00:00:00Valentine's Day is coming up and whether you want to more deeply connect with your partner
00:00:03or work out whether or not you should break up, I've got the fix for you. I have put together a
00:00:08list of 50 of the most viral and science-backed ways to connect with your partner more deeply
00:00:13and 25 questions that will help you work out whether or not you should break up. And they're
00:00:17all available right now at the Modern Wisdom Valentine's Review and it is completely free.
00:00:21You can get it by going to chriswillx.com/valentines. That's chriswillx.com/valentines.
00:00:29One of the most common issues that I'm seeing online at the moment and people talk about a lot
00:00:35is working out when to end things. How do you come to think about advising people on knowing when to
00:00:44leave a relationship? I coached, there's someone who was coaching recently who had given me all sorts
00:00:56of reasons why they should already be gone. And I sat in front of her and she was like,
00:01:05"What do you think I should do?" And I was like, "You've already given me so many reasons why you
00:01:12shouldn't be there, but I can't make you leave." I sometimes think of, I don't love this metaphor
00:01:23because I believe in renewal and rebirth, but I sometimes think it helps to think of things
00:01:29like a cliff edge. And at a certain point, you go over the cliff edge and then you're in free fall
00:01:38and there's a lot of damage that gets done. Or maybe the cliff edge is, your life blows up
00:01:43financially because you put off doing something sooner. Or maybe the cliff edge is that there's
00:01:50a certain amount of time that's passed that you can never get back. But that idea of going off
00:01:55the cliff edge is in some ways has been important to me because I see part of what I do is, can I get
00:02:03someone to act? Can I almost even create a fake cliff edge now that stops them from getting to the
00:02:11real cliff edge where there's going to be so much time passed that they're now going to have deep
00:02:16regret about having spent that long with that person? Or there's going to be such chaos in their
00:02:20lives, or they will have lost so many other relationships because of this relationship.
00:02:24And I said to this woman I was coaching, "I can't make you leave. And the reality is, the really
00:02:32tough reality is you might need to experience a lot more pain yet before you leave. I can't determine
00:02:41for you how much pain you need in order to leave. We all have our threshold." And the scary thing,
00:02:49and I'm kind of in a way talking about a certain kind of breakup here because there's some truly
00:02:55toxic and dangerous relationships that people get into. And I don't mean just dangerous physically,
00:03:01but just dangerous in the sense that they're with someone that really rubs them of their
00:03:07soul, their identity, their confidence, everything. There was a Beth Macy, I think it's Beth Macy,
00:03:14who wrote about the opioid crisis in America. She said, "The scary thing about opioids
00:03:21is that the cliche about drugs is that someone will hit rock bottom, and it's at that point that
00:03:30they'll ricochet back up again." And she said, "No, no, no. With opioids, people hit rock bottom,
00:03:35and then they realize rock bottom has a basement, and that basement has a trap door."
00:03:40There are relationships like that where you think somewhere, "Oh, this is the point where they leave."
00:03:50And it's like, "No, no, no. Something even worse has to happen yet, and something even worse has
00:03:54to happen." So there's no one answer, but at a certain point, I think that we have to hit a kind
00:04:03of pain threshold where we say, "Can I endure this for the rest of my life? Do I deserve to endure
00:04:11this for the rest of my life?" And the one trap we have to be very careful of is someone asked me a
00:04:18question in my membership the other day. What did she say exactly? She said, "What if what I have
00:04:28right now is the best that's available, the best that I can get? What if better isn't out there?"
00:04:36And I said, "You have to be really careful with that logic, because you're saying that the only
00:04:41reason to leave is if you believe, from this place of fear right now that you're coming up with this
00:04:48question from, that someone better is coming. But you can't compare it with if you think something
00:04:54better is coming. You have to compare it with the happy that you can be without this person."
00:05:00And there's a thousand different versions of that happy, and not all of them even involve another
00:05:05person. But in a way, "Could I do better?" is another trap that will keep you where you are,
00:05:11because now all I need to do is speak to enough friends who tell me that dating is a war zone,
00:05:16and it's terrible, and you don't know what it's like out here. You don't want to be back out here
00:05:20again, and you go, "Well then then I'll stay." Right? That's a trap. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very
00:05:26odd situation that there is this threshold of pain. Like somebody will say, "I knew it was over
00:05:34six months or two years or five years or 15 years before I left." What does that mean? "I knew it was
00:05:42over, but I didn't leave." It's strange, right? There's two things going on at once. There is
00:05:50whatever this justification, motivation thing is to push somebody out of the relationship finally,
00:05:58or to build up the bravery, or the resentment, or the bitterness, or whatever, to be able to say,
00:06:04"This is it." And that sometimes seems to be separate. The motivation to leave seems to be
00:06:09separate to the awareness that this is not right. Is that a fair way to frame it? I think it's a
00:06:14really important distinction. Yeah. I think you can even have lost hope that it's going to get better.
00:06:20You really just have to, you know, the activation energy, right? The activation energy of leaving
00:06:28is high. I have to go through heartbreak, loss, untangling my life from somebody else's,
00:06:41explaining it to all of my friends and family, letting my community know, whatever it may be.
00:06:47There's all these ways that I have, like, I've got to do a lot, and endure a lot,
00:06:52and pass through a lot of pain in order to leave. The activation energy of staying
00:06:58is a lot lower. So it's natural. I think it's human behavior that we default to what we have now, even
00:07:08if... Status quo bias. Yeah. Yeah. And then add to that the sunk cost bias. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:07:14And that's a real thing. Loss aversion. Add to that the fear that somehow in the time I've been
00:07:20in this relationship, my appeal has gone down in the world. I'm no longer... My stock price has
00:07:25halved. Yeah. And now I'm going out and I'm going to do worse as a result, or I'm going to struggle
00:07:30to meet someone as a result. All of these things just converge to create a kind of paralysis that
00:07:36says, yes, maybe I'm not happy, but not today. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me that people stay
00:07:45in relationships for huge swaths of time that they're not supposed to. All of this sort of
00:07:50converges together to create a really difficult situation for most people to survive. It is
00:07:56definitely an interesting question to ask that, what if this is the best that's available? But if
00:08:02you say, well, this relationship is making you unhappy, you would be happier on your own.
00:08:07Forget if there's something better out there. You're choosing miserable connection or miserable
00:08:16coupling over satisfactory singleness. The hard part is that what we haven't spoken about is ego.
