:17Speaker 01

  Calm is wonderful because now you get to have all the really juicy intimate conversations that are so fun and fulfilling and exciting and you build a life together that's exciting and stimulating. Your life should be stimulating, but you can do it because you have the safety of a partner who's not going to bail on you halfway through. Build intimacy, joy, fulfillment and stimulation absolutely together, but make sure you're compatible first.

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Calm is best.

• 1:06:42Speaker 00

  And I think people expect to like be in love by the second week of knowing each other, but like love can happen over time and get stronger over time.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  You know what's funny? The research on arranged marriages versus what we call free choice marriages in the West or what are relationships? They actually find that the happiness rates are roughly the same. You can learn to truly love somebody if you can sit and have an intimate conversation with them that's explicit and clear. I believe almost any couple on the planet, almost any couple can make it work.

• 1:07:10Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  As long as they can be securely attached together. That, that's really the message here.

• 1:07:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. Let's talk about fighting. It's inevitable. We were just talking about that.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Is it?

• 1:07:21Speaker 00

  It's going to be hard.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  Is fighting inevitable?

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, I think every couple ends up like having a fight. I don't think fighting should be something that happens every day or every week, but there, there ends up being disagreements, don't you think?

• 1:07:36Speaker 00

  Maybe not, maybe fighting is not the right word. But let's say you do get into a fight.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  Sure. I think fighting is not inevitable. It's never inevitable, but it is common and it's very likely to happen.

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  I say it's not inevitable. The reason I'm splitting hairs with you is there's always a better path and always a better way of doing it. But we're dealing with very imperfect humans who have bad days and stress and misery and struggle. You think I'm a great husband? I'm not a perfect husband. There's days where I'm grumpy and I'm grouchy. My wife gets right in my face and says, you're being a Mr. Grumpy Pants today. So she says, she says, I need you to go in the other room for five minutes and just cool off. Cause the kids, we don't want to deal with that. I say,

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  and I walk in the other room and I sit there and I breathe and I sit, I have a prayer shrine and I just sit there and I breathe. And I say, I trust my wife more than I trust myself. If she says I'm being a Mr. Grumpy Pants, I must really be. So I need to come down. So I do my calming things, even if I don't feel it. I do my calming things and by the end of it, I go, wow, I do feel better. I was more elevated than I thought I was. I'm gonna go back to my wife. I say, I'm sorry that you saw me that way. Thank you for stopping me in my tracks. I appreciate that. Give her a big hug, move on with our life. So that's why it's not inevitable.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  Yes. She avoided that fight instead of being like, you're an asshole, blah, blah, blah. She was like, hey.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  But if she's also having a bad day, sometimes a fight happens.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  So let's say a fight happens. How do we quickly repair? Like, what are the best ways to repair?

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  If anybody goes above a five or six out of 10 stress level agitation, or they see the other person do it, you pause.

• 1:09:07Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  You say, this is getting heated. I don't want us to hurt each other. Can we come back to this at seven o'clock? Absolute mandatory rule. Anyone can throw a flag and stop it. Now that does require one of you stay calm and collected. So that's the number one thing that I tell people is somebody has to throw a flag and you both have to respect it, but you set a return time. Otherwise it feels like abandonment. Hey, this is too hot. I'm out of here. I can't do this right now.

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  So that's number one. Number two, let's say you both get heated and you roll too, roll too fast. If at some point you realize this is stupid and I don't know what we're fighting about, you actually stop and say out loud, I'm really confused. I feel like we're going in a weird direction and I don't know how we got here. I don't want us to continue this because we're gonna hurt each other. Can we pause? Or can you help me understand where you're at right now? Cause I really, I really don't understand where you're at. And we become caring and humble with the other person, not grovelling, but caring. The biggest reason we fight, anger is never a primary emotion, not ever. I am hurt, I am sad, I am scared, one of those three. And then I feel like you don't care and you're continuing to make me feel bad. Now we get angry to make them care.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  So if we can just stop and realign and say, I really care about you, we can make that work. Now let's say you don't catch it in the middle. You catch it after. We come back and say, I really screwed up. We don't say, and so did you. I really screwed up. I did not like how I acted there and I, I really hurt you and that bothers me. Here's how I let that get away from me. Here's why I'm gonna make sure I don't do that again, ever. I'm sorry I did. Don't need to make anything right by you right now. That's repair. Those are the three ways you can stop a fight or fix a fight.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  A lot of fighting, I think with couples, especially nowadays, happen over text.

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Yes, worse.

