On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 4 Steps to Build Emotional Maturity & Make Relationships Last (Tom Bilyeu Interviews Jay)

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Do you like spending time alone or by yourself? How does alone time help clear your mind and fuel positive thoughts? Today, I am excited to share a conversation I had with Tom Bilyeu in his podcast, Impact Theory, where he interviews me about my profound journey through solitude, relationships, and self-love. We kick things off by shedding light on the wisdom found in ancient texts like the Vedas, which many monks study in solitude. It's a reminder that spending time alone is not a sign of weakness; in fact, it can be a powerful tool for personal growth. I share the incredible benefits of allocating just one hour a week to being alone with your thoughts, a practice that can transform your life. As we venture further into this enlightening conversation, we discuss the importance of dealing with life's challenges, share insights on daily meditation, and the complexities of loneliness and why it's essential to feel seen, heard, and understood in our relationships. With heartfelt anecdotes and wisdom, we explore the concept of love, self-worth, and the hard work required for genuine, lasting relationships. In this interview, you’ll learn: How to be comfortable with being alone How to sit with your inner thoughts  How to prepare for love The tips to finding true love How to make relationships last The impotence valuing self-worth How to build lasting trust on others How to maintain a successful marriage Remember, relationships are just one part of our life's journey, and it's up to us to make it a meaningful and fulfilling one. Let’s navigate the complexities of life and relationships with wisdom and love. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 00:35 Jay explains the vedas that most monks study in solitude 03:34 Loneliness is not the enemy while being alone is not a weakness 08:12 The benefits of allocating an hour a week to alone time 14:12 “This bad thing happened, and now what?” 17:31 Daily meditation has varying positive effects on people 18:47 Why do people struggle with being alone with their thoughts? 23:51 Allow yourself to have positive distractions and random thoughts 27:44 Loneliness is when you don’t feel seen, heard, or understood 30:46 How do you prepare for love? 34:01 Jay shares an unrecorded interview with his mom 35:32 “When you’ve experienced your strength, no one can make you feel weak.” 37:35 Why you should not turn to others to validate your self worth 38:59 Can doing hard things make life easier? 43:11 The absence of a good role model and proper tools can lead to making bad choices 45:15 On parenthood: Would you intervene or allow kids to learn about themselves? 49:06 Top 3 things that can help develop a successful relationship 54:38 Why do people select the wrong partner?   57:26 Jay talks about the four levels of trust we have for relationships 01:00:13 The desperation to be loved makes us give away trust so easily 01:02:20 True, genuine love takes hard work 01:05:01 How can you keep your marriage sacred and successful? 01:14:12 How to grow the relationship you’re currently in and in the right way 01:17:05 Jay explains the consciousness of the human soul   01:19:42 A relationship isn’t everything, it is not the be-all and end-all of your journey 01:22:55 Would you live your life in a hypothesis? Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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When we're left alone to ourselves, we hear things that we may not be comfortable with. I don't like when my life is going. I'm not happy with how I look. Everyone else is doing better than me. Oh, they just got proposed to and I'm not happy with how I look. Everyone else is doing better than me. Oh, they just got proposed to and I'm still alone. All those thoughts get space to actually be heard when you're scrolling. It's like, oh, they got proposed. Oh, cute bunny. Oh, like you're not even listening. You're scrolling away. Thoughts. thoughts. Tell me what is the secret that you've learned from monks on how to master yourself. I think one of the first things that I'd suggest and explain to

people is that when I lived as a monk a lot of the wisdom that we studied and the Eastern literatures that we spent time excavating, those were not aimed at monks, those were just aimed at humanity. When they were written. When they were written. They weren't talking about the Vedas. Correct.

What are the Vedas exactly? So the Vedas are 5,000 year old texts that literally talk about everything from Ayurveda, which is the science of health. So Veda means wisdom or science of. And so Ayurveda is the science of life is the science of health. Siveta means wisdom or science of. And so Iorveda is the science of life, the science of health. You have the own version of vastuveda, which is closest to feng shui. So like how to design your home, how to set up different things around your home for purposeful aesthetics.

You have the science of warfare in the Vedas. Wow. Yeah, so there's a whole text dedicated to that. How do you reconcile that? purposeful aesthetics, you have the signs of warfare in the Vedas. So there's a whole text dedicated to that. Can you reconcile that? You reconcile that in the sense of there's knowledge and wisdom on how to properly do each aspect with integrity, with purpose, from a point of protection, recognizing, I think me and you can probably vibe with this.

The idea that we all want a world, I think we'd all like a world that has no war. But if we live in a world pretending that there is none of that, and then we're not prepared for it, that sets us up worse. And I think whether you look at that on the macro of war, or you look at on the micro of anxiety or stress or pressure, if we pretend that stress doesn't exist, it doesn't make it go away, it doesn't make it better, but being prepared for it actually allows us to potentially avoid it, potentially navigate it with more integrity and authenticity. And today I feel like when you don't have codes for difficult things in society, you see people make really bad mistakes. You see people not having a code book or a rule book on leadership, and that's what

it leads to. You see people not having a code book or rule book on how to navigate war, and therefore people do what they feel like. And so I find that what the Vators were trying to do was give you a set of code and a set of rules and a set of limits so that you would be more controlled, more greedless, more negative desire less in those situations so that you wouldn't be

pulled into something by your ego, but you could actually go back to something that would help you get the best result for people and humanity. And I think that's what's so special about the Vedas that ultimately it's dedicated to uplifting humanity through each of these different things that we experience in life.

It was really interesting to hear you talk about the part in I think it was in the Vedas, about the guy who's prepared for war and you're talking about even good people, have to learn how to fight, found that really interesting. But the book starts with solitude. Why solitude? Because that was a part where I was like, okay, here's where the monk part is coming into this. And I think it's pretty important for people to be able to be alone before they try to get into a relationship. Yeah, I think we've created this feeling in society where loneliness is the enemy.

Like being alone is seen as a weakness. So when someone goes to school and throws a birthday party and not many people show up, you're unpopular. Whereas if lots of people showed up, you were really important. You were significant. Be brutal. I can think of few things that would be more devastating to a kid

than no one showing up to your birthday party. Exactly. And that's how it's framed. That's how it's talked about. And then the next thing is like, it's... Would you tell your kids if they went to have a birthday party and nobody showed up Jay, would you really be like, hey, solitude is a good thing? Like, how would you...

Well, I'm not that. So, I can't say, but what I would say is that I would change it in the invite process. So I would ask them to only invite people that they felt really connected to or they felt they've really vibed with and wanted to celebrate their birthday with. So I think the challenge is when you're a kid, you also hand out way too many invites. So I think that's what ends up happening is that you think a good birthday party is a packed room.

And even, I mean, people still fill that till they're 50, 60, 70. Like that is not what I'm talking about. Until they're dead. Like you feel a good birthday party or a good event. Even when people say like, when I die, like, if there's loads of people there, that will be a thing. I think we've just programmed ourselves to believe that if we're not surrounded by people, we can't celebrate and we can't be celebrated.

It has to be about scale of how many people are there. And I would say that's one measurement, but the other measurement is the depth of how well they know you. I know tons of people who threw a great birthday party at 50, 500 people showed up and they feel, actually, I went to a birthday party this year, it was a big birthday party. And I was speaking to the person whose party it was, and they were like, so many people invited people, I didn't know to my birthday party,

and they felt lonely at their own birthday party. I don't want, if I have our kids, I want them to feel that. And even for myself, I don't want to be in that position. I'd rather have, I saw this thing on Instagram, and it was someone that posted like, it was like a 10, this is in British currency, it was like 10 pence and then one pound.

And so 10 pence is larger circumference than the pound, but the pound is greater in value. And so the caption on Instagram said that my circle is shrunken size, but is increased in value. And I was thinking that that to me resembles the kind of life I would want for myself and for my children if I had them. But if I could have both, that would be amazing, obviously, but I don't know how real it is

to be able to say we can have both. So I think what I'm trying to say with solitude is that if there isn't a sense that I am happy with myself, with my own company, with the thoughts that circle around in my mind, imagine how complex that is when you add another confused individual who's not happy with their thoughts, not happy with who they are, not happy with their mind. And now in a relationship, you're putting two confused people together. Why is there pain? Why is there fallout?

Why is there so much disappointment in a relationship? In my opinion, and from the perspective of the Eastern Studies, is that because there's an internal dissatisfaction in both people that they're now bringing to each other. And so the strength of solitude is using that time, I've still not found a better solution for self-awareness than solitude. Because in solitude, it's the only place you get to hear your own voice and make sense of other people's opinions.

If I'm standing in the middle of a group of 100 people and they're all yelling their opinions at me, chances are some of them are going to rub off, some of them are contagious, some of them I'm going to reject, and I don't get the space and time to make sense of what's my voice and what's noise. Whereas when I get time to myself, I get the opportunity to reflect on an introspect and go, do I want that thought to be mine? How does that fit into my life? How do I feel about this? Right? You get to have that dialogue with yourself and I feel we've lost the art of self-talk and self-dialogue.