00:08:26The way ego plays into relationships. And especially if you think... There's the archetype
00:08:32of someone who's maybe with someone who they don't feel like they're happy with. They don't feel like
00:08:38this person is that great. They don't treat them that great. They're kind of like... There's an
00:08:43apathy of, do I leave? Do I stay? A fear of, am I going to do better? All of that. But there's also,
00:08:50when we're with someone who makes us unhappy, but we love them and we think they're amazing and we
00:09:00have put them on a kind of pedestal where we're like, this person is the best I've ever gotten.
00:09:09And there's something truly special or unique about this person. Now our ego is involved
00:09:16in a really big way. And once ego is driving in that way, it's not... The ego is not asking,
00:09:24am I happy? Ego is trying to feel enough. - Am I redeemed?
00:09:31- Yeah. If I can just secure this person, then we'll be all right. We'll be enough. And that's
00:09:41why in dating, there's a lot of people who end up in relationships because they're so busy trying to
00:09:48get someone that they don't stop to ask whether it's actually advisable to get this person.
00:09:53And then they get that person if they're lucky. And now we're in a relationship with someone who
00:10:04may be wildly incompatible with us, who doesn't make us happy. We're anxious all the time.
00:10:10We never quite feel good enough for this person. We don't get their full attention. We feel like
00:10:15we're being fed scraps, but on some level we're like, but they're mine. And at least they're
00:10:22mine. And at least I'm in the game with this person. But when we feel like that, it's almost
00:10:30like the chase never really ends. The chase is a perpetual chase. Yes, on paper, I'm with this
00:10:37person. They're my partner, but I never quite feel like I have them. - You've not arrived.
00:10:42- Yeah. I never feel safe. I never feel like they're as into me as I am into them. And when
00:10:49we're in that place, we become chronically anxious, chronically stressed. Our nervous system
00:10:59is chronically jacked up. It's exhausting. Emotionally, it's exhausting. And of course,
00:11:06from the outside, you're like this... I remember being in a relationship where a friend of mine,
00:11:12a very dear friend of mine, she came on my podcast at the time. - Did she have an intervention on the
00:11:20podcast? - No, she didn't tell me. So we met up. We hadn't seen each other in months. Lives in New York.
00:11:26She's over. We have this podcast. She have a nice time. She leaves. I was in a relationship
00:11:36at the time. I was the person I'm describing. Deeply unhappy. But in my head, I was telling
00:11:44myself I'm happier than I've ever been. I have this person. I remember after the breakup,
00:11:53this friend of mine, she said, "I'll never forget that day when I met up with you and I came on your
00:12:00show." She said, "I walked away. I called my sister and she said, 'How's Matthew?' And she said, 'Oh,
00:12:07he is not good. He is not happy.'" And I had no idea how much I was telegraphing. - You were just
00:12:17leaking your unhappiness out of yourself despite thinking that you'd made it. That's so fascinating.
00:12:26I've had it in my head. I had Huberman here yesterday. And I'd love to find out the sort
00:12:32of neurological underpinnings of what's happening during the "I can fix her. I can fix him" chase
00:12:40versus the "I have arrived. I am safe. I am secure" chase, which I guess is kind of less like a chase
00:12:48and more like a rest. Reason being, there's a lot of that sort of cortisol dopamine energy going on
00:12:56of this is a goal. And if I can achieve the goal, I will get a sense of satisfaction. But it's always
00:13:02very rushy. It's always kind of like a high and then a low and there's whiplash. And it feels a
00:13:10little bit sort of chaotic and ambiguous and unpredictable and uncertain. And sure, there are
00:13:18highs, but they're more like victories than they are true rests. And I would love to work out what
00:13:27the sort of neurochemicals that are driving that are. And I would wager that there will be stuff
00:13:33to do with pursuit and risk and edginess, right? Like adrenaline, epinephrine, norepinephrine,
00:13:42dopamine, as opposed to like oxytocin, serotonin. You are in a sympathetic relationship, not a
00:13:49parasympathetic relationship. Does that make sense? Yes. Well, and one produces, as you say,
00:13:55the rollercoaster. And it's not just a feeling of achievement. It's relief. That's the feeling so
00:14:05often is relief. I have them. I have them. When that person who you just so want the approval of
00:14:14and you so want them to want you back the way that you want them, you want them to think about you
00:14:19as much as you think about them. When that person says something like they send you a text and they
00:14:26say, I miss you so much. I just love you so much out of nowhere. You like, all of a sudden you're
00:14:35like, it's almost like you, your life was being threatened and now it's not. Now you feel like
00:14:41someone's taken the gun away from you. Yeah. Oh my God. I'm safe right now in this moment. I feel
00:14:46briefly safe. And that release, that kind of euphoria that results from that,
00:14:56extraordinarily powerful. And when psychologists talk about that trauma bond, there is that
00:15:06variable reward nature to it. What is a trauma bond? Trauma bond is the idea that someone
00:15:14treats you badly again and again and again and again and again. And at a certain point,
00:15:20it's so unrewarding that we might even consider like enough is enough. But then right as we're
00:15:30starting to make up our mind about that person, they do something sweet. They do something seemingly
00:15:36kind. They show up for us in some way. They apologize when they've lied or gasped at us or
00:15:46made us feel awful about our feelings for the last 10 times, but all of a sudden they show some
00:15:51promise and then we're dragged back in or sucked back in. That's the trauma bond. And people stay
00:15:58in that for years and years and years. That's the really scary part. But there's a variable reward
00:16:05nature to that. That's in a way the slot machine, right? If you never won, chances are you wouldn't
00:16:13be there, but you win just enough that it keeps you there. The kind of safety that healthier,
00:16:25more slow release energy relationships produce is a different kind of feeling.
00:16:35There's certain Instagram content out there you see of people who are like,
00:16:44"I'm just waiting." There was one I saw the other day from a guy who was like,
00:16:52"I'm just waiting until I'm not going to settle. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that.
00:16:57I'm waiting until it's magical. I'm not going to settle for love that isn't magical, for love that
00:17:03isn't this, love that isn't that." And the more he spoke, for me, it didn't feel like the version of
00:17:13love that tends to be enduring, that tends to genuinely make people happy. It felt to me like
00:17:21a kind of justification for constantly waiting for that feeling. And I think we get, in some ways,
00:17:30these arguments get pitted against each other. It's either you find someone that is stable and healthy
00:17:36and it's kind of boring and you settled a little bit, but whatever. Or you find someone who's
00:17:41exciting and it's passionate and it's magical and it makes you miserable. I don't think it's
00:17:50necessarily an either or in those terms, but I do think that in the same way you could do drugs and
00:17:57eat pizza every night and get drunk every night and that would produce a kind of high, but you're
00:18:03a healthy guy who values the feeling that being healthy gives you, there is something you get from
00:18:10that that's more powerful to you. And in relationships, until that thing becomes more powerful,
00:18:19you're always going to be chasing this other thing.