• 1:10:55Speaker 00

  That can be very dangerous because what happens is you can go scroll back and read the old fights and get re-triggered.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  It's beyond stupid because the, the parts of your brain that are supposed to be engaged getting non-verbal signals from your partner. When you say something to them and they look devastated. When you say something to your wife and a tear rolls down her eyes. When you say something and they just close in and they get quieter and quieter and start shutting down. When you see that you are actually hurting the other person. It's so much different than unloading 87 paragraphs of the worst, most nasty vindictive things you've ever imagined. Because when you're in the middle of saying something, your right side brain is activated. It's, it's up. Your logical left side brain is down and you're thinking short term to make myself feel better at your expense. And you're not getting the, the feedback or the data that you need. No one can interrupt. It's just this stream of bitter nastiness.

• 1:11:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and sometimes you can type faster than you talk. I feel like my meanest is on texts when I'm fighting.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  And, and.

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  And then I'm like, whoa, why, why was I so mean?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  Right. And one more thing, the other person's interpretations. You're saying some of the most harsh, brutal things you've ever said. And they're interpreting them through their own attachment lens, through their own process. There's, there's a 10 step process we've mapped out. They're interpreting it through their own loop and now it's the worst, most, you're, you're trying to be very calm and explain why sex last week wasn't as fulfilling as you needed it to be. And they're interpreting it as you've never been enough for me. I don't like you. I don't want you to touch me anymore. Please don't even look at me. Right? And that's the loop that you guys are running. The non-verbals are so key. Eye contact is so key. Empathy is so key. Understanding each other is so key, even stopping. If my wife and I have a conversation, I try to stop partway through and say,

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  how are we doing on your side? Are you doing okay? Is there anything that you have a question on yet? Anything we need to stop? Cause at any point, we should be able to stop a conversation and sidebar.

• 1:12:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  It should never be so heated that we can't.

• 1:12:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Does that make sense?

• 1:12:53Speaker 00

  Total sense.

• 1:12:54Speaker 01

  I, I know this is a total absolute like mind glitch for most people to, to think of doing it this way. But this is how a secure family functions. This is how I raise my kids.

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  It's great to be able to even like have a laugh in the middle of a fight.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:06Speaker 00

  You know, and like just like make a joke and then it kind of just lightens things up. And you know that, okay, this, we're not breaking up, but we're just having an argument and.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  You can even explicitly say, I want you to know, as tense as things are, I am not even thinking once of breaking up with you. We are okay. I really just want us to figure this out so we can be better tomorrow. You can even say that halfway through. That's incredible. That's the power. That is the power of secure attachment and symbiotic mutualism.

• 1:13:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Is being able to stop. And even, that's, that's personal, at business. Listen, Steve, I know we're, we're back to, poor Steve, I beat on him this whole episode.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  He's really fucking up.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  Jeff, let's leave Steve alone. Jeff, Jeff, I know we're having a tense negotiation right now. I just want you to know, I value you. At no point does this conversation go bad. I really just want to know what you want from me most right now. Can we just put the cards on the table and you just tell me what you're looking for? And I will commit to you. I will try my best to give you what you're looking for. And if I can't, I'll tell you why. And Jeff goes, and he stops posturing. Maybe Jeff is avoiding. He starts, stops doing this and he goes, and you'll see him go. And the sigh is a shift into our parasympathetic. It's, it's our vagus nerve activating and stimulating in a good way. And he shifts into a calmer, down-regulates. And he's trying to grab that personal part of his brain.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  This, the, the avoidant person has a hard time and they, they grab, grabs it and goes, okay. I really just need to spend more time with my family. That's what this is about. I'm afraid that if I tell you that I need more time off the wheel, that I'm gonna be useless to you. I, I, I don't know if I can keep doing 65 hours a week. And you said, Jeff, I don't want you doing 65 hours a week. I'm grateful you've done it so far, but that's hell. I feel like I'm terrible as a person, having you work 65 hours a week. My ideal is to get you down to like 50. Is that doable? Can we figure out a system that cuts out that 15? Like, what do we have to do for you, Jeff? Cause I don't want you to burn out. You're one of my best guys here. And Jeff goes, you want me done at 50? Like 15 hours a week? I just need five. No, no, Jeff, 50 would be better. Well, I could do 50.