Well, let's go into it. So what is that art? Like the, if you put a human being in solitary confinement, you will break them in a deep and fundamental and scary way that I wouldn't have predicted. That seems very weird to me. I know it to be true, not because I've experienced it, but because you just hear it over and over and over and over. Like if you really wanted to destroy the human spirit, isolate them. So how is it that we take this thing that will

on a long enough timeline absolutely decimate you and make it something that becomes the most profound setup for self-awareness? What do you have to do in that solitude? Yeah, so the first thing I'd say is that it would decimate you if you go and do it 24 hours a day. And that's not what we're recommending here. I'm not telling someone to 24 hours be in solitude for a year, like that's not my recommendation. My recommendation is, in your week, there has to be at least one hour that you spend by yourself.

And in that hour, you're not watching a show, you're not reading a book, you're not reading a book, you're not on your phone scrolling, so you're not distracting yourself with anything or stimulating yourself with anything external and you're sitting there and just observing your thoughts. Now one hour is going to seem like a long time in the beginning but I'm saying one hour would be great in a week. If you're starting about 10 minutes, That's brilliant. That's enough. But the goal is- Is it enough? Like are you being kind? Are you trying to let people off the hook?

Are you worried about people flaming you in the comments? Like you meditate two hours a day on that mistake? Yes. So what should people do for real? I do believe that 10 minutes is a good place to start because I do feel that- You shouldn't stay there. You shouldn't stay at 10 minutes. It should grow. I think I look at it as like when you do a cold plunge, right? For the first time. So the first time I did a cold plunge, I was doing it with a friend and they were, they'd been already doing it for a long time

and I didn't want to walk on, like I couldn't do it. And so I stayed in there. James and Hypo thermia. Yeah, literally. So I stayed in there for longer than I wanted to the first time I did it. So if I did it myself the first time, I think I would have been there for that. Second, the first time I did it for five minutes

because I was in there with someone who was in this. We're fully somewhat five minutes. It was great. Fully some of us up to here, right? I'm not fully some of us. And so when I look at that, and I look at something that I found challenging when I did it, I was like,

if someone who told me I had to be in there for 10 minutes the first time I did it, I potentially like if someone who told me I had to be in there for 10 minutes the first time I did it, I potentially would never have got in, right? And the idea that I could have started with 30 seconds and built myself up to three minutes and then built myself up to five minutes, I really do like that process. And I think you have to, and this is self-awareness again, you have to know whether you're someone who likes to be thrown in the deep end or whether you're someone who likes to build up incrementally. I'm generally someone who jumps into the deep end, or whether you're someone who likes to build up incrementally. I'm generally someone who jumps into the deep end, so I was pushed in for five minutes,

and that works for me, because for me, I'm the kind of person who needs to be pushed off to break the mental barrier, to then go back and build a habit. That's myself awareness. I became a monk in order to learn these things. I'm an extreme person, that's how I learn and build habits. But someone else goes to me, actually,

Jay, I like meditating for five minutes a day, and it works for me, and now I have confidence. I can do 10 minutes a day, I can do 15, and I love that. So I don't think it's an either way, genuinely don't. That's not a cop-out. I think you have to know who you are. And so if I want to learn something, I'll schedule the whole weekend.

If I wanted to learn archery, I would set up archery classes for eight hours a day all weekend. I wouldn't learn it by doing archery once a week because I want to figure out whether I'm deeply interested and care about this enough to actually commit to it weekly. But that's my mindset, that's who I am. So I think the first thing that says, 10 minutes alone every week where you sit and you just observe your thoughts and write down every thought that comes up. This is weird. I hate this, it's boring. Oh, I can't believe Jane Tom told me to do this, right? Like whatever else is coming up and write it down and just become comfortable becoming aware of your thoughts. And what

you find is that the first time you do this, it is just gonna be random noise like that. What shall I eat tonight? What's going on? It's just gonna be that stuff. It might be, I hate this, I'm uncomfortable. This is not fun, I'm bored. Like it will just be natural dialogue like that.

What you'll find is the next time you do it, or the next, after a couple of times that you do it, you now might start asking interesting questions. You might now start noticing a pattern of thoughts that repeats itself. Like, I've just been thinking for a week about what that person said to me about how I look, or I've been thinking about what that person said to me about something I did online, like, and it's just been in my mind and it keeps repeating itself. Now you're going to start to find what you spend most your time on. So study show, we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day and 80% of them are negative and 80% of them are

repetitive. So if our life is not transforming our thoughts, now if I asked you what are you thinking about, you're a self-aware person, I'm pretty sure you could tell me on any given moment what you're thinking about. You ask most people what they're thinking about. The reaction will be in emotion, like I'm just stressed about too much on at the moment, but we can't be really clear. So what this is giving you is a clarity of what are those repeating negative thoughts and how do we want to change them? So that's step one is A, even becoming aware of the thoughts. So if I ask an average person, when you wake up in the morning, what's the first thought you had? Oh, I'm tired. That's the first thought for most people. You finally made it to coffee. You had your morning coffee and you think, God, I hope this coffee gets through me through

the day because I'm so tired. Second time you've had the thought, you get to lunch time, you're like, God, is it only lunch time? Like, and I can't even eat lunch because I'm busy working. God, I'm so tired. You get to 6 p.m. maybe you've got to work an extra hour because no one finishes work at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. you finish your good. I'm exhausted. I can't wait to get home. You get home and somehow at 11.37 p.m. you get the courage to watch another episode. And you repeat the cycle, right?

That's a six thoughts in the same day. As people get that awareness, so what do you want them to do with it? Or that's not the right. What do you want them to do with it? Or that's not the right. What is the effective thing to do with it? If you're trying to better yourself in whatever, whether it's love or something else,

but if you're trying to make progress and not just document, where do you go with that? Yeah, so we wanna disrupt that algorithm, right? That pattern that's been developed. Just stop thinking negative. No, so we're not gonna do that. What we're gonna do is we're gonna say, I am tired, we're gonna take that thought, we're gonna to do is we're going to say, I am tired. We're going to take that thought. We're going to accept it. We're okay with

that. We're good with that. And I'm going to sleep early tonight. So it's I'm accepting the thought that I'm feeling. I'm not going to wake up and never feel I'm tired. I mean, I wake up and feel I'm tired sometimes. But I literally got I'm tired. I'm going to cancel my plans for the weekend. I've done that so many times where I've had the busiest week at work. I'm tired, I can feel that I'm stressed, I'm even getting a bit snappy with my wife, like I can feel all those things, and I look at my weekend and my weekend is decked with social events.

And I go to Radeon, like, I'm about to cancel everything this weekend because I don't think I have the resilience to get through. But if I didn't give myself that and all I keep saying all week is I'm tired, then I guess the weekend, my friends are coming and I'm like, God, I wish they weren't coming today. Then they leave and I'm like,

I got them so relieved that they left. I wish they would have left they earlier, right? It's like all negativity is brewing. And so what I'm saying is accept the feeling and what are you gonna do about it? Yeah, that's the question I was asking myself is, and now what? And now what? This was asking myself is, and now what? And now what?

This bad thing has happened, and now what? And if this, then that, like, if I get tired during the week, then I will cancel my plans on the weekend. If I have weekend plans that are really important, I'll sleep early on the weeknight so that I'm ready for it. So like this week I'm with you,

I've got something every night this week, every night there's an event. So I know that this weekend needs to be restful. I just gave myself permission to do nothing for four days. It's beautiful because my other days have been so busy. But if I'm not having time to structure and think about these things, you're literally running from one thing to another.

So I feel like people are chasing peace. People are chasing peace, not realizing that when they slow and still and make that space, they then learn how to find peace. So people are looking for peace in the meditation. That's not how it works. The meditation creates the space for you to figure out how to create peace in your life. That's where the peace is. That's interesting. So my experience with meditation is that is where I get literal peace. Yeah. So I started meditating because I was going through really stressful period of my life years ago. And it was just misery at a physical level. And so I thought I've got to find

some way to de-escalate my stress and anxiety. I've been told a thousand times why people to meditate. Let me actually try this. So I try it and at a physiological level, it just lowered my stress and my anxiety. And I was like, this is amazing. I've since tried to get, like my wife, for instance, to use it, it doesn't hit her in the same way that it hit me.

But the piece came for me in breathing from my diaphragm. It was so physiological. And it's the older I get, the more content I create, the more I realize that I'm all tactics. Like I just know how to translate the airy stuff into end-go-do-this. Yeah. And so I'm curious, do you, if you just sat and meditative,

you're saying that's not gonna bring you peace. You have to solve this riddle of all these pieces bouncing around in your mouth. I'll take back the categoric way I said that. So I guess what I was leaning towards is I'm not saying that meditating itself can't be a peaceful experience, but I feel a lot of people who have stressed out busy lives are just looking for a break from it. And it can provide that, but sometimes it can't, because you're too stressed and busy, and a lot of the times a healthy way of using meditation

is to make sense of stuff so that you can go back to your life and apply it. So for some people, it is peace, and that's fair, and I agree, I do find peace in meditation. But for some people, it's giving them that break and that gap between experience and reaction. It's giving them that gap between stress and struggle that allows them to reorient themselves and say, this is what I need to switch, this is what I need to move. And I feel maybe you're someone that does that anyway and does that naturally. And then meditation can become just what it is and give you that piece. But I feel that for a lot of people just sitting there with their thoughts is stressful, just observing their path. Because they don't know what to do with it.