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00:19:21There's this interesting link where people confuse chaos for chemistry and intensity for intimacy.
00:19:33And I think it's just largely like a neurobiological trick. I don't think that
00:19:39there's anything really deeper going on. I think that almost all of the situations through any
00:19:46choice of their own, just the way that they present has hooked a particular like a fish line
00:19:52into this area of your brain and it keeps on pushing it. And then calm love feels boring at first.
00:19:59And that chasing love that feels safe instead of exciting and not assuming that this person isn't
00:20:08sparky, that there's no spark. I mean, this was a great insight I learned from Jessica Baum's first
00:20:14book, Anxiously Attached. She's got a new one out called Safe. You should bring her on the show.
00:20:19She'd be great for you. And she said some people sit down with someone and they feel a spark
00:20:27and they assume that that's something special between both of them. But what they don't realize
00:20:30is this person is just sparky with everyone. That's just who they are. And you go, that's brilliant.
00:20:37And especially on a first date, we had this with Prime, Logan Paul's drink. For instance,
00:20:42allow me to blend two worlds you didn't think I was going to blend today. The beverage industry
00:20:47and like intimate connection. Prime optimized for first sip. And we did a ton of taste testing on a
00:20:54lot of different drinks. And there were some drinks that you're like tolerance for them over time. Diet
00:20:59Coke is a great version of this. Like you take your first sip and it's satisfying, but the real key to
00:21:04Diet Coke and all of the Coke line is that you can keep drinking it and you really never get sick of
00:21:10it. There are other drinks that you optimize for the first sip. So if Logan Paul's on his podcast
00:21:15and he flicks a bottle of Prime across and he goes, Matthew, taste that. And you take a sip and you're
00:21:18like, wow, that's really fucking hell. There's something going on there. But after you get halfway
00:21:25through the bottle, you're like, it might be a little bit, this is getting a little bit sort of
00:21:28sickly. And by the time you finish it, I don't really want another one of those. They've certainly
00:21:32balanced some of the flavors better than others. But for some of them, it's like, ooh, and maybe
00:21:36if you're a 12, right? Like your palate is slightly different to mine. I think the same thing is true
00:21:44with partners, that there are some who optimize for the first sip up front and you're like, oh,
00:21:50this is so, it's thrilling. I'm on a roller coaster. You're like, yeah, like being on a roller coaster
00:21:56is cool until you can't get off. There are so many ways that we get it wrong with that mind trick
00:22:03that you just talked about. And actually it's the key to getting over it. That's the great part.
00:22:09Understanding that it's a kind of trick of the mind is the key to not overvaluing that first
00:22:17feeling you get. Oh, this is just, oh, hello brain. You're doing that thing again. As opposed to imbuing
00:22:24some karmic, existential, transcendent value onto this person. And they're doing a thing
00:22:33that, as you say, it might be something that they put out universally. That once you realize that,
00:22:42it becomes cheaper. It no longer has the same weight. I've met guys where I'm like,
00:22:51like I meet a guy and when we go out or something, I'm like, this guy's like,
00:22:54it's so charming. What a raconteur. So dazzling. I'm like, and then he makes me feel so,
00:23:00you know, like connected. And I'm like, we're going to be best friends. I've like fallen into the trap
00:23:07where I'm like. You've been finessed by some dude on a night out. Well, I've been so charmed that I've,
00:23:13I'm like, we're going to, I'm like, go home. And I'd say, yeah, like you cut, this guy's great.
00:23:18You got, and like, and then I realized like how many of the friends I have, forget romance. How
00:23:26many of the friends I have in my life today that I truly value are the people that in the first 20
00:23:36minutes I went home and was just like, I got to text that guy again. You know, like whatever,
00:23:42how many of them were that guy? Usually it's the people that over time are really like,
00:23:49I value who they are, their character, the way they show up, the integrity, all of that. So the
00:23:56same is true in our love lives. It's very easy. Don't, we have to be very careful of getting
00:24:01bowled over by like, like a nightclub trick, essentially. Like what didn't. Careful, careful,
00:24:09dismerging the world of nightclubs. Okay. I might have, you can take the boy out of promo,
00:24:13but you can't take promo out of the boy. We, you know, you know that nightclubs will often just
00:24:20hold a line outside regardless, even when there's no one inside. And then everyone sees the line
00:24:28outside of the club and says, there must be something going on in there. Look how many people
00:24:33want to get in there. And then we've, most of us have been in that place of like, we got in
00:24:38and we went, where is everybody? There's no one here. There's more people in the line outside the
00:24:45club than there are inside the club. So it's, we're all prone to that, to that idea. And by the way,
00:24:54when we don't value ourselves, when someone else is showing themselves to be hard to get instant,
00:25:01we increase their value for two reasons. One, because it's natural. The natural economics
00:25:07of attraction is scarcity. If you make yourself seem hard to get, you're rare. And if you're rare,
00:25:12you must be more valuable, but there's also a personal part going on, which is if you reject
00:25:17me, or if you make yourself hard to get for me, and I have even an inkling that I'm not enough,
00:25:22then I start thinking you're really valuable. It's almost like if you want me, I'm like,
00:25:29I don't value me. So by you valuing me, there must be something wrong with you. Yeah. There's
00:25:35something going on with you. You want me, like you're, you're starting to dip in my eyes. That
00:25:39is one of the most unfortunate dynamics for somebody to have, that I only want somebody
00:25:45who doesn't want me. Like if that's your motivation, and somebody that seems to be kind and well
00:25:51balanced and open, transparent about their wants and committed and ready now, and you go, oh,
00:25:57that doesn't, there's something, there's something in there that doesn't seem quite right. I can't
00:26:04work it out, but it's because you have low self-esteem. It's because you don't think very
00:26:10much of yourself. And that means that if you see somebody who shows up in a way that you are not
00:26:15prepared to show up for yourself, you assume that there's a pathology going on. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
00:26:23There's something going on with them. And if you don't like me, or if you're not sure about me,
00:26:27well, you're onto something. Um, so I found on Reddit, five questions to ask yourself if you're
00:26:34unsure about your relationship. Okay. Number one, if someone told you you're a lot like your partner,
00:26:40would this be a compliment to you? Number two, are you truly fulfilled or just less lonely?
