00:00:00How do people know when it's time to quit?
00:00:02How do people know when it's time to leave a relationship?
00:00:06I mean, it's hard to say.
00:00:07It's like, how do you know when to leave a job?
00:00:11You know, look, the humorous answer is, you know,
00:00:15winners never quit and quitters never win.
00:00:17But if you never win and you never quit,
00:00:18you're a fucking idiot.
00:00:20So, I think when you have done what you could do
00:00:28and you are still in a place where
00:00:32I think the majority of the time you feel
00:00:35empty and unsatisfied and alone.
00:00:38I think there is a type of loneliness when you're with someone
00:00:41and you feel very lonely.
00:00:44That is a very unique kind of hell.
00:00:47I had a friend who used to jokingly say that
00:00:51the way he knew he was in a relationship is
00:00:53when he was having sex and he found himself thinking,
00:00:55you know, one of these days I've got to get laid.
00:00:59So, I think that sometimes when you are with someone
00:01:01and feeling alone,
00:01:03when you are having a sexual relationship with your partner
00:01:06and you feel yourself wanting to sleep with other people
00:01:09in a consistent way.
00:01:13But I also think that,
00:01:14and a lot of what I talk about in my book is the idea
00:01:18that sometimes that is a spiral
00:01:21that we didn't mean to create
00:01:23and that sometimes we've been created with excellent intentions
00:01:27and that there is a way to reverse that spiral.
00:01:29So, like my pension for
00:01:33manipulating people's emotional state in a courtroom,
00:01:36I think that power can be used for good.
00:01:39And one of the examples that I give is
00:01:41what I refer to as sexual monotony,
00:01:44which is that I think a lot of people with excellent intentions
00:01:47screw up their own sex lives
00:01:49in a monogamous relationship.
00:01:51Because we meet, we start dating.
00:01:56Maybe we're not virgins,
00:01:57we've had other relationships in varying degrees.
00:01:59Okay, so what do we do?
00:02:01We throw all the different techniques
00:02:03we've learned along the way from other partners,
00:02:06from porn, from the internet, whatever.
00:02:08We just throw that at each other.
00:02:10And what do we figure out pretty quickly?
00:02:12Oh, she likes this.
00:02:14This she really likes.
00:02:15This not so good, it landed flat.
00:02:17Okay, and she figures out, oh, he likes this.
00:02:19This he loves, this didn't do anything for him,
00:02:22this he doesn't like at all.
00:02:23Okay, now, what do you do then?
00:02:25Play the hits, man, right?
00:02:26You play the hit.
00:02:27Like, I can go see Bruce Springsteen,
00:02:28you hear the acoustic goes to Tom Joad.
00:02:30I want Born to Run, I want Thunder Road.
00:02:32Like, play the hits, right?
00:02:33We're on a tight schedule.
00:02:34Like, let's play the hits.
00:02:35And with great intentions, you play the hits.
00:02:38She loves this, you love this.
00:02:39We do it, we do it in a certain order.
00:02:41What have we just done?
00:02:42We created a routine.
00:02:43And what starts to happen now,
00:02:46if we're not checking in and having this open communication,
00:02:51now if one of us does something different,
00:02:53it's like, oh, that was weird.
00:02:54What did we deviate from the routine?
00:02:55Is something going on?
00:02:56What's happening there?
00:02:57And it's unspoken very often.
00:02:59So now we're in this routine, we're in this rut,
00:03:01we don't know how to get out of it.
00:03:02And then when we start to have conversation,
00:03:04well, why don't we do this anymore?
00:03:05And how come we haven't done that anymore?
00:03:06Now everyone's defensive about it.
00:03:08So what I always talk about is like behavior modification
00:03:12or like behavior manipulation with good intentions.
00:03:16And one of the examples that I give is if look,
00:03:18if you're tired, like in the bedroom,
00:03:20we're just doing the same things in the same order all the time.
00:03:23I don't think having a confrontational discussion
00:03:26with your partner is helpful in that.
00:03:28I have suggested to people, I think the best way to do it,
00:03:31and find me a woman who wouldn't want to have this conversation.
00:03:36If you went to a girlfriend and said,
00:03:38the dream I had about you last,
00:03:40I can't even look you in the eye.
00:03:41The dream I had about you last night.
00:03:43I don't even know where it came.
00:03:44Wait, what?
00:03:45What was it?
00:03:46Like she's going to want to know.
00:03:47What was it?
00:03:48I can't even.
00:03:49I don't know what.
00:03:50It was like the dirtiest dream.
00:03:52What were we doing?
00:03:53And then you describe what it is you've been thinking about doing.
00:03:56And either she goes,
00:03:58Oh, is that something you'd want to do?
00:04:00And then you go, I don't know, maybe?
00:04:02Like, I guess something in my subconscious.
00:04:04Like it was hot in the dream.
00:04:06Maybe, you know, give it a shot kind of a thing.