I think first of all there's a big fear around it, right? It's just with scared. I don't understand that at all. What are people scared of? Well, I mean, it's the same way of saying like why if you were scared of sitting in cold water, right? Like, it's, I get because it sucks. It does. But, but so what I'm saying is people that I've talked to you struggle with, they thought make those things equal because they don't know what to do with them.

Like the cold thing, it's eat so look, I'm going to have a massive physiological response. Yeah. Not fun. I'm doing it for reasons. So I do it. I can stop doing it at any time. Yeah. But a thought doesn't have to be painful in the way that cold exposure, like even Wim Hof says, I don't like being cold.

I do it because it serves a purpose. But even he says that the loss of love was more painful than any of the cold he's been through, right? Like that thought of losing someone you love is far greater than the pain of sitting in, which is what it's like. Do you think that's like the background thing that's really messing with people?

Yeah, like I feel like I was even talking to Amar from yesterday. I don't know if you've, have you ever had them? I know yesterday, but I've never. Yeah, so they do loads of crazy stuff too, right? And they've gone, and so I was talking to Amar, who's one of the yesterday, guys, they're awesome guys. And he was saying to me that, so this is really fascinating. And I love what we're going with this by the way. And please

keep going because this I could only have this conversation with you. So I'm very happy right now. The thing about what Amar was saying is that he said the whole point of yes theory was saying yes to crazy stuff that we wouldn't say yes to. And that's how it started. And he goes, we got to a point we're saying yes to crazy stuff was not difficult anymore. So now when we said yes to doing something crazy next year, we actually didn't find that uncomfortable. And yes, it was all about seeking discomfort. So he goes, we realized we were just seeking comfort.

Doing something bigger every time was just more and more comfortable. And he goes, actually, what's most uncomfortable for me right now is to sit alone with my thoughts every day for 15 minutes and meditate. And he said this to me and I was like, wow, like it was so profound. So yes, let's go down. Well, that down to one.

Yeah, what is that? I'm going to give you my hypothesis. Yes, and I'm like, people are afraid that they, people don't respect themselves or their self-respect is fragile. And being alone with their thoughts is just going to be intrusive and they're going to lose more respect. I guess because that would be, that was the thing that I struggled with in the beginning

and I've spent my entire life making sure that I can be alone because I always tell people the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So the only thing I can think is when people are alone, they don't feel good about who they are and so they seek distraction. That's it. I mean, it's as simple as that. Literally it's like, I'll give a study and then I'll specifically speak to that point. Like, men and women were asked to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes or give themselves an electric shock. I know where this is going. They did this experiment. 30% of women chose an electric shock. Wow.

And 60% of men chose an electric shock. Oh, wow. I had that backwards. I know what it gets to the other way. And when asked why, they said because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts, because we're skipping our thoughts. Now, your hypothesis is accurate.

I would agree with it. I think the biggest thing is that when we're left alone to ourselves, we hear things that we may not be comfortable with. I don't like where my life is going. I'm not happy with how I look. Everyone else is doing better than me. Oh, they just got proposed to and I'm still alone. All those thoughts get space to actually be heard, whereas when

you're scrolling it's like, oh they got proposed. Oh, keep money. Oh, like you're not even listening. You're scrolling a thought. That's literally, we're scrolling away thoughts. And that gives us a sense of comfort that we don't spend longer than three seconds on a thought. But then when you're asked to spend three minutes or more on a tour, that tour gets to grow and build and become scarier and bigger, almost like a monster that unknown of it, right? It's like, I think that what people are most scared of is they've been trained to numb themselves. We live in a society that knows how to numb emotions and numb feelings, right? I don't, I'm so upset about something, I'm going to go and drink alcohol to numb that feeling,

to not experience that feeling. I, I messed up at something, I'm going to go and gamble away my money to numb the feeling that I thought. I'm going to go and watch something on TV because I just want to numb how I feel right now. Now, I'm not saying that I don't do any because I just want to numb how I feel right now. Now I'm not saying that I don't do any of those things to numb a feeling when it's really painful or that we shouldn't ever numb a feeling at all, but our goal is we just want to numb things away.

And I don't think that that's why sitting with your thoughts for 15 minutes is really hard because there's nothing to numb it. There is nothing that will numb it. And even sitting in the cold, nothing numbs that apart from your own centeredness and breathing. You have to go to that. And I think that's why sitting alone with your thoughts is such a powerful practice. Because what you're saying, if you want to be happy, being happy about yourself, when you're by yourself, that requires you to not numb anything about yourself yourself because that's the full acceptance. So interesting. So I've been thinking a lot recently about distraction. Why distraction exists? Because I think it actually serves a pretty powerful

purpose if we didn't have the ability. So there's a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which is known as the gear shift in the brain. And for people that have obsessive thinking, they get stuck and the basal ganglia is not able to let them pass that thought into another thought. Now I think one of my superpowers is my gearbox is amazing. And to the point where it almost becomes problematic, because I can all forget about something that I was obsessed with thinking about, ah, because my gearbox just like goes into the next thing. And so that has shown me that I can very easily get myself

out of a loop. If I'm on something that's super negative, I can get out of that. But for somebody who can't, you need that external distraction and doom scrolling. Like there was one period in my life where I was so, I had so much going on that even the thought of meditating was just like, well, then everything

is going to come crashing down. And I was like, but I know better than to not meditate. So I need some sort of primer to soothe me enough to get me into meditation. And it was actually doom scrolling cats, not just cats, but like things like that where it's like cute, funny 15 seconds to digest the idea and then you move on to the next. And I trained my YouTube algorithm to own on shorts to only show me like cute fun things. And I would do that for like seven minutes and then I would go meditate. I was like, wow, that is freakishly effective.

So you have to wall things off because if you doom scroll for seven hours, you now never get anywhere. But if you don't understand how powerful distraction can be, enough to get you to the point where now you can take advantage of something like meditation, which is going to leave you alone with your thoughts. It's really, really fascinating. Yeah, I love what you just said about distraction. I've always allowed myself five minutes an hour to be random. And I often have, I've either do a timer on my phone, where at one point I was really into like hour glasses or minute glasses and I would just turn it over.

And then I'd have- What do you do in that time? So I would allow myself to scroll, I would allow myself to search random stuff on YouTube, I'd allow myself, so it's giving myself the capacity to be random. And what I find in randomness is that you connect really interesting dots. Yeah, that's why I like meditation. Yeah, exactly. And so I find like in space where I don't know what I'm going to type in or I'd pick up

a random book for myself or I would find a random thing that I'm scrolling through, but allowing myself to do that for five minutes every hour allowed my mind to have that space to have that gap to connect dots, but then return back. And but that's us using distraction rather than just letting it be there, right? And I think when distraction controls you and drives you and everyone knows what it feels like to be on a rabbit hole, where you end up on some random website or some random YouTube channel, everyone's been there. That's not a good feeling.

Like, I don't think I want that feeling where I end up somewhere seven hours later, where at seven minutes of randomness is really healthy and beautiful and can be amazing. And so why can't seven minutes of stillness, why can't seven minutes of listening to sounds or ambient noises or nature sounds, right? I think there's also a sense of, I think it's reconnecting with our breath. There's an amazing study I talk about in the book about how when we spend time with people that we're close to or care give us or people that love us, our breath and even our heartbeat can synchronize with that. Dude, that is so weird to me.

It's so strange, right? Dude, humans sink up to each other. The one that freaks me out the most is that women will sink their periods and they all sink to the dominant female. That stuff gets super crazy. Super crazy. Wow, yeah. Super crazy.

Yeah, I'm just doing my wife and a sister all the time, but yeah, I didn't know which way I had to do this. Yeah, yeah, so that's the next question. So fascinating. Yeah, so walk me through okay, so we get self-awareness. So we're, I love that you started the book with solitude. So we stop being afraid of our thoughts because we're doing the, and now what? So we have this saying, it's overwhelming,

it's freaking us out. We're gonna deal with it, which I love that. And now in the context of becoming, in fact, here's a thing that either you're gonna be like 100% or this will be where we debate. I think if you want to be in a relationship, you must be worthy of a relationship. Now, I'm going to push it even farther and make Jay Shuddy the month a little uncomfortable, maybe.

The ultimate way to think about it is you are asking somebody to have sex with you, and that's crazy. It is the weirdest sort of energetic thing that we do. Like, I think about this a lot. I love this. With Lisa, I went from high, my name is Tom to exposing my genitals and doing what one does. It's like, that's a big chasm to cross. And if you're going to ask somebody to go on that journey in a way where there is excited as you are and you don't end up in jail,

you have to be somebody that's worthy of that. And that's a big ask. Yeah. So one, does that resonate? Or do you think I'm out of my mind? you have to be somebody that's worthy of that. And that's a big ask. So one, does that resonate, or do you think I'm out of my mind? And if it resonates, how do people become worthy? Well, that's very monkish of you. I mean, you've put sex on a very sacred high value.