00:26:46Number three, are you able to be unapologetically yourself, or do you feel the need to show up
00:26:51differently to please your partner? It's a good one. Number four, are you in love with who your
00:26:55partner is right now as a whole, or are you only in love with their good side, their potential,
00:26:59or the idea of them? And number five, would you want your future or imagined child to date somebody
00:27:05like your partner? Hmm. These are good questions. Those are good questions. I think as well,
00:27:11would you, here, I think this is a good one. If you and your partner had a child and then you died
00:27:22and your child was going to be raised by them and only them with all of their habits, values,
00:27:29behaviors, would, would that worry you or would you feel like that was a problem or would you be
00:27:35super happy with it? Wow. Yeah. Like, are you basically hoping that your future parenting,
00:27:43you're going to act as a gatekeeper or as a magnifier? It's like, oh, well, you know,
00:27:48I'll be there so I'll be able to protect them from the parent or I'm happy to get the fuck out of the
00:27:54way because they're much better than I am. They're a much better person than I am. There was another
00:27:58one that I read this year that I thought was so fucking interesting, which was a question to ask
00:28:04yourself if you're unsure about your relationship. If you could wake up tomorrow morning and the
00:28:09relationship was over without you having to say it to them, would you feel relief or would you feel
00:28:19wistfulness? I always remember having a dream about someone that I was at the time really
00:28:29heartbroken over. And it was like the moment I realized something had truly shifted in me that
00:28:38meant I was better. Because in the dream, we got back together. And then within five minutes of
00:28:49getting back together in the dream, the same things that made my life hell in the relationship were
00:28:58happening again. And I suddenly in the dream thought, what have I done? Like, I've made a
00:29:04terrible mistake here. Why did I go back? Why am I back in this situation? And I woke up and I
00:29:11realized the nightmare was being back. The nightmare wasn't having been heartbroken. I'm not big on
00:29:25dreams, don't get me wrong, but that was a very profound moment for me to realize my brain has
00:29:35switched. But I do even remember, even in the midst of the worst heartbreak of my life,
00:29:42I do remember a sense of relief. And I don't want to say for one second I wasn't in the worst pain
00:29:53because I was in terrible pain. And I was questioning myself, I was questioning my worth,
00:29:58I was like in a dark place. But I still remember feeling a sense of relief when I thought I don't
00:30:08have to continue to feel the way that I did. Because I was so anxious. I was like a version of me that I
00:30:17really didn't, not just didn't like, but that I didn't, you know, it was a version of me that
00:30:25was like the worst possible version of me in many ways. And I felt this sense of relief that no
00:30:32matter what, even if this is the worst heartbreak ever, I don't have to, I no longer have to feel
00:30:38that anxiety. I'm now deeply, deeply heartbroken in its place. But I don't have to feel that
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00:32:01for stuff. Thank you. Definitely one of the pains I think that people feel, this sort of odd kind
00:32:15of inheritance of a relationship that went on too long when you knew that you should have left
00:32:19is the sentence, and the worst thing of all is I lost myself. You know, because the relationship
00:32:25is now over, but there is this weird inheritance that future single you has gotten from the
00:32:33relationship, which is this weird parasite or pattern that was a part of that. And unfortunately,
00:32:45because of how long you have tried to fold yourself into a shape to make this person happy,
00:32:51you have left, but the shape that you're in has remained in part. And I think that
00:32:58the knowledge of that, the knowledge that, well, I don't think that I am the person that I was when
00:33:04I got into this relationship anymore, a person who I preferred to the person that I am now
00:33:08is another motivation for not leaving because you say, well, I'm not even me because that's
00:33:14more sunk cost fallacy. That's more loss aversion, right? And you go, well, when I get out of this,
00:33:20I can't even do the things that I did to get myself into this. So like my value, maybe my
00:33:27stock has decreased, but worst of all, my stock has decreased because of something that that person
00:33:32did to me. So I'm going to get them to redeem me. I always remember, I don't even know, I don't know
00:33:42Jordan Peterson's work very well, but I always remember hearing something or reading something
00:33:46about the lobsters. And what is it? What is it? Defeated lobster sort of gets, it's like affected
00:33:52afterwards. I had, that gave me like this invasive thought that like, yeah, this like, what if I am
00:33:59the lobster that now is like, you know, there's some, I now walk away as this permanently sort of
00:34:08scarred thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, red crustacean. The, the, the weird thing is I think people, people
00:34:16have this fear that leaving is going to make them lonely, but in relationships where most of your
00:34:28time is spent questioning whether or not this is the right relationship, you're already alone.
00:34:35You're already alone in this relationship and leaving is the first step to stopping that.
00:34:42And, and that will bring on the, the, you know, all of those feelings will come to a kind of
00:34:49crescendo at that point. And, you know, there'll be heartbreak to go through and all of that.
00:34:54And, you know, any, any good coach or therapist, when someone is going through the most acute
00:35:01heartbreak is not going to start by saying, why did you let that go on for so long?
00:35:07They're going to start by just treating the wound. Like let's, let's, we have to get you back to a,
00:35:17you know, a feeling of safety again of, you know, getting, lessening this acute
00:35:23pain that you're feeling. But at a certain point, the question will come somewhere down the line.
00:35:32What happened there? Like what was, now that we're in a better place, what actually happened
00:35:39in that situation? You know, what was going on that made you ignore your intuition?
00:35:48By the way, not instincts. Instincts and intuition are different.
00:35:53How do you distinguish those?
00:35:56Your intuition might be telling you something's not right. Like some, this isn't, I shouldn't
00:36:02be treated like this, or I should be in a relationship that's not this hard or whatever.
00:36:06Your intuition can tell you that. Your instincts, as my boxing trainer used to say, will get you
00:36:13killed. Because your instinct might be, I feel unsafe. Try harder. I, you know, I, I'm not
00:36:22getting love. Try harder. Do more. Stay in it. Instincts are what tell you when you get sucked
00:36:29out by a riptide in the ocean to swim straight back to shore. And the riptide's stronger than
00:36:35you. So you die. The, the, your instincts won't tell you swim, take a longer part. You already
00:36:41feel like you're going to die. Take a longer swim back. Swim sideways, parallel to the ocean
00:36:48or to the shoreline, and then swim around once you're out of the tide. Your instincts won't
00:36:53tell you that. Your instincts, instincts in boxing don't tell you to slip. Your instincts in boxing
00:37:00tell you to blink right at the time where you need to have your eyes. So it's in a relationship we
00:37:07all, most of us at least, have some bad instincts that have been trained. And those instincts get
00:37:14us into a lot of trouble. And they, and actually it's not, your instincts aren't necessarily you
00:37:20listening to yourself or that deeper voice. Your instincts are actually often what get in the way
00:37:25of that deeper voice and stop you protecting yourself. So I, to, to add some compassion and
00:37:33some comfort to, to that idea that, you know, we get into this thing and then I'm afraid to leave
00:37:38because I don't want to be the version of me that is like, realizes I've now lost myself and I'm like,
00:37:43feel like I'm starting from further behind and all of that. I think in many ways we shouldn't focus on
00:37:52the person that has become the object of all of this anxiety and cortisol and, you know,
00:38:00fight or flight. We should instead see them as a kind of like a revealer of something. Like there's
00:38:09something was already there in me and that could have been ignited by ten different people like
00:38:17this. And if it wasn't going to be ignited by this person, there's a very good chance it was going to
00:38:23be ignited by somebody else. And in a way it might be a blessing that it got ignited by this person
00:38:31this year than someone ten years from now. Because if this draws my attention to some, like it's not
00:38:41our, I want to be very clear about something. I'm not saying it's our fault when someone treats us
00:38:46poorly. But when we ignore certain behaviors, when we continue to put ourselves in the firing line,
00:38:56it's worth, it's in some ways powerful to know, okay, that revealed that, that showed me that.