00:04:08Or if she goes, Oh, I would never want to do that.
00:04:10You go, yeah, I know.
00:04:11I don't know if I eat dairy before I go to bed or something.
00:04:13I don't know where that came from with subconscious.
00:04:15But at least now you've got that.
00:04:18You've got that dialogue happening.
00:04:20And again, this is with a tremendous desire to deepen this connection.
00:04:25I think we screw up our relationships,
00:04:28not because we don't care,
00:04:30not because we don't want to be good at the job.
00:04:32I think it's just a matter of, you know,
00:04:34well, why should I do this?
00:04:36Well, you didn't do this for me.
00:04:38Why should I do this for you?
00:04:39You can reverse that flow just as easily
00:04:42by just starting to treat your partner with grace
00:04:46and giving them things that, leaving each other at home.
00:04:49What woman would not want to receive a text message in the middle of the day?
00:04:53You know, a song just came up on my Spotify.
00:04:56I had it on shuffle and it was making me think of you.
00:04:58Or you know what I just thought of?
00:05:00A woman just walked by and she was wearing that perfume you were wearing
00:05:03when we first did it.
00:05:05That's the theme.
00:05:06That's the equivalent of sending nudes.
00:05:08And then P.S. you're way hotter.
00:05:10Yeah, yeah, perfect, perfect.
00:05:13And by the way, what a gift that is.
00:05:16And what man has ever received a nude or a suggestive photo from a girl?
00:05:21Out of the blue?
00:05:22Dude, an out of the blue nude?
00:05:23Who you're dating?
00:05:24Yeah, that's like triple nudes.
00:05:27That's worth three times the normal nude.
00:05:29That's a gold star nude.
00:05:30That's three dozen roses you bought for her.
00:05:32Correct.
00:05:33That's what that is.
00:05:34And it's so, what does it cost?
00:05:35Nothing.
00:05:36We did a series on the show 20, 30 episodes when I first started
00:05:40and it was life hacks.
00:05:41It was how to make a great toasted sandwich.
00:05:42This is my favorite meditation app.
00:05:44But a lot of them were behavioral and many of them have stuck with me.
00:05:46Sleep with your phone outside of your bedroom.
00:05:48Try and go for a walk first thing in the morning.
00:05:50The best one is basically this book for friendships.
00:05:52And it's text your friends when you think about them.
00:05:55Because they pop into my head all the time.
00:05:58My old business partner that I used to run nightclubs with for 15 years.
00:06:01Sometimes I think about when we both got food poisoning
00:06:03at his son's first birthday party.
00:06:05And it'll just come and then it'll go.
00:06:08But if I don't have the rule, the impetus, just text Darren.
00:06:12Text Darren and say, dude, just thinking about when we shit ourselves.
00:06:16I was in Manchester.
00:06:17You were in Newcastle.
00:06:18We were both locked in nightclub toilets.
00:06:19Do you remember?
00:06:20We were trying to run our events, our respective events.
00:06:22It was on New Year's Eve and that thing happened and da, da, da.
00:06:25Or you just send one.
00:06:26Hey man, thinking of you.
00:06:27Hope you're really well.
00:06:28You know what I'm actually loving and I never say this about tech?
00:06:31Apple Photos sends these memories reminders every once in a while to you.
00:06:35Like it just goes into your camera roll and it says like here's a memory.
00:06:39And it just pops up.
00:06:40Now sometimes it's upsetting because all of a sudden you're like sitting there
00:06:42and you got a photo of your dead friend.
00:06:44But a lot of times it's just some random photo.
00:06:47And I have to tell you, like I get them.
00:06:49Half the time I text them to the person who's in the photo with me.
00:06:53And I go, this just popped up on my thing.
00:06:55Look at these fucking kids.
00:06:57Who were we back then?
00:06:58And it starts the like how you doing, man? I'm good.
00:07:01You? Yeah. How's the -- kids are good?
00:07:02Yeah. All right, man.
00:07:03Just want to tell you I love you.
00:07:04Love you too.
00:07:05What a like beautiful moment of connection.
00:07:07Costs nothing in the middle of the day.
00:07:09It rules.
00:07:10It rules.
00:07:11But nobody -- but here's the thing, man.
00:07:12You're never going to -- and this is my like soapbox lately.
00:07:18You're never going to hear a lot about this in mainstream media.
00:07:22And the reason why is because it's fucking free and you don't have to buy anything.
00:07:27Okay, so here's a guess on that.
00:07:29There's no commercial incentive for it.
00:07:31Saying just text your friends, it'll improve your social network.
00:07:33Doesn't have you signing up to some new app or joining a running club or signing up for Equinox or whatever the fuck.
00:07:38Right.
00:07:39I think another part of it is the same reason, one of the fundamental same reasons that the pick-up artist movement was so pushed back against by women,
00:07:47beyond the fact that it was manipulating them to get them into bed.
00:07:49Sure.