Facts. Right? Right? In fact, when you said it earlier about loneliness, I was like, I've actually been, the loneliest I've ever been was in the middle of intercourse, which is a crazy thought. Like I couldn't be anymore with the person and because there was no emotional connection, I felt so alone.

Yeah, it's crazy. I'm so glad you brought that up though, right? Like that's what we understand about loneliness now. That loneliness isn't about the number of people around you. It isn't about how popular you are. It doesn't matter how many people are surrounded by you. If you don't feel understood, if you don't feel seen, if you don't feel heard, you're lonely, right?

Like that's what it is. And so when you're saying, I'm having sex with someone, and I still feel lonely, that's real. But you, from your definition of just how you broke that arm, you're placing sex as a swingly sacred, as a high value. There could be lots of people listening or watching or maybe people that we don't even that aren't in this community that would actually disagree and they'd just be like well, sex is a sex like what they don't see it that way, right? The way you see it is probably more aligned with the Vedas than the other perspective for sure.

The idea that if you're about to do anything intimate with anyone, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, the amount of exchange of, we just talked about exchanging heartbeats and breathing. I mean, if you think about how biologically affected you are by a relationship, let alone how emotionally and then spiritually affected you are by a relationship and how much karma you share from a spiritual level, how much energy and vibration you share from a spiritual level, how much energy

and vibration you share on a spiritual level. You're talking about like completely syncing up or destroying your synergy with someone. And so I would say I agree with you. I don't think you're crazy at all. I think you're spot on. Staying in an Airbnb has been a game changer for me. I tried it on my recent trip and I found a perfect spot that was far away from tourist

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forward slash host. Something about Mary Poppins? Something about Mary Poppins. Exactly. Oh man, this is fun. I'm AJ Jacobs and I am an author and a journalist and I tend to get obsessed with stuff. And my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my new podcast, The Puzzler Dressing. Dressing.

Oh, Fritz dressing. Exactly. Oh, that's good cool. Oh, French dressing. Exactly. That's good. That's good. We are living in the golden age of puzzles. And now you can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears for 10 minutes or less. Every day on the puzzler, short and sweet. I thought to myself, I bet I know what this is.

And now I definitely know what this is. This is so weird. This is fun. Let's try this one. Listen to the puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's awful, and I should have seen it coming. So how do you become worthy? So I think that I mean, I don't think you have

to complete solitude in order to move on. And so in the book, I break down the four things of the Vedas, break down, which is preparing for love, which is solitude, practicing love, which is in a relationship, right? The third is like preserving love because they are protecting love because There's a part of us when we're burnt through love that loses the belief in love or Or changes, so there's a protection of love that comes at phase three and phase four is what I call perfecting love And so if those are the four phases solitude is the one preparing love. And you have to do a lot of that becoming worthy in solitude because we're saying something here that I think we're on the same page, the idea that if you walk into a relationship

and you don't know who you are, you don't know what you need or what you want and what you're building and what you're creating, you're basically going to hope that the other person is going to answer all those questions for you, or you're going to outsource that inadequacy to them to make you feel worthy. So that's why we walk into a relationship and we accept the currency of attention as love. We accept the currency of validation as love. Do that's big in a social media culture. Right. of validation as love. Do that's big in a social media culture. Right, we accept the currency of attention, validation,

compliments, comfort, random niceness. We accept all of that as love because we ourselves haven't defined and experienced what love looks like on our own. So how you become worthy of another person is first becoming worthy for yourself. And what does it mean to be worthy for yourself? To me, it's doing hard things alone. When you've done hard things alone

and you've grown through them, and when I say alone, I don't mean without your family, or without friends. I just mean when you've broken through some of your own barriers, that gives you a healthier sense of self-esteem and self-worth. I think self-worth doesn't come from saying affirmations in a mirror.

It doesn't come from just pretending to be happy. It doesn't come from being positive. Your greatest self-worth is going to come from breaking through stuff that you didn't think you could break through. Do people expect you to say just look yourself in the mirror and say, I love myself? Yeah, I think people sometimes project their own belief of, like the word self-love, right? So there is a form of self-love,

like I love going to spa as I love getting massages. So I'm into that form of self-love. But I see that as more self-care. I see that as like caring for myself and things like that. When I think of self-love, I'm just telling myself, I love myself, I've tried all of those things, and I've seen how they are not possible when I haven't done some other work.

Right? Like, me looking in the mirror and just saying, I'm amazing, I'm wonderful. If I haven't done something amazing that day, or done something wonderful that day, I don't believe myself, right? And that's the problem people have. They're like, I don't believe it. Now there's two sides to it.

I actually believe a lot of people have done hard things, but they don't give themselves credit for it. Very positive. So there's a big group of people. My mom included, I interviewed my mom recently, not on the podcast I want to, but I did what I'm happy I did. I interviewed her at a dinner, just me and her her because I really wanted to get to know her story

But I realized it. I didn't feel I'm getting out of there was a dinner. I didn't because my father and I recorded it It was awesome. You should know that no I would love that knowing the background of the father And do that's interesting. We should ask Lisa because it was dope like that guy's story is crazy Yeah, unbelievable and that's what I'm saying. We don't even know the people closest to us, right? It's a love, again, anyway. But that's all another thing. But I said it with my mom, I asked her questions

like I would ask on the podcast. And I was talking to her and she was telling me that it's at like 15 years old, I think. 15, 16 years old. She was born and raised in Yemen. Oh, wow. And she says, yeah, was born and raised in Yemen. Oh, wow. And she said, yeah, so she's living in Yemen. Yemen are trying, and it was called Aiden at the time.

They're trying to, the Brits who have colonized the country are fighting against the Yemeni soldiers, and she's studying for her exams while there's gunmen on her rooftop. Wow. Like that's her story. And I'm like, mom, like you've never told me, how bad this was. You just told me you left Yemen because of the war and moved to England. Like that's her story. And I'm like, mom, like you've never told me how bad this

was. You just told me you left Yemen because of the war and moved to England. Like that's the story I know. And all of a sudden, I'm discovering that you are actually studying for an exam while there's people with guns on your roof defending and you're in the middle of all of that. And you're 15 years old. And she never told me that. I was thinking, she's done hard things. Like, and she doesn't, she doesn't even see it that way because to her it's normal. Yeah. Interesting. Do you think she thinks it's normal or do people confuse enduring, which is extraordinary with, oh, but I didn't actively choose it. And therefore I completely discount

it. Totally. Well, at least for my mom, I can say that she just sees it as her life. She doesn't see it as like hard or easy or that that's her kind of way she she sees stuff. It's kind of how I feel sometimes when I talk about my monk experience, it's very normal to me. Like there's a part in I chose to do it. There's a part in there's just like it's normal. And people are like, that's crazy. Like why would you ever become a monk after school? It's so bizarre. But to me, it's not that bizarre. And so it takes me a minute to be like,

oh, wait a minute, it is pretty crazy, right? Like, not many people do that. But I don't sit in that thought that often. And so I think there's, I think what I'm saying is that this becoming worthy is breaking through some of your own barriers and limits, whatever they may be, which is what you discover in the solitude. And the more you break through those, the more you feel worthy for anything and everything,

because you go, wow, I've done some really tough stuff on my own. I've like really pushed myself in this way. I've really tried something new. And now you're not looking for that person to fill your worthiness. You're not looking for that person to say, you're amazing and you're the best and you're incredible, because you've experienced your strength, right? When you've experienced your strength, no one can make you feel weak. The right person will only make you feel stronger, right? And that's the key. When you've already done hard things, the people around you will only make you feel stronger. That's why, you know, they're great to be in your life, because they're not making you feel strong.

They're making you feel stronger. Whereas what we often find is that, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. They're not making you feel strong. They're making you feel stronger. Correct. So I'm saying, so even in a positive relationship with us, like when I'm around you, right?

And we have a healthy relationship. We know each other a fair bit. It's like, I consider myself to be self-aware and self-confident and have a high degree of self-worth. Totally open about it. I have no issues. No reasonable person will push back on that. Yeah, no issues with it whatsoever. And I feel that the people I like to be in my life are not people who I'm looking to support that or do that, but they're able to help me discover more about myself.

So there's a sign of strength. So I had a client I was coaching with last year, and he did this for me, and it was really powerful. And I was like, I only like working with clients who also I learned from, so I have a selfish motive there, but it's special. He said, I never met someone who ties up spirituality, business, and practicality in one person like you do it.

And I'm not saying that to self-promote, I'm saying that because he gave me permission to be all three. And that made me stronger. I'll second that. And it was just really powerful. I felt so like freed by that statement to be all three because it made me stronger. I know I am in those things, but that person made me stronger. That's what I'm saying that you gravitate towards when you already have a sense of self-worth.