00:39:03I now, it's not that I'm further behind, it's that I got, it became revealed exactly where I am.
00:39:10And now that I know that, that's beautiful. I know, forewarned is forearmed. I now know
00:39:20that something happened to me there. Instead of personalizing it, which actually makes this person
00:39:27too powerful. I shouldn't make this person that powerful. They're not that powerful. In our love
00:39:32lives we have a tendency to make people into angels and demons. They're either the angel on the pedestal
00:39:39that can do no wrong and that's false. Or they're the demon that has got so much power over us because
00:39:45of the way they've hurt us and what they've become. And that gives them way too much power as well.
00:39:50I think instead it's like, no, let me take both of you off that pedestal
00:39:54and give you a lot less respect. And instead realize that all you were was the person
00:40:02that I met along the way that revealed something that was already there in me. And you're not so
00:40:08powerful that only you could have revealed that. There's a thousand people that could have revealed
00:40:11that about me. But what I do now get to do is address that. And me addressing that today
00:40:19might be the thing that actually allows me to find healthy love.
00:40:22Dude, you're so good. You're fucking fantastic. Obviously you're like a fossil at doing this stuff
00:40:30now. You're part of the fucking archaeology of the world of relationships. But I just think your
00:40:36insights are really, really wonderful. I very much appreciate how you delivered them with sensitivity.
00:40:41A lot of the conversations now, especially actually even coming from female advice online,
00:40:48feels male coded. It's quite stiff and stern and spiky. And maybe this is just because
00:40:58most of the stuff that goes viral doesn't have the breathing room in terms of duration to be able to
00:41:04say, well, we need to be gentle with people here. We need to understand that humans do have emotions
00:41:08and they can't act rationally as opposed to here's the five icks that you need to know is a red flag
00:41:13for whatever. Does it fit into 45 seconds if not fuck off? But I think as a fellow sensitive chad,
00:41:22somebody who feels emotions more deeply than would probably be optimal. I think a lot of guys have,
00:41:32I can only speak for men. I imagine women probably have this even more so. On average tend to feel
00:41:37emotions more deeply. Emotionality is one of the big sex differences between men and women.
00:41:43But for the guys that do, they're like, fuck. I have a sense of shame or uncertainty or
00:41:52emasculation about the fact that I feel this thing and I should just be able to cut and run
00:41:58or not invest or not feel things with the sort of level of depth that I do. And I think it's
00:42:04reassuring to people to hear, oh, I'm not broken. It's okay for me to feel it. Maybe it's even good
00:42:12for me to feel these things. Maybe it gives me access to a depth of life and a resolution of
00:42:17existence that other people don't. And with that is going to come some potential pitfalls and some
00:42:22pains and some challenges. But if I can navigate those pretty well, look at how much beauty and
00:42:29connection and intimacy is available on the other side of this thing. But yeah, there's a bunch of
00:42:36pitfalls. And I think that the ending of a relationship, the letting go, even in careers,
00:42:44in friendships, this sort of weird balance that a lot of guys have and girls too increasingly now
00:42:52as they become sort of socioeconomically more independent and they've kind of got into their
00:42:56masculine energy more. Increasingly, these sorts of people living those sorts of lives say, well,
00:43:06look at how much discomfort I can put up with in my professional life. Or maybe I should apply that
00:43:14to my personal life. Maybe my resilience, my ability to endure hard things that I've developed
00:43:20in order to be great in my degree or great in my career or great at my sport of choice or whatever
00:43:26it is. Well, I can put up with a lot of discomfort there. And then this skill gets ported over because
00:43:33it's a noble skill. For most of the world, putting up with discomfort, going through hard things,
00:43:39enduring stuff, subjugating your own needs, putting your desires to one side in place of a bigger goal,
00:43:46chasing the dopamine, doing the thing, delayed gratification, not taking right now's emotions
00:43:52as the most important thing or right now's level of comfort or stability as the most important thing
00:43:56in place of something that's in future. And then when you take that and warp it just a tiny little
00:44:02bit, that becomes the very thing that is catastrophic to your personal relationships.
00:44:09It's a really, really, really astute point. And that skill in itself, and thank you,
00:44:19by the way, for what you said. It's very meaningful. It means a lot. It really does.
00:44:28That skill, let's just call it resilience, the ability to endure difficult things.
00:44:34It's a very, very powerful skill to have, a very powerful trait for one to have.
00:44:40But what we often don't realize is that there is, and I'm getting here into the work of people like
00:44:51Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels and Schwartz, but the idea that there is an inner child there
00:45:03who gets overlooked when those skills mutate into your kind of bodyguards that
00:45:14you rely on to get the job done in everything in your life. And those bodyguards showed up
00:45:20somewhere as a survival mechanism like, "You're not equipped to deal with this. I need to come
00:45:26along now and take care of this." And we forget who predated the bodyguards. What part of us
00:45:34predated those bodyguards? What part of us is kind of sick of us running the show using these bodyguards,
00:45:46applying them to everything? These bodyguards are weaponized by fear. If you for one second
00:45:54take your eye off the ball, it's all going to come crashing down. These bodyguards are
00:46:02armed with your greatest, most catastrophic fears.
00:46:12And that brings them to life. And behind all of them, part of us that doesn't have a voice
00:46:18is this part of us that didn't need to be all of that, that didn't need to have all of that.
00:46:25And she said something to me that was very, very powerful. She said, "That part of you
00:46:55that has been kind of abandoned." And for me, I have an image of myself as a kid
00:47:07at a time when I didn't feel like I need to hustle and try and prove my worth, create safety.
00:47:18It's a version of me, I won't go into detail, but it's a version of me that's just sitting
00:47:24at home very innocently and is eating cookies and watching TV, that version of me.