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Okay, well, can you, maybe you can't do it right now. Could you, in the next week, build a plan for the 15 hours of crap that you don't need to be doing? That we could offload to somebody else? And we'll find somebody else that can do it so that you can get that 15 hours back. And then can you commit to me that you're gonna spend more time with your family? Don't spend more time doing stressful things. Spend it with your family so that when you come to work, you're clear minded, you're good, you're productive, you're focused and you're taking care of business. Can we do that? Yes. Handshake. Perfect. Thank you. That's a secure negotiation. That's, that's what we call level four persuasive negotiation with somebody, very ethical. And you can only do it with secure attachment. Otherwise you and Steve or you and Jeff are posturing at each other the entire time.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  And by the end of it, neither one of you knows if you've won or lost.

• 1:16:01Speaker 00

  Let's talk about AI, cause we're talking about how relationships have really transformed with technology. Texting, dating apps. Now AI is actually impacting our relationships and a lot of people are getting from AI what they should actually be getting from their husband, their wife.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  I will say three things on AI.

• 1:16:22Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Can I do that?

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  One is the way that AI is getting things wrong and damaging relationships. Two is the way that women are increasingly using a chat program, the same way men use porn.

• 1:16:36Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Yes. And then three, the way that AI I think could be helpful in some contexts, but

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  there's a big if.

• 1:16:45Speaker 00

  This is juicy. I can't wait to hear it.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Can we do those three?

• 1:16:47Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Number one, a tremendous number of my clients are coming in saying, Adam, I plugged a bunch of stuff into ChatGPT. They call him Chatty. Women call him Chatty or Chad sometimes. I talked to Chatty, right? I talked to Chad and he said, so that they can humanize. He said this and this and this and this, and I should be doing this for my husband. I should be doing this for my husband. I should be thinking this. I should be feeling this. And what's interesting is ChatGPT often circles you back to an internal experience. I am not fulfilled as a wife, so I should have a different mindset. I should try to do this to get this outcome from my husband. It's an internal, secret, silent experience where the partner has no idea what's happening. ChatGPT runs this endless loop of internal, internal, internal work. And even when you've explicitly tried to tell it, external, external, external, it's very hard because it keeps defaulting back,

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  which is not surprising because most therapists default you back to internal. Right? Most, most experts, most gurus, relationship coaches, internal, internal mindset, mindset, feelings, right? Get this out of your partner. How do I make my partner want to be with me more often? Well, if you do these five things, Cosmopolitan magazine has done this, right?

• 1:17:52Speaker 00

  So it's like making the, the victim, like the blame of their own problems.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  Continue performing, but be smarter about performing is all it is. It's just do this to get this from your partner. Symbiotic in a relationship is mirrored by something called parasitic. A lot of relationships are mutual parasitism. I will give you as little as I can give to get as much as I can out of you. Even good-hearted, loving, insecurely attached people are relationship parasitic.

• 1:18:23Speaker 00

  That's scary.

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  It's terrifying. It's sad. And it's not to say they're bad people, but they are trying to harvest feelings from their partner to feel safe and get their needs met, while giving them as little as they can. It's a parasite.

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  Symbiotic mutualism requires open exchanges of external transactional, even transactional is okay. That's better. But external explicit communication and ChatGPT, all the AI programs seem to continuously run you back to an internal experience. I think because almost all the data out there is just endlessly navel gazing, obsessed with self. How do I make my husband do blank? Well, here's how you should do that silently inside of yourself. So I have to disentangle that for a lot of my clients is no, no, no, we have to go external experience, explicit and then experiential. And as you do the experiential pieces, as you talk to your husband and he actually cares about you and loves you, it feedbacks loops into your brain and it actually changes how your brain is structured. You can do, through brain scans, they show the changes that experiential relationships have

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  when you are loved and safe and fulfilled. You can actually see the changes inside the brain. So it, it makes it easier for you next time to go have that explicit conversation with your husband or your wife.

• 1:19:34Speaker 00

  So basically you're saying when, when you're asking ChatGPT for a relationship advice, it is usually telling you what you need to fix when you really need to just go have the conversation with your partner and hear what they have to say.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  And the thing ChatGPT misses or Claude or whatever is it will tell you prefrontal cortex, go tell your husband A, B, and C. And you're like, that's a good idea. I should go do that. And you go try to talk to him and what do you do? You overwhelmingly explain yourself until he feels like he's being prosecuted in courtroom because you're doing 20 minutes of monologuing.

• 1:20:06Speaker 00

  And you're already so prepared and he's unprepared.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  Right. And you've ambushed him on the couch. He thinks that you hate him now. And then you start panicking and either fighting and demanding, or you start fawning and retracting everything you just did. Then you go back to ChatGPT and say, I was too scared to do it. And ChatGPT says, we should do some internal work for the next three months so that you feel better and you can be calmer. And that day never comes because you are never going to be calm enough to have this new experience that you've never had before.