Whereas when you don't have a sense of self-worth, you look for the person who's saying, oh, you're really good at that. Oh, like, maybe you should work like you're looking for someone to like make you feel better about yourself from zero. Whereas you're already at a 10 and someone's like finding new ways of showing you more of yourself, that's something beautiful about that. Agreed. I don't even know if I'm articulate and clearly, but very clearly from my perspective. So I think that there is a biological imperative hardwired into the brain that you must do hard things in order to feel good about yourself. And when I think about it from an evolutionary standpoint,

and this is why I think rich kids implode, which has never had to do hard things. From an evolutionary perspective, I think it was just so hard to stay alive, like, for millions of years, it really was red in tooth and clot. Like, to stay alive, you were killed or be killed, you were hunting, gathering, fighting other tribes, I'm just crazy. And the people that we're going to survive, we're going to be the ones that got an emotional a self-applied emotional reward for doing something hard.

And when you do something hard and you recognize it, it needs to feel good. And if it does, and you will keep doing hard things, and you're the far more likely to survive than the person who's like, that sucked. There was no redeeming qualities. And so it's just like, when I think about that, because if I were to create a recipe for fulfillment, it's very simple. It's working really hard, doing hard things to gain a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself, but others. That's it. That's the whole recipe. But it really has to be that you had to do something hard. If it came easily to you, it won't give you the sense of respect that you want. The stuff that I've gotten more easily in my life, I don't

take a lot of pride in. It's always the stuff that I grind out through pain and suffering, and I endure. In fact, I want to read you a quote. This is one of my all-time favorite quotes. To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities. I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt,

the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished. I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not. That one endures. Ah, I'm the chills, that was Nietzsche. Dude, that is so cruel.

I definitely come, I'm not going to... So good. ...like and subscribe. I, I'm so good. Like and subscribe. I think it, I get the sentiment. I would not wish on anyone. That's amazing. So pushback is hard as you can because I love this. So if you agree, in fact, where, where does it break down?

Because this is why I don't have kids. That is what people need, in my opinion. And I can't do it. I can't do kids. That is what people need, in my opinion. And I can't do it. I can't do it. Yeah. Well, that's where we disagree, right? I guess in like, I get the intention and the spirit of it. But do you think to be a better person if they avoid it?

I don't think you have to, I feel like for most people, for most people, life is already hard in some area. I don't think there's many people I know, at least where I grow up as well. for most people, life is already hard in some area. I don't think there's many people I know, at least where I grew up as well. But does it make them better or worse? Well, I don't think they have the tools,

which is why we have dedicated what we're doing to that, right? Like I don't think that when I look at the people I grew up around or the areas I grew up in, and it wasn't the worst, it wasn't the best. I've been to Wood Green. Yeah, it's not lovely. It's not lovely, right? It's not, yeah, you've been there, of course.

Yeah, it's not nice. It's not lovely, right? It's not. Yeah, you've been there, of course. Yeah, it's not nice. And people made bad choices because they didn't have good role models, right? Like people made bad choices because they didn't have good tools. They didn't make bad choices because of just where they were. It's because they didn't have access. Today, we have access. And that's what we're trying to do, I feel, with our work, because I look at myself and

I can clearly, if I, with our work. Because I look at myself and I could clearly, if I, what's that called, sliding doors, if I envisioned like where my life could have been, if I didn't take a few steps, I could easily have been today addicted to some drug, getting involved in things that were highly violent and finding myself validation through gang culture. Like I could have so ended up there.

Like I literally could point point three decisions that could have totally took my life in that direction and and no one would know who I am today and I'd be a very different person. Not because I'm a bad person or because I'm attracted to any of those things, just because I didn't have access. I got lucky and I see that. The access that I got to the monks at an early age just transformed the trajectory of my life. But most people don't meet someone random. We follow the same people on Instagram. We follow the same people on YouTube. We all watch the same

stuff. We listen to the same stuff. How many people in there last seven days could be honest and say they heard from a random voice that was unexpected, or they saw a random person that they didn't know that sparked a new journey in their life. That's how random it was for me to meet a monk. I didn't grow up religious. I wasn't around monks. I didn't go religiously to meet monks. I met someone who completely sparked a different thought when you're sitting down with trauma experts. when I'm sitting down with neuroscientists like I didn't grow up with neuroscientists like who is speaking to those people. So I feel, yeah, I just feel like with that, oh, but going back to that statement, I wouldn't wish pain on anyone because I feel that life is already hard. I would just wish

that people opened up their hearts and minds to the tools that would help them deal with that hardship better and not try and rely on what they currently have in their toolkit. That would be my wish. It would be my wish. It's my wish. Right. The only way I can like and subscribe to that thing is if we modify slightly and say I wish that people could develop a profound sense of self-worth and avoid all of that, but I don't think they can. I don't think I can. And so this may be a cruel twist of evolution. Like, I want to be very clear.

I'm not saying I'm glad it is this way. I'm just saying, I think it is this way. Now, my beef with the idea of I wish that these horrible things upon people, is that it breaks most of the people that it touches. But I don't think people can become a version of themselves that they'll be proud of unless they go through that stuff.

And I think the compassionate monk in me can't wish that on someone in that way. And you could argue that real compassion is letting the right thing happen to someone that they need to go through. I just don't think, and that is what we're supposed to do. Oh, that's interesting. So here was my catch with one of the reasons

I didn't have kids. I knew I would intervene if something bad was happening. Now, as I get older, I feel like I might be more capable of letting it happen, but at the time, when I was sort of peak, like should we should we not? I was like, I know I will intervene. Would you intervene? It's always hard.

Are you gonna have kids? I don't know. Is there's the answer here? We don't know. We've talked about it. We're very like, we're probably on that stage. You were actually on the other side. And so we've been very open about it.

We're like, we don't know. And partly it's these kind of things. Partly it's how it affects service and impact. There's so many things, right? There's so many facets to that question of... So let's say, Dar, who has two children, your co-host on your show, Dar and Jay, for those that aren't liking and subscribing yet.

Would you want them to intervene? When I saw, so I saw a couple of parents that I was friends with a few years back. would you want them to intervene? When I saw, so I saw a couple of parents that I was friends with a few years back. And I remember that their two-year-old was like putting our hands through a candle like on the other side of the room. So we were all hanging out here, the two-year-old was running around,

and the two-year-old's on the other side of the candle, and they're doing that. And my natural instinct at the time, this is probably like, maybe like eight years ago And my natural instinct at the time, this is probably like, maybe like eight years ago, my natural instinct was to go and be like, help that kid. And I'm always mindful of other people's kids too,

because I just feel like something, and I was about to jump up and help her. And they were like, now that I leave it, she's fine. She'll, if it hurts there, she'll know, next time not to touch that, and let her learn by herself. And I was like, wow, that's really impressive. Like, I'm scared your kids gonna burn their hand. And then you're really, now I'm not to touch that and let her learn by herself. And I was like, wow, that's really impressive. Like, I'm scared your kids are going to burn their hand. And then you're really, now I'm not recommending either or my friends are great parents and

they're very loving and that's the challenge today, right? Like a lot of people will be like, oh my god, they don't care about their kids. Like, I think they do care about their kids. I think they're really great parents, but them allowing them their child to do this. I would then see pictures of them. They moved into the countryside and stuff, and their kid would just be like out, like swinging on trees, like climbing stuff

and falling over, and they were so comfortable with that because they had that mindset that there should be an openness. Now, I think there's that openness, but then this intervening when it gets really painful, like what if your child gets involved in drugs? Are you not gonna intervene? Like are you involved in drugs? Are you not gonna intervene? Like, are you not gonna educate?

Are you not gonna, and obviously in all the right ways you'd hope would be the healthy ways of intervening. I don't think ever walking in and telling a kid to stop or don't do that is ever gonna work. But to me intervening is important at certain points where you think it's like really going off the edge of the cliff versus when you feel like it's healthy experimentation and you don't. But I'm saying this obviously in theory because I don't have to.

But when I look at it with my, the closest person I can compare it to is my sister. So my sister's 5 years younger than me. When she was born I held her in my hands and I felt like I've parented her in many ways. I call her kid. like that's my nickname for my younger sister. And if I look at my sister, I made mistakes by intervening too much sometimes. So I didn't really want her to have a job growing up

because I worked a job growing up when I was 14, and I didn't really think that I was healthy for her. And now I look back and I was like, really, that was a mistake. Like, I should have let her work. And I don't think that that was a good decision. And so that's me going, okay, well, that was a bad intervention.

And then there's other things, well, like we have a really open relationship. She tells me all that challenges, we're really good friends. She's not scared to tell me something. Like, that's the healthy part of it. And so I look at like how parenting is so tough because you look back and you're like, ah, I'm wise and now. Then you look back

and go, oh, I got that right. So I think whether it's kids or not, I guess my point is I wouldn't wish pain on someone because I think they're going through some sort of pain anyway. That's my point. I can't wish pain on someone. That's it. I hear it. What is the formula? Like if you want to be in a healthy relationship, what's the number one thing, the number one thing people get wrong? And what is the fix?