00:47:31And I don't have to go too far forward in my life to find a completely different version of me
00:47:37who was on the playground at school selling cookies, who was like, "I have to earn money
00:47:46and I have to protect and I have to be safe." I was already in that mindset. And there's such
00:47:52a difference between those two parts of me. This one, the bodyguard had already come out
00:47:58and said, "We better crack on and we better start doing that. We better start doing that."
00:48:01And that part of me doesn't need more of a voice. When people say, "But what if I don't do that? What
00:48:09if I become soft or what if I become..." I'm like, "That's not, as they say, the leading edge of your
00:48:15growth is figuring out how to do more of the same. You know how to be resilient. No one needs to tell
00:48:22you to work out. You're going to work out. No one needs to tell you to be ambitious. You're going to
00:48:26be ambitious. It's in you." What's the part that's not natural to you? And the part that Kristen said
00:48:34to me that was very, very powerful was this voice. The bodyguards always have a voice. But this voice,
00:48:44this little you, only has the power that you give them. They only have the power in the material
00:48:52world that you actually give them. You're the person who has to actually materialize their demands.
00:48:58So ask them, "Hey, what do you need? What would represent a good day to you today?"
00:49:06And what they say will probably scare the fucking shit out of you. Because they might say, "I want us
00:49:13to have some fucking fun. Does everything have to be so serious all the time? Does everything..."
00:49:20My bodyguard, I'm on the Chris Williamson podcast. You're a friend of mine. So there's a comfort there.
00:49:28But still, it's you. And this is a big show. And there's a lot of people watching. My bodyguard
00:49:33comes out and says, "You better say good stuff on this show. And you better be your best. And you
00:49:37better, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this." But that little me, if I ask him, "What do
00:49:44you want?" He'll say something very different. He might say, "Can we just do the show today
00:49:53and just have fun doing it? And talk to our buddy and enjoy it?" And no matter what, if we do it,
00:50:02this is one of the things I was taught. As long as we do it together, it's a win.
00:50:08That is so powerful. And I know for a lot of guys, this kind of talk is not what they're used to.
00:50:17It's not the natural go-to. Us men are very, very hard on ourselves. We're more sensitive
00:50:24than most women will ever know. It routinely shocks women to learn how sensitive men actually are
00:50:31and how much things actually affect them. I think it's one of the reasons that women
00:50:36can be cruel and callous and dismissive is because they actually don't realize.
00:50:44They assume it's going to bounce off of this guy in front of them. Well, he's not bothered by
00:50:49anything. He's kind of like a punching bag emotionally. Meanwhile, there's this little
00:50:54boy inside of the guy who's getting bruised every time he gets hit.
00:50:57A hundred percent. It's like you have to be the superhero that starts sticking up for that
00:51:06little boy. And ask yourself, "What would that mean in this relationship?
00:51:11What would that mean in the way I'm working myself to the bone right now? What would that mean in the
00:51:18way that I'm berating myself constantly because this business isn't succeeding in the way that
00:51:23I would like it to? What would that mean when I get rejected by a woman that I talk to or approach
00:51:29and in that moment I get made to feel like I'm not good enough? What would it mean for
00:51:35me to be a superhero to him right now and to take care of him and to give him what he needs?"
00:51:42It's going to sound strange to a lot of men who have never looked at work in that way but
00:51:48it's one of the most powerful things I've ever done. I find it life-changing.
00:52:18[music]
00:52:48--first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to
00:52:51drinkelement.com/modernwisdom. There's no code.
00:52:55I usually care about the box more than that. drinkelement.com/modernwisdom.
00:53:06To be a caretaker of yourself in that way. Yeah, dude, I wrote this essay about advice
00:53:15hyper-responders a few months ago and it's basically that advice for the masses often
00:53:23lands disproportionately. So if you say you should endure hard things, you should
00:53:28be resilient, you should suffer, on the other side of discomfort is something valuable,
00:53:34the people who are already not predisposed to taking that advice, it probably bounces off of
00:53:41and the people for whom they assumed, "I knew I had to work harder. I knew that I'm a piece of
00:53:46shit and I knew that I needed to work harder." They're already killing themselves trying to do
00:53:50it. So this idea of advice not landing evenly and when you think about most people on average,
00:53:57if you were to take a general population view, probably do need David Goggins screaming in their
00:54:03face telling them to go harder rather than Eckhart Tolle whispering in their ear that they're already
00:54:08enough. But that advice does not land evenly and because of that you need to go, "Oh,
00:54:13I have too much of that thing already and maybe what I actually need to do
00:54:21is give myself a fucking break." You have to be real about what you need. Dude, I had a personal
00:54:27trainer once that when I was flat out, couldn't breathe, he would yell at me and he'd call me
00:54:39names, just drill sergeant style. I got that guy in my head already. I don't need to externalize him.
00:54:53That's the voice I've been needing to quiet down my whole life. I said to this trainer at the time,
00:54:59I was like, "Dude, I promise you this isn't what I need. This isn't going to work for me.
00:55:07I get it might be what some people need. You got to find a different style with me. You don't need
00:55:12to worry about me pushing myself. I'm pushing myself. It's because I'm about to throw up.
00:55:20You don't need to give me that energy and if you do, I can't carry on with you."
00:55:24Within the same session, he went back to that gear and I said to him... By the way,
00:55:32I like this person. I actually like this person, but I said, "Les, remain friends. I can't train
00:55:36with you anymore." But that was me recognizing that the leading edge of my growth is something
00:55:47else. It's usually the thing that makes you the most uncomfortable. The other day, I woke up with
00:55:52a sore throat. I was like, "Should I go to the gym or should I go to jiu-jitsu this morning?" I train
00:55:59early in the morning. I was like, "Should I do it?" There's that voice in my head that says... I've got
00:56:04Jocko Willink in my head saying, "Just go. Just go. Fine. If you don't want to go tomorrow, don't
00:56:12go tomorrow. But today, go." I'm like, "Yeah, but that's always what I do. I'm not someone who stays
00:56:20in bed. I'm someone who gets up." If I'm worrying, if I'm on the edge... Because that's what people
00:56:26ask me when we're doing values work of, "What's your north star right now and what does change
00:56:32look like for you? What does growth look like for you?" There's often that feeling of, "Do I
00:56:39really need to stay in bed right now or is this one of those moments where I'm using it as a get-out
00:56:44to get out of doing something difficult?" Those are hard questions, by the way, because when you're
00:56:49trying to do something new, there's a lot of clumsy recalibrating and you'll swing too far in
00:56:55certain directions. If you're trying to get over your fear of confrontation, there are probably
00:57:00going to be some times where you create confrontation over something you shouldn't because you're just
00:57:04like, "I don't know right now what's appropriate for me to do and say and what's not." But in that
00:57:10moment, my guiding light is Matthew over the last 38 years of being alive. I don't know what you're
00:57:18going to say. Has your bigger problem been slacking off and not doing the thing that's hard or has it
00:57:27been giving yourself grace and not making things worse? This is so great and I think for every level
00:57:36there's a devil and as you become older and you have more experience, that intuition becomes more
00:57:43powerful and you're able to play with what to 23-year-old Matthew needed to be a relatively
00:57:52one-dimensional piece of advice, which is stop being such a pussy. But after a while you go,
00:57:58"I understand where my tolerances are. I understand what the ceiling feels like. I understand what the
00:58:03floor feels like. I understand the difference between backing off because I'm leaving something
00:58:06on the table and backing off because I'm going to get injured in one form or another." Can I read you
00:58:11an essay? Please. Okay. Some advice on how to support men. Men want to aim high without feeling
00:58:19insufficient if they fall short. Men want their suffering to be recognized and appreciated without
00:58:23being pandered to or patronized and made to feel weak. Men want to believe that they can be more
00:58:29without feeling like they're not already enough. Men want to be able to open up without being judged. Men
00:58:35want support without feeling broken. Men want to be loved for who they are, not for what they do.