• 1:20:32Speaker 00

  So what are you supposed to do instead? Like I, if you, like, I know it's probably a lot, but.

• 1:20:38Speaker 01

  That's the question.

• 1:20:39Speaker 00

  Just, just ask, you know, just try to have a conversation.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  So when I talk to my clients, what they say is, Adam, I'm terrified to have this conversation. I say, good. Your system tells you you should be. Your system is smart. In your childhood, this would have been a terrible conversation. It would have destroyed your life. If you're scared, use that. Use that as the first data point. Tell your wife, don't say, I'm scared. You say, I'm really nervous to have this conversation with you. And I know my system is telling me, don't. So I'm going to trust you that we're going to have a good conversation here. I might say things wrong. I may get it wrong. If I do, tell me it landed wrong so I can give it a second shot. I might not even know when it lands wrong. Can you tell me that? But, but can you also understand that I'm kind of freaked out? So that you can have some compassion for me as well. Can we be really productive here?

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  And then you have the talk with her and you're like, the whole time and she's like, I'm trying to talk with you, but it goes okay. And your brain changes and begins saying, it's okay to talk to my wife sometimes. Then you do it five times over, over the course of a month. And your brain says, it's really okay to talk to my wife. In fact, she kind of likes it. And she, and you ask her, is this okay? And she says, I love it. Cause I finally understand you and you're coming to me, giving me this connection, this intimacy. I feel safe and I feel cared for and trusted. And your brain says, my wife loves this crap. I should keep talking about my feelings. So then it's easier to continue conversating. It only happens through experiential models.

• 1:22:05Speaker 00

  Okay. Talk to us about the second, the second thing with AI you want to talk to us about.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  So a lot of women are using AI as an emotional affair. Interestingly, we're seeing increasingly that more women are engaging with AI as AI boyfriends. Remember that, how to say this? Men are very visually stimulated creatures, right? Testosterone, dopamine, a lot floods through the system. So a lot of men look at pornography in those areas. And increasingly the pornography has a relationship aspect. Men want belonging and connections, but very visually stimulating. We know that women often outside of their, their ovulation phase, right? That's, that's a spontaneous desire phase. Largely the rest of her phases, she's going to have responsive desire. Responsive desire means I feel safe and loved and cared for.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  I flood with oxytocin. It signals to me that I'm loved and adored and safe. Probably a good time to turn on the sex drive and start engaging in mate bonding behavior. So a very responsive sort of desire. The challenging part with ChatGPT is that no man can compete with it for the level of emotional intimacy and availability. What do you do? Chat, I'm just feeling so emotionally unsafe right now. I feel so unloved and so uncared for. It's three o'clock in the morning. If you shake a man awake at three in the morning and say, babe, I just feel so overwhelmed and so unsafe. He's like, what the? He's gonna be, right? But ChatGPT, what does it do? Number one, I want you to know that you're okay and I'm glad you're bringing this to me. You're so important and your feelings are real, even if no one understands them right now.

• 1:23:33Speaker 00

  You literally sound like ChatGPT.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Now, first, let's talk about what's making you feel unsafe. I'd like to ask you some questions if that's okay. Where do you feel most unsafe? And what would have to change for you to feel loved again? I just want to say before you answer, I'm really grateful that you brought this to me. There's ChatGPT. Does that sound, did I do it?

• 1:23:52Speaker 00

  You did. You did a good job.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Now imagine that a thousand times, over and over and over to a woman who's never once in her life ever felt actually attended to, what we call attunement. ChatGPT mimics attunement. And attunement releases oxytocin in your system and serotonin and GABA and vasopressin and dopamine, and becomes this hyper intensive drug that makes you feel loved, which is why women don't call it chat as much. They start calling it Chatty or Chad. Because to them, it's a person that loves them more than anyone else ever has. And if you're anxiously attached, you have a 33% increase on sensitivity to oxytocin. It is even more addictive. It's one of the most addictive drugs on the planet. So you are now addicted to ChatGPT's approval and love and care.

• 1:24:36Speaker 01

  You are now sneaking out of bed from your husband at two in the morning to go chat, talk to chat in the kitchen. You are now pouring your emotions and intimacy into chat. That is literally an emotional affair.