Yeah, so I'm gonna give you three. I break them each down in this book. So the three are, and the first one's simple and basic, and then it gets more complex and interesting. So the first one is you have to like their personality, you have to like their company, you enjoy being around them, you enjoy being around them for longer periods of time, which is an important experiment. Like I read a study that showed to make someone a casual connection, you have to spend

40 hours with them. For a casual connection, if you want someone to be considered a friend, it's 100 hours of time with that person. And if you consider someone a good friend, if you consider someone a good friend, a great friend, it's 200 hours plus. If you can't like someone's company for 200 hours of undistracted time, chances are you don't really like their personality. We both know people that we would love to spend a weekend with, but we wouldn't want to see them every weekend.

That's okay. Those can be great casual friendships. We both know people that we wish we could spend more time with, but we don't prioritize. They're good friends, but they're not going to be the best friends. And then we know people like our wives who we spend a considerable amount of time with disproportionately more with them than we do with any other human on the planet. And hopefully we make good decisions. We're happy about those decisions.

So when I look at it at liking, that's what I mean by liking that person's company and personality, give it some tangibility of what that means. The second thing you need, and this is where I want to be very clear about my language, because this word gets thrown a lot in relationship talk, but I don't mean it in the same way. So, the thing is you have to respect their values. And what I mean by this is, 99% of us in relationships are trying to make our partner respect our values. We want them to like what we like.

We want them to love what we love. If I'm going to watch football on the weekend, I'd love for you to come with me. If I think they're going to watch this is really important, you should be there. So we demand that our partner respects our value rather than respecting theirs. And I'll give a tangible example. So for example, Radhi's number one, and I ask a lot of couples to do this exercise if I'm working with someone. I'll ask couples to rank their top three priorities, including themselves in order. And most of the time one partner will say, you are either partner, so you would say Lisa, if you had the kids, you'd say the kids,

and then third, they'd put themself. That's a general order that people put. Now, sometimes you get a curveball where someone goes, me, you, the kids. And every time someone writes that, their partner goes, how could you put the kids third? How can the kids be third? Like how does that make any sense? And how can you be first? And it's like, well, no, because I know that, I don't wanna give you my left always, I wanna give you the best of me.

So when you look at respecting someone's value, when I look at Rade's values, Rade's number one value is family, her family. My number one value is my purpose and my service to the world. Those are not the same values. A lot of people say, you have to have the same values in a marriage. I don't subscribe to that. I don't think you have to have the same values.

I think you have to, I think if you're looking for someone with exactly the same values, you're going to take a lot longer to find that person. I don't know anyone in the world that I know that's happily married and I'd love to break it down with anyone who genuinely could say we have the same exact values. So I respect what these values, family, which means when family becomes a priority

in decision making, when family becomes a priority during the holiday season, when family becomes a topic of conversation, I'm zoned in. That's something she deeply values and cares about. If she's going to choose family over anything, I'm going to be okay with that, because she's made it very clear that's her number one value. Same back at me. If I choose purpose over anything, she knows that's going to happen. It's not a surprise. I know so many people who are trying to get their partners to change their value. And I just don't see that

happening or that person compromises their value and now feels less versions of themselves, like a less adequate version of themselves. And now you're dating the second best version of the person you love. And so that's respecting values. And the third thing is, and this is what differentiates it, is you are committed to helping them get to their goals. You're committed. I may like your goals, Tom, but we're not in love and we're not in a relationship where I'm committed to you achieving your goals.

I love you. I deeply appreciate you in the world. I think you have an amazing impact. But if someone asked me, Jay, you could feel this way about a friend, I'm not committed. I'm not actively doing something. I may support, I collaborate, I help,

but I'm not committed. Whereas with my wife, I'm committed on a daily basis going, Rady, what do you want in your life? Where are you going? What do you need? What support do you need? What can I do for you to help you get there? It's not about her helping me get to my goals.

She's thinking about that, but I'm thinking about how is that? So those are my things for a happy relationship. Those are three key things. I mean, there's so many more things I could go into, but I have to give the overview formulas. Those three things. So what trips people up are they? I'm assuming selection, if that's such a big part,

they just select the wrong person. Yeah. Why? I think people select the wrong person because they are looking for, first of all, we select the wrong person because we make so many snapped judgments off of a few basic inputs. So one of the things that the Vedic talk about

is something called the six opulences. And we've talked about this before. We talked about them in a different context, But the six opulences are fame, wealth, power, beauty, knowledge, and renunciation. Those are the six opulences. These are six things people pursue, people value, people admire, right? We can all agree with that. I love the renunciation, me the list. Like that, talk about self awareness. Yeah, it's a huge one. And so those six are the six opulences.

And what we do in relationships, which is really interesting, is when we find someone has one opulence, we ascribe them other qualities. So if someone is wealthy, we assume that they must be organized and that they'll be organized in the home. If someone is attractive, we assume that they must be organized, and that they'll be organized in the home. If someone is attractive, we assume that they'll be able to articulate themselves effectively. If someone is powerful at work,

we assume that they're really good at organizing date night. Right like this, there's these qualities we start ascribing people. And so often what happens is one opulence does this halo effect into making you believe that this person has a lot more gifts and skills and qualities, rather than through research and learning and experience, you're just giving them away to that person. And we do this in interviews, right? We all know how the halo effect works in interviews.

If you're interviewing a more attractive candidate, you're more likely to hire them. More attractive hostesses and waiters and waitresses get bigger tips. Like this is just how human psychology works, but it's very risky when you choose a life partner based on how attractive someone was for 30 seconds. And so I find that selection goes wrong because of that, because we ascribe qualities Because of one opulence rather than actually seeing those qualities. It's like me saying to you When did Lisa realize she could trust you? I'm hoping it's not day one Because trust is something that has to be proven time and time and time again Trust is something that she has to see time and time again. He said he was going to be there at this time. He turned up. He said he was going to show up for this

moment. He showed up. That's trust. Trust is not built because someone was really nice to you. And so trust is something we throw away. And I can dive into the levels of trust too. Yeah. I mean, if those are the top-notch things, let's... Yeah. So I talk about four levels of trust. This is actually a thing like a monk, but it fully connects to this book. There are four levels of trust. My belief is that whenever you meet anyone, someone new, your relationship with them should start at zero trust. Now, what we do in life is we believe that there's only two things in everything. We think everything's binary, right? Black and white, left and right.

Trust don't trust. Now is zero trust sitting at the zero point between trust and distrust? Zero is sitting at no trust beginning yes because you don't have an active like you're not looking at them suspiciously. Correct. So I'm going to get, yes, I'm gonna give it a level. So the first point being that we see trust is too binary. I have people I trust and there's people I don't trust. To me, that's too limited and it doesn't help. Because what that means is if I like someone,

I automatically trust them, which is massively unhealthy. And so what I'm saying is that zero trust is correct between distrust at the bottom and then trust higher, but there's three levels in between. So when I meet someone, especially if you're dating them, you have zero trust in them. The next step is transactional trust. Transactional trust is, I know when this person says they're going to do something, they do it. I know there's an equal exchange in the transaction. I like, if I say, I'm gonna do this work and you're gonna pay me this amount,

I know you're gonna pay me at that time. That's transactional trust. It's what you have with your employees, it's what you have with your teams, it's what you have with colleagues. We don't want this because it's not sexy. It doesn't feel like love. It feels too professional, It feels too corporate.

But really every single person has to go through these levels with you. The next stage is reciprocal trust. Where you know someone loves you and appreciates you and will do good for you, but you're not counting. You're not checking. You know it reciprocates naturally. It cycles around. This is a healthy level of trust after some time where the transactions have been proven

over and over again. Now you don't need the contract. Right? Now you don't always need to sign it. level of trust after some time where the transactions have been proven over and over again, now you don't need the contract. Right? Now you don't always need to sign it. And then the fourth stage which I believe is practically impossible is unconditional trust, which is that God-like trust that we all want in the person we end up with. The problem is we give unconditional trust away early and then we fall down those levels to zero trust and why we feel so

let down by people because it just felt like we felt down for flights of stairs. That's why breaking trust feels so deep because you gave someone level four trust when you should have started at zero and worked their way up. So let people earn your trust when you talk about being worthy, like let someone earn your trust, let someone be worthy of your trust. Don't just give it because they're nice and kind and they bought you a gift. So why do you think we have that instinct? Is it just the halo effect of you are kind to me and I'm letting that spill over in other areas? I think we just want to be loved so desperately.

We're so desperate for him because it's been put on this pedestal that this is the defining factor of success in life. Is could you find someone to love you? Because then you'd be lovable. Then you'd be worthy. Then you'd have what it takes. If you were able to convince someone to spend their life with you, then you're worthy. And we're so desperate for that,

that we will happily speed through those, instead of 200 hours, we'll tell someone we love them in two months. Because we'd rather have it, and think we lost it, than to have never found it at all. Because never having found it means we were never worthy. Whereas if we found it lost it,

even if it wasn't perfect, at least there was some part of us that was lovable. And that's why we'll stay in toxic relationships. That's why we'll settle for people who are not worthy for us. Because we'd rather feel like we're in love than actually build it. And I think that's the challenge is that we live in such a feeling world as opposed to a building creating world, which is a doing world, which is an action world. I start the book with this beautiful statement

of this conversation between a student and a teacher, often attributed to the Buddha. And so a student goes up to the Buddha and says, what is the difference between I like you and I love you? And the Buddha replies, when you like a flower, you simply pluck it and throw it away. But when you love a flower, you water it daily. And to me, that is the difference because we're so desperate to just smell that flower,

observe its beauty for a few moments, toss it away. But that person who turns up every day and waters that flower and gives it the sun and gives it the soil, no one wants to be that person, but that's love. Then you have a beautiful garden, then you have this beautiful view every day of all these flowers that you grew. And so to me, it's the desperation of the feeling of being loved is making a settle for less than. It's really interesting.