00:58:42TL;DR, blending inspiration with compassion is not an easy task. How do I set lofty goals which drive
00:58:49me to fulfill my potential without feeling less than if I don't get there tomorrow is a question
00:58:54every guy has asked ever. The desire for self-love and high performance comes into conflict inside
00:58:59the mind of everyone, men especially. Sure, some men are all drive and goals with non-introspection
00:59:05and sure, some men are all reflection and inner work with few external desires,
00:59:10but most men desire a mix of encouraged self-belief and understanding support. Inevitably,
00:59:17these two things come into conflict. Basically, every man just wants to hear, "I know you can be
00:59:24more, but you are enough already and even if you just stay where you are, I'll be right here next
00:59:29to you. You're going to be great, but you don't need to be great, and I'm with you no matter what."
00:59:35Or, as said best by Sturgill Simpson's mum in one of his songs, "Boy, I don't care if you
00:59:41hit it big because you're already number one." I know you can be more, but you are enough already
00:59:51and even if you just stay where you are, I'll be right here next to you. You're going to be great,
00:59:55but you don't need to be great, and I'm with you no matter what. I wonder how few guys
01:00:01have ever heard anybody say something like that. You can do wonderful things, but it doesn't matter
01:00:08if you don't. I think you've got, "Don't praise a guy's achievements, praise the personality traits
01:00:15that made them possible." It's kind of the same sort of thing. I'm not fussed about the outcome
01:00:21that you get from this. I'm bothered about the inputs that sort of go into it,
01:00:29and those inputs can be malleable. If a guy's outcomes is different between inputs, outputs,
01:00:35and outcomes, I think, inputs, how hard you work, outputs, what the work resulted in, and then
01:00:42outcomes, what the final end of the equation when it hits the real world is. The sense of malleability
01:00:58that guys have got if you praise them based on effort and traits. I'm sure this is the same for
01:01:05women too, but if it's outcomes, you go, "Well, that means I just need to grow the company,
01:01:11or I need to work harder, or I need to become more muscular, or I need to do whatever," as opposed to,
01:01:16"Oh, it's your tenacity that I really respect, or it's your loyalty, or it's your sensitivity."
01:01:22And you say, "Oh, there's 3,000 ways that I can manifest that into the world, and that means that
01:01:29I don't feel like the pressure that I already put on myself." And again, this is for a very specific
01:01:33subset of humans, but they're almost exclusively the sort of humans that listen to modern wisdom,
01:01:40listen to your show too, right? So you know they're like, "People hyper-respond to advice differently."
01:01:45It's like, yes, that's true if you take a broad cross-section of the world, but not if you take
01:01:49my audience. They're just the type A people with type B problems, like insecure, overachiever group.
01:01:55Oh, well, that means that my sensitivity is my strength. And the fact that she really cared
01:02:05how I was there for her when her dad died means that, because that's like sensitivity,
01:02:12but in a sort of a rigid way, I'm going to be stunned. It's like, huh, well, maybe she'll
01:02:21be okay with me talking about how I've got some self-doubt coming in from work, and she'll be able
01:02:27to help me work through that too. Or she really appreciated my loyalty to my friend when he was
01:02:32going through a tough time. Huh, well, maybe that means that my loyalty to her is valued in a
01:02:38different way, as opposed to like, she appreciates how hard I worked to build the business,
01:02:46as opposed to how big the business is. I just think that distinction, don't praise a guy's
01:02:51achievements, praise the personality traits, and I know you can be more, but you're enough already,
01:02:55and I'll be right here next to you even if you don't change. I just think that's like,
01:02:58for the women that are listening, if you want a guy to just fucking completely melt emotionally,
01:03:05and then go on and end worlds, like rip the fuck out of it. I think that's it. I think that's the
01:03:11playbook, personally. No, I think that to receive that kind of compliment from someone, it's like as
01:03:20truly safe as you can feel in yourself. I think that men, women, anybody need to also really
01:03:34realise that if they're anxious, this is not an uncommon feeling. If you are doubting yourself,
01:03:42this is not an uncommon feeling. I heard Jesse Eisenberg talking about having a panic attack
01:03:55on set. He was in the middle of a scene and the director paused the scene and went over to the
01:04:06director and said, "I'm sorry, something's happening with me. I'm not able to go on right now." The
01:04:11director just said, "Everyone take five." He essentially said to Jesse Eisenberg,
01:04:20"If you didn't have these feelings, it would be strange. You're learning all these lines,
01:04:29you're on a set, you're trying to be emotionally sensitive, you're trying to do your thing,
01:04:33you're trying to make sure your makeup's right at the same time." There's so many things here
01:04:39that if you, he said, "I don't know how you do it. If you weren't constantly feeling this way,
01:04:46that would be weird to me." Jesse Eisenberg describes this feeling of like,
01:04:50"Oh." Because as soon as he didn't feel like he was broken for having those feelings,
01:04:58it actually gave him the ability to embrace them and to say, "Well, then my job is just to
01:05:05do the best I can do with them. I'm not a freak for having them." I think that men especially,
01:05:12because we don't talk enough, and for me, the most powerful conversations I have that make me
01:05:19feel better tend to be with other men who are being honest. When I'm on the phone to a friend,
01:05:27when you and I are on the phone together and we're just being honest about things,
01:05:31I'll always get off that call and just feel better about myself. I only get off a call feeling worse
01:05:39about myself if it's become some egoic call where we're all talking about what we're achieving and
01:05:44this and that. Then I'm like, "Am I doing enough? Am I this? Am I that?" If I'm just having a call
01:05:47with someone and we're having real conversation about things, I go away going, "Oh, it's not just
01:05:56me." Then I'm like, "Oh, then I think then I'm fine." My job is not to not have any of these
01:06:07feelings or to think that I'm deficient in some way for having them. We're all having some version
01:06:14of it. So now my job is just to do the best I can with them given my life, my makeup, my DNA.