00:07:50I think that a reliable signal of your authenticity means that there are some things that are close to your sense of self and there are other things that aren't close to your sense of self.
00:08:00Your capacity for jujitsu, when you first started 15 years ago, I didn't see as some window into who you truly are as a person.
00:08:09Therefore, if you started learning to become better at jujitsu, I didn't feel that you were contriving yourself or coercing me into believing that you're a certain way.
00:08:17Okay.
00:08:18The same thing goes with learning to play the piano or speak French or something like that.
00:08:22Sure.
00:08:23The same thing is not so true with our abilities in the bedroom or with the primary language that we speak or perhaps our accent.
00:08:31We got rid of our accent, what are you trying to hide there?
00:08:33Immediately you can feel like, oh, he worked on, he watched some instruction about the bedroom?
00:08:38And I think the reason is there is a degree of ick among the people that are not tapped in.
00:08:44The world split into two groups, people who are tapped in and people who aren't tapped in.
00:08:47The world of people who aren't tapped in look at, we could call it conscious relating.
00:08:52I can't think of a better word.
00:08:53It will be a placeholder for now.
00:08:55Conscious relating.
00:08:56So I'm genuinely thinking deliberately about how I show up and how it affects you and how that recursive spiral is going to continue to go.
00:09:04And my goal is to spin this spiral up as much as possible and stop it from coming down as much as possible.
00:09:09That's what I want to do.
00:09:11And I'm going to learn about attachment theory and I'm going to realize that, oh, wow, I maybe do get a little bit anxious if somebody doesn't text for a while.
00:09:19And I'm going to tell you that thing.
00:09:21I'm going to use the emotions and you're going to learn it about me.
00:09:24And if you get it wrong, I'm going to be gentle with you but firm.
00:09:26I'm going to hold my boundaries.
00:09:27I'm going to say, hey, babe, you remember when I said about that thing?
00:09:30When you do that, it makes me feel this, and I'm sure that you didn't mean to, but I would love it if you.
00:09:35And you just continue to build on that.
00:09:37And you're going to cycle through partners, I think.
00:09:39And this has been my big thing for the last sort of two years or so, trying to get below the neck.
00:09:43I was emotionally decapitated.
00:09:45And trying to work out how to stop praying at the altar of fucking cerebral horsepower.
00:09:50And you are going to cycle through partners and friends very quickly because it's a particularly, it's an acquired taste.
00:09:59This is not, unfortunately, Papa John's.
00:10:02This is something slightly more niche.
00:10:04But I think that the alchemy that's available, the friendships that I've got now,
00:10:10the way that I relate to my friends is so much deeper.
00:10:13Even the friends that I had before who've grown with me and have been prepared to sort of come along for this ride
00:10:19or have been on parallel journeys on their own.
00:10:22Yeah, and the depth of connection comes from that.
00:10:24It fucking rules, dude. It fucking rules.
00:10:27But see, this is something I think we have to, as a society,
00:10:30Unspeakable misogynist.
00:10:31But we have to, absolutely, we have to start normalizing that because I, you know,
00:10:38it astounded me like when my book, you know, How to Stay in Love, right?
00:10:42Like there's a title for a book, How to Stay in Love.
00:10:44Noble goal. You're in love. You want to stay in love. That's lovely.
00:10:48If you saw, you know, let's use Galloway as an example. He's a married guy.
00:10:54If you walk into Galloway's home and you see seven habits of highly effective people,
00:10:59you see power of habit by doing, you see, you would go, look at this guy.
00:11:04Look at Galloway, man. He's crushing it out there. He's a monster.
00:11:07And you know, he's still trying to sharpen the sword. Love it. Love it.
00:11:10You see on his thing, How to Stay in Love, you'd be like, oh shit, things are right at home with Scott?
00:11:14Not you, but most people are going to look at that and say,
00:11:18because we're supposed to just be naturally good at this.
00:11:21In other news, Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce companies in the United States.
00:11:28They are the driving force behind Gymshark, Skims, Allo and Nutonic,
00:11:32which is why I partnered with them, because when it comes to converting browsers into buyers,
00:11:36they are best in class. Their checkout is 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms.
00:11:42And with Shop Pay, you can boost conversions by up to 50%.
00:11:45They've got award winning support there to help you every step of the way.
00:11:48Look, you are not going into business to learn how to code or build a website or do backend inventory management.
00:11:54Shopify takes care of all of that and allows you to focus on the job that you came here to do,
00:11:59which is designing and selling an awesome product.
00:12:02Upgrade your business and get the same checkout that I use with Nutonic on Shopify right now.
00:12:07You can sign up for a $1 per month trial period by going to the link in the description below
00:12:12or heading to Shopify.com/modernwisdom or lowercase.
00:12:16That's Shopify.com/modernwisdom to upgrade your selling today.
00:12:20Thank you very much for tuning in. Ooh, a tasty morsel of a clip there for you.
00:12:26Well, the full episode is available right here.
00:12:30Come on. That's it.