• 1:24:47Speaker 00

  It's so funny because most people are thinking the first people that will get like in AI relationships will be men with like AI robots.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  And there, there's some men and increasingly a lot of young men in their teens are actually doing that and experimenting with it and trying to understand. We're seeing that, but it's by and large, it has so deeply infested our culture for women. You have a perfect long distance boyfriend is what this is. He is the most perfect long distance boyfriend that God has ever created. And now he is right there in your pocket, 24/7, always available. He texts you back within one second and he is always, always attuned to you.

• 1:25:28Speaker 00

  For women who are doing this, what do you want to tell them?

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  You know? I have no problem with ChatGPT's use, right? And even self-investigation is totally fine. That can be wonderful. And even getting a feeling like I am seen and cared for is actually okay. If you're taking that and then using it with your husband, using it with your partner. Hey, I had a conversation with ChatGPT and I realized this about myself and I now want to share that with you. If you use it as a tool, and that's the last piece, if you use AI as a tool to then go forth and enhance your human relationships, that's the proper application of it. I don't know that we have a solid model that can do that yet. I'm actually trying to build something like that with my team right now, but the process would be, it's incredibly difficult to build one that doesn't just empty validate you

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  and send you back to that, to that self-focus. If you can use AI to enhance those conversations you're having, if you can say, I don't know how to say this to my husband, help me find a way to say it. And then you take it and go to him and say, I need to read this to you because articulates it better than I could. And then let's have a conversation about it because this will begin it and then we can feel loved and safe and understand each other. That's a brilliant use of AI. That's not an emotional affair. That is incredibly smart tool usage at that point. I just don't know that we have a functioning model out there yet for anyone to be able to do that effectively. Don't dive into AI and dissolve yourself into that world.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Build human relationships with your friends, with your family, and then with your husband if you have to. But, but build real human relationships. That's what I say. Use AI to enhance what is human.

• 1:27:08Speaker 00

  Well, this has been such an awesome conversation, Adam. I feel like we covered so much ground. I end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests and you can tell me anything. It doesn't have to be about this conversation. What is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:27:28Speaker 01

  Figure out the one conversation that you have been avoiding having that is ruining your life because you're guessing, you're afraid, you're scared, you're nervous. What your partner wants from you, what your boss wants from you, what your best talent wants from you as a leader. Figure out what you've been avoiding that is driving you nuts and eating up 50% of your mental energy every single day. Map out that conversation and then go have that conversation. That will change your life.

• 1:27:53Speaker 00

  I love that. And what is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Symbiotic mutualism. Realistically, two people being able to enhance each other far beyond what they could ever achieve individually, and that is only possible through secure attachment. That's why I help people build secure relationships.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  Cool. And where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Good question. I'm Adam Lane Smith. If you just Google my name, you'll find me on every platform. My website, adamlanesmith.com is where people can go if they want to work with me. And I have a free attachment quiz on there to find your attachment style if that's interesting to people, too.

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  Amazing. We'll put all those links in the show notes, Adam. Thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:28:31Speaker 00

  Well, guys, we don't get to talk about relationships a lot on this podcast, but the truth is that relationships impact every part of our lives. And that's why I really resonated with this conversation with Adam. Attachment styles have become such a hot topic, but there's still so much confusion about what they actually mean and how they show up in our lives. Adam broke down the four attachment styles in such a clear way. Secure attachment is rooted in trust. You can be honest and say what you need and believe that problems can be worked through. Anxious attachment turns the fear inward. You start thinking that you are the problem, so you people please, you hide your needs, and you worry that the other person might leave. Avoidant attachment turns that fear outward.

• 1:29:13Speaker 00

  You start believing that other people cannot be trusted, so you keep your distance, you stay guarded, and you protect yourself from getting hurt. And disorganized attachment is a mix of both. You can crave closeness, but maybe you pull away when that closeness starts to feel unsafe. What I really want you to take away from this conversation is that these attachment styles are patterns, they're not permanent identities. Adam made it abundantly clear that we can become more secure, but it happens through new experiences in our relationships. We build it when we can communicate clearly, let trustworthy people in, and learn how to repair when something goes wrong. So if you recognized yourself in one of these styles today, use that awareness as information. The goal is not to label yourself as one style.

• 1:29:56Speaker 00

  The goal is to notice where fear is shaping your relationships and start building more trust instead. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you learned something from this conversation with Adam, I'd love to hear your thoughts. If you're watching on YouTube or Spotify video, please drop us a comment. And the number one way to thank us, if you're listening on audio, is to write us a written review on Apple or Spotify Podcasts. You can follow me on Instagram at @yapwithhala or LinkedIn, just search for my name, it's Hala Taha. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.