01:06:22There's a great concept I loved. I think it's from Alfred Adler, the psychologist,
01:06:30who talked about the idea of relationships being horizontal, not vertical. That when we have
01:06:40horizontal relationships, we look at someone that we think is ahead of us and it makes us insecure
01:06:47because we think we're behind somehow. He said, "But if you imagine instead that you're all on a
01:06:52football field together and you're all just moving along the football field on your own speed, your
01:07:00own journey, getting to where you can get to based on you and all of your factors, it doesn't matter
01:07:07whether someone else has won the Super Bowl and you're raising a family somewhere. There's no
01:07:14vertical. It's all horizontal. You can look at someone else as your friend, as your teammate or
01:07:22however you want to see it and go, "Oh, that's awesome that you're doing that with where you are."
01:07:28You then get to be in your own world where you just go, "Look, this comparison thing
01:07:33really makes no sense. Who am I? What have I dealt with in my life? What factors have been
01:07:41holding me back? What's been the hand on my ankle every time I try and do something?"
01:07:48I always think of that scene in Lord of the Rings where Gandalf is hanging off the edge in
01:07:55the Mines of Moria. The Balrog, he's going to make it and then the Balrog's whip just comes and grabs
01:08:06him and pulls him down. We've all had that moment where it's like no matter how hard we're trying,
01:08:14I'm doing everything. Maybe we're just finally getting some peace in our life or maybe we're
01:08:21finally starting to get somewhere and then that whip comes and grabs us by the ankle and pulls us
01:08:29down. It's in those moments where you're like, "I can't take another thing. I cannot take another
01:08:36thing going wrong in my life. I cannot take another defeat. I cannot take another way that life gets
01:08:42hard out of nowhere." It's in those moments that people want to give up and be like, "I can't do
01:08:49this anymore." Part of that is this kind of comparison with where other people are with how
01:08:57easy we perceive them to have it. Resentment that someone else doesn't have to deal with this or
01:09:04whatever it is. I'm a big believer in making peace with even the challenges and the difficulties that
01:09:17we have that no one else can even see. Only you know the particular fingerprint of how hard your
01:09:28journey is and what's making it difficult. When you really accept that, which is a form of accepting
01:09:35yourself and your life, it almost is like nothing else matters anymore. All that matters is what's
01:09:42the best I can do with where I am. Forget moving to LA and comparing myself with someone else and
01:09:50where they are and this person and that impressive person and whatever. It's all irrelevant. All there
01:09:56is is just your life and all your difficulties and what will you make of that. It's why I wrote in my
01:10:06book about this. I've never watched a full episode of it in my life, but the TV show Chopped.
01:10:12I don't even know what that is.
01:10:14There's a TV show Chopped where it's a bunch of chefs who basically get given a basket of
01:10:22ingredients and they're like, "You've got 20 minutes." By the end of the show,
01:10:27they're going to get rated on what they do with those ingredients. The show is about how
01:10:35resourceful and interesting these chefs can be with these ingredients. The episode I watched,
01:10:40they got Alaskan king crab, great ingredient. Then they got kelp jerky. I don't know what you do with
01:10:50kelp jerky. You have to be a pretty interesting chef, I'd imagine, to do something interesting
01:10:53with kelp jerky. But that's the point. The show isn't about ingredients. The show is about chefs.
01:11:01I think that in life, all our resentment comes from obsessing over our ingredients.
01:11:08Whether it's the way we look, our height, how much money we have in the bank compared to somebody
01:11:14else, where we started compared to somebody else, our natural level of wit compared to other people.
01:11:22It's like we get so angry or hurt or down on ourselves based on the perceived deficiency of
01:11:32our ingredients. But that's not the game. The game is just, "Here's your basket.
01:11:38You're a chef. What do you do with those ingredients?" Yes, you can't expect anyone
01:11:47else to understand or fully acknowledge how far you've come with your ingredients.
01:11:51Because most people, apart from the people who know you best, hopefully the person that you
01:11:55have an amazing relationship with, certain key people in your life, they may not even be family.
01:12:00They might be friends you develop over a lifetime. But most people will never know what it's taken
01:12:06for you to be where you are today, or in some cases, for you to even still exist today. But
01:12:14you do. And that's why we have to do ourselves the service of understanding more often.
01:12:22Forget what amazing meals I want to create. What amazing meals have I already created
01:12:28from the ingredients that I started with? Because if we start paying more attention to that,
01:12:35the confidence we're looking for might be something we already have in abundance.
01:12:40There's this line from Oliver Berkman where he says, "Outward complaints are not a good gauge
01:12:45of internal suffering. Just because somebody carries it well doesn't mean it isn't heavy."
01:12:50Yeah. Yeah.
01:12:52So good. And yeah, this sort of boring, mundane, private victory where you've overcome
01:13:01some something, right? Like it's that day where you didn't get sleep because you accidentally
01:13:10had a coffee too late. And you had to deal with that email. And you hit that bit of traffic. And
01:13:14you did this thing. And you did this thing. And you did this thing. And it's honestly so
01:13:20normal and unspectacular that it might not even register with your evening conversation
01:13:28with your partner unless you have a particularly open connection with them.
01:13:32But getting through those mundane victories or boring successes,
01:13:38those are the ones that even though they're not grand, they are even more important because
01:13:43life is largely made up of overcoming those things and of how you deal with those things
01:13:47and of the resistance of them. And I think a good part of it is, and one of the reasons that men
01:13:52in particular struggle, is that I just want someone to see how fucking hard it is sometimes.
01:13:57Like this really, really sucks sometimes. Or maybe even a lot of the time. Just see it, please.
01:14:05Just pat me on the back and go, "That's not easy. Dude, you crushed it for getting through that."
01:14:11And it's an odd kind of appreciation, awareness, recognition. It's like a gratitude from somebody
01:14:22else. They've sort of inserted it into us. They've hit us with a tranquilizer dart that's been filled
01:14:26with being seen. It's like, "Yeah, that was tough. Sorry you went through that. Congratulations for
01:14:35doing it. Thank you. Thank you." And again, the advice hyper responder thing, for the people that
01:14:43worry, "Well, if I let my foot off the gas or if I take too much of this sort of pussy sympathy stuff,
01:14:50I'm going to lose my edge." You haven't lost your edge ever