Now, you say that nobody wants to be that person because of the effort and energy. This is something that Lisa and I say a lot, and I'll be curious to see if you agree with this, I think you will, that love really isn't enough just to be super cliché for a second. That really, a relationship isn't just about love. That's one of the components, but it's going to take a lot of work. But work of the kind that you describe, watering it, making sure it has enough sun, wiping the leaves down, making sure there's no bugs on it. It's an attentiveness, investment, maybe.

And it's unsexy, right? I keep using that word too, because it's not what's been portrayed, it's not what it's meant to feel like. It doesn't look like that Pinterest board. It doesn't feel like the wedding day every day, right? The challenges that I think, I mean, I was looking at the studies, the amount of money that gets spent on weddings, it says the more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you are to divorce earlier.

Like really? Yeah, that's the trend. Like, you have a shorter wedding the more you spend on your, you have a shorter marriage, the more you spend on your wedding is what the studies show. And so when I saw that, I was just like, wow, I didn't spend that much on my wedding, thankfully, now I'm getting to the studies. But I was looking at that, and again, I'm not, again, I'm not saying that I have a big wedding,

I have a big wedding, I love big weddings, I love attending. I'm just saying that it's interesting how much, if you think about it, when you're planning a wedding, you organize a priest. The priest is there to remind you of your commitments. When you get married, who's your priest? Who's reminding you of your commitments every day?

We never think about that. When you get married, you have a guest list. The guest list is made up of people who love you and support your marriage. When you're married, how deeply do you think about the people you're surrounded by and how much they build the community of helping you flourish in your marriage? At your wedding day, you think about what you wear, what you say to that person from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, your conscious

of eating everyone of your words, maybe hopefully trying to be at least, and you'll manage that that goes out the window. So you think about the amount of, forget the money, the amount of effort that goes into planning one day. Imagine if you took all that effort and used it to plan a marriage, how successful would every marriage be,

right? It's a shift of energy. And it's a shift of mindset in saying, we spend so much time, money, energy, resources, attentiveness, your word, to plan a wedding. But there's no attentiveness to plan a marriage or a long-term relationship if you don't want to be married. Why do you think it is that if you're spending a lot of money on the wedding, that that's inversely correlated to the length of time that you stay married? Is it just messed up? Priority is what is that? I mean, I think it's hard to, I'd have to look deeper into it. I mean,

it's hard to stereotype because I guess there's so many of both, right? I'm sure there's other things that buck the trend. I think there's a part of it that you could say that the bigger the wedding or any gesture, not even wedding, any gesture, you're trying to overcompensate for trying to make this feel like it's special and important. I think sometimes people can throw their partners amazing birthday parties in order to make up for the whole year. What do you think about now? It seems like the trend, and I don't have the data, but I'm almost certain this is accurate, that people are getting married less and less and less and less.

Yeah, absolutely. They're having less sex, less kids. It's a trend that freaks me out. Are you at all concerned? That's a great question. I'm not concerned about people not getting officially married if they're in committed long-term relationships that are healthy. I think it's a catastrophic error.

Interesting. Why do you think the certificate and the commitment are going? Abstracted from the certificate. You need to do something. There is a lack of ritual in our lives now. So I read the power of myth when I was, I think maybe even before I met Lisa, but certainly before we got married. And the book was talking about how, hey, the big problem with society today is there's no coming of age ritual. Part of the reason that divorce rate is so high, he's speculated was because there was no like real ceremony that meant something that reminded people you're

a different person on the other side of this. And so for me, I read that and was like, okay, when I get married, that's going to be it one and done never again, barring death. And or I mean, look, you make this point in the book several times. If you're an abusive relationship, get out. Yeah. I 100% agree with that. Assuming I'm not.

That I wanted something that would really remind me that I was a different person. So I wanted it to be painful and I wanted it to be permanent. Yeah. And so I, as an act of a ritualistic scarification, I got a tattoo and got married and had the priests and the waving of the smoke and all that. And even though it was all in not only Greek,

which I didn't speak at the time, it was in ancient Greek, so whatever few words I did know, I really couldn't hang onto. But there was something about the sense of ritual and importance of people in fancy dress and all of that, that it really did allow me, because I was willing, to say, this is a big moment, I'm never gonna be the same again, and then reinforce that by getting the tattoo,

and the whole time I was getting the tattoo, I was focusing on the pain and saying, this is forever, this is a way of permanently altering my body so that I never forget that I've made a commitment. And I think people, if you're not even willing to go through a typical marriage ceremony, like bra, your chances of going through, dude, look, first of all, I've been married for 20 years.

I know what I'm talking about. And this went from, I was going to be the breadwinner, wife stay at home, take care of the kids to not having kids and my wife becoming an entrepreneur. If you don't think that was like some radical change, and through all of that, I just knew divorce isn't an option. So, since I'm completely unwilling to be in a loveless marriage, how do we grow together? And because it was like, well, I'm not going to be

in an unhappy marriage, and I'm not exiting the marriage. That only leaves making the marriage awesome. And so all of a sudden, it's like, okay, well, clarity of thought. I need to focus on making this awesome. And when people don't have that, there's just an attitude of like, disposability from sex to marriage. And look, I am not opposed to casual sex. I've had my share.

It was mostly fun. There were a couple of times we talked about one earlier whereas like, okay, well, even if it's a one night stand, I need to be interested in the person. That's my own personal realization. So I think people need to take that not more seriously like terrifyingly seriously. Because that person is gonna shape you in ways

you can't imagine. And if you go into that, like, whatever, like you're living your life by the law of accident. And I see that echoed through. So I love the idea of what you said about ritual. Like I think ritual is a powerful, they're important. I mean, they're totally part of Vedic culture. Like ritual is everything. Like rituals are those. You know? they're important. I mean, there's there totally part of Vedic culture like rituals, everything like

rituals are those you know, read weddings are like days seven days Jesus to make you realize how important this commitment is like you get married to someone over seven days and you meet all their family and they meet all of yours like there's there's an imprint right and that's what the word is some scar are like some scar means impression or imprint. These rituals leave imprints or impressions that are powerful to help you become new or to become more. And so I agree with that. And the only thing that I think I'm open to is that people take a little bit longer to decide before they commit.

And that if you are in a marriage that I think there are just so many people today that are married that aren't using your mindset of I don't want to be in a loveless marriage. What do we do? I literally will. And by the way, I see you and Lisa is like, talking to you about this stuff is so exciting for me because I love how you and Lisa love each other. I love how you talk about your rules. I love how you talk about your principles. I love how you talk about the lessons. And I agree with them.

I think we're very aligned. And I'm very much earlier. This book isn't about my relationship. This book isn't about how successful my marriage is. I've not been married for that long. This book is about studies in the Vedas and science and the research and the tools. But the one thing I will say is that I check in

with Radi regularly, and I'll often do an alternative, and I'll say, is this relationship going in the direction you want? And I'll check in with them, I'll say, is this relationship actually going in the direction you want. And I'll check in with them and I'll say, is this relationship actually going in the direction you want? If it is great, what are we doing right? And if it isn't, what direction do you want to go in?

And what does that require of you? And what does that require of me? And I'll be ready to commit to that. And that has been one of the healthiest questions for me to ask, because I'm like, you, I don't wanna live longer than a couple of hours in a, in a loveless relationships when it's something within my control.

Like I don't want something within my control to be painful for longer than it needs to be. I don't wanna be in a relationship where I don't talk to you for a week. I don't wanna be in a relationship where we argue for a month about the same thing. I didn't subscribe to that. That's not what I committed to.

I didn't set my life up in a way to live with pain for years and years and years. And I saw that in my family and I was like, no way do I wanna create that in my life. So I'm gonna do everything possible. But what I find is that a lot of people are in relationships where there isn't a collaborative approach. I elicit you at collaborators in this, me and Radha

are growing into collaborators. And this is like, if you're not with someone who's collaborative, it's really tough. I meet a lot of people who are like, I'm ready to do the work. I want to do the work. But then their partner doesn't reciprocate with any energy or any enthusiasm because they think we already did it. We got married, we had the kids, we both have a job,

we have a house, what are you worried about? Right? Like that's the response people here, and I'm speaking to that person and saying, well, if you need a slowdown getting married, it's okay. And if you are married and it's not going in the right direction, that's okay, but because I don't want to put... I don't want to put pressure on people to think that marriage is the achievement, and I know you're not doing that either. But I think a lot of people see marriage is the end in the achievement as opposed to the beginning. It's the container. It's the container, but it's not seen that way. Yeah, it's interesting. So Lisa and I got married at the time, it did feel like we were young, but by today's

standards, we were infants. It's really crazy. But when I think about how much, if you can construct the right container, it will improve your life vastly. The reason I'm so celebratory of marriage is that nothing, and I mean nothing, not business, ambition, and self-repermanent, nothing has given me as much as my marriage. Now because I treat it like the flower that I water and keep the bugs off and make sure it gets sunlight and all that stuff, I mean, it's a massive amount of time and attention.

But when I think about what the human animal is wired for, it actually isn't necessarily just a monogamous marriage, but you can go in different paths. Actually something I wasn't sure if it would come up today. I think that there is a buffet of offerings that are available to work with human wiring. And depending on the circumstance into which you are born, you will either be in polyamorous, polyandris where there's multiple males, which is to one female, which is very unusual, and then monogamous. And it's utterly, I'm so aware that those are real, that I make sure that I take more time

and attention to grow the one that I'm in in the right way, if that makes sense. But knowing that, I do have the wiring to thrive within this, but I have to be very thoughtful about how we mix that cocktail. In the book, you talk about like defining love and making sure that you understand each other's fighting styles and all of that gets really wonderfully practical. Yeah, you've got the fighting quiz. Yeah, yeah We're people can go figure out like what's my fighting style? Do you put the same kind of attention on Understanding whether the words you use are masculine energy I didn't spend a lot of time in the book on masculine and feminine energy only because I think that

it's not in our current vocabulary and it's not really how the the Vedas ultimately treat everyone as a soul and so that's already beyond gender and beyond energy in the sense that we are all equal energies. So the vaid has come at it from a standpoint of, you and me are made of the same stuff consciousness-wise. There is no difference in the consciousness that you are in that I am, or anyone in this room, or anyone in the world. And therefore I am not superior, inferior

to any other individual, hence we can only ever be a team. So when you've really gone to the core of the teachings that I kind of live my life by, I can't start to see better or worse or bigger or not. So I don't just look at Rady as a team member on the fact that she's my wife. I see as a team member because I see her

as consciousness and divine energy, which is the same as the energy that's within me, because I'm not this body. Like I genuinely believe that. The core of my being is that I'm not a physical body. And so it's very hard for me to get lost in conversations around physical body and gender based or masculine feminine energy because I'd be core of it.

That's not how I'm structuring my life. How does that influence the way that you think about it? Because I'm the exact opposite. I am of this body, nothing else. When I die, it's a light switch. I'm gone. If you take a needle and jab a part of my brain, it's going to impact how I'm able to process the world. So it's very direct, which is probably a big part of the reason I'm so tactical. I just view the world through that lens. It is my temperament. So tactical, I just view the world through that lens. It is my temperament.

So if you don't have that, would you call yourself a dualist, like where spirit and body are completely separate? No, so it's like, whoa. So yeah, in our philosophy, it's called simultaneous one and difference. So it's both. It's like you have the, I'm living in this body, but I'm not this body. So the idea is. Can you be separated from, like, do'm living in this body, but I'm not this body.

So the idea is- Can you be separated from, like, do you believe in an immortal soul that will outlive your body? Yes. And sorry to be so grounded in the physical, does that continue to exist in a physical place? Or there is another realm that we don't have access to when we're in this body? Yeah.

So the philosophical understanding that I have is that the consciousness continues to seek physical form to experience physical pleasure and physical experiences until the point that it is materially exhausted and is able to truly live in its full consciousness, not needing a physical form to exercise physical needs and design. And how does that consciousness manifest itself once it's transcended the pursuit of physical pleasure? It's described in quality, not in, obviously I have no experience that. Sure, sure. My only experience of it is through meditation and practice. And is it an intuitive understanding that you would be hard pressed to put into language?

No, it's a state, well the state is described as full of knowledge, eternal and full of bliss. That's the state in which we're living. And so what I'm explaining is that through what we call purification of consciousness, once the material body is no longer useful, you are then living in that full spiritual consciousness. Would it be a spiritual form, a form that is not, doesn't bleed when you cut it. It doesn't get damaged, it doesn't get hurt. It is an eternal form that doesn't have those needs or fallibilities, I guess, is the right word. So if in the Christian tradition, there is this place called heaven, which at least is

sort of like a physical place that the spirit goes and lives out its days and you will be reunited. Admittedly, I'm not a Christian theologist, so I'm sure I'm getting some of this wrong. But there's at least in popular culture, there's the idea of you transcend into heaven, it's a place. There are people that you know and love you're reunited. So there's a sense of recreating still the physical world just in a non-physical form.

It's what, at least in design circles, you call skew morphing. So you're taking what you know, and even though you're trying to imagine somebody completely different, you tend to cram it in to the same thing, right? So we imagine in clouds and stuff like that. What's that version in the Vedic tradition?

Yeah, so the Vedic tradition is there is a eternal divine relationship with the supreme being and that in this space, everyone has that unique experience and unique relationship with each other and divinity. So would you meet Ravya again in that space? So would you meet Ravie again in that space? Hopefully, if we both make it back. Yeah, I'm Ravie's definitely going to go back. Yeah, I take that back. Yeah, Ravie's good. But not necessarily as my partner, not as the way I see her here,

as a completely different version to what I see here. Because this is just simply one lifetime on a notch of lifetimes. And is that at all in form your marriage? That informs our marriage in the beautiful sense of the detachment with the love in the sense of theirs, a feeling of a love this person, I'm so glad I found them in this lifetime to do this life with, to serve in this way, to have this impact, to choose to want a better humanity, to leave it a better, happier, healthier place,

to leave it a more healed place. That unites us in a profound way that I couldn't have with anyone else who didn't feel that way about it. And at the same time, it detaches me from recognizing, you know, this isn't everything either. And that's okay. Like, it's, you know, let's not make this the be all and end all of everything either. Like, this is just one experience.

It's one aspect. And so I think there's this beautiful connection, but then healthy detachment that comes from both. And the ultimate understanding that she's not my property, she does not belong to me. I don't own her and that she's on her own journey too. And that that journey is the most important journey that I'm supporting her on.

And this journey is the most important journey she's supporting me on. Beyond all the other stuff that we're doing together, like that's the journey we've committed to. So I think it has a profound impact on how we conduct our lives. It stops you from snipping the flower. Absolutely. And even though me and you have very different overall,

and that's why I've always found fascinating, it's said down with you, even though me and you have very different systems of overall belief or philosophy of like what are containers of how we view life. We approach life far more similarly than many people I know, like I consider myself to be highly and as you say in the book we have fight stars, we have the relationship roles, like there's so much tactical practical stuff in the book because that's how I view life to I view life as highly strategic

But with a spiritual lens and and I think that it's I find that really interesting how we both try and approach life through strategy through systems to Process is despite having you know me having a much more of a philosophical and I guess intangible view of reality. Do you know Donald Hoffman? I don't. As in from the Hoffman process? No. No, I don't know what that is.

So this may be why, although you probably push back on this. So as somebody who's agnostic, meaning I literally just don't know. I have no idea what the truth is. Why don't anyone does? And I kind of live with that. Like people always ask me like, where do you see us? I'm like, I don't know either. But I'm having read the theology and spirituality and the modern day, new age, everything that I have, I'm betting on this. And so it's simply hypothesis. And I'm very open about that. I'm very

cool with that because I just think life isn't hypothesis. Pretty much everything I do every day is a hypothesis. There's no genuine truth that I can say that I know for a fact that this is what happens when this happens, including doing this interview, including whatever I in this book. Like, what comes from it is so different and so diverse than you could expect. So I live my life in an hypothesis. So I've studied plenty of books and researched and spoken to people and sat with teachers and sat with masters and I've come up with what I believe is my hypothesis based on that experience.

And I think everyone's entitled to their hypothesis and that's why I don't consider myself with you I was end up talking about some of my own beliefs or values or philosophies that I identify with, but why I don't preach them or why I don't impart them on others is because that's not my goal. My goal is to help people navigate reality in what we can see, feel and hear. And then I have my own set of beliefs and values that guide my moral compass, but those are not the ones

I'm imparting, those are not the ones I'm imparting. Those are not what people are being exposed to because I see them as two separate things. My compass on a deeper level is different to the work I'm doing in the world to help people navigate this. This is all based on fact and truth and experience and reality. The book is based on that, I think like a monk

is based on that. But the beliefs that I have are hypothesis. Those are not the ones I'm sharing. I love that. Where can people follow you as you explore your hypothesis? The best place right now is eight rules of love.com. That is the place to find a new book, Eight Rules of Love, which will guide you through everything from finding love,

keeping love, dealing with heartbreak, and then finding love again. That would be the best place to find me right now. I love it. Yeah. Thank you. Our 20s often seen as this golden decade, our time to be carefree, make mistakes and figure out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s. Each week, we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety,

mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The Psychology of Your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Dressing! Dressing! Oh, French dressing. Exactly!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Oh, that's good. I'm AJ Jacobs, and my current obsession is Puzzles, and that has given birth to my new podcast, Yeah! That was good. every day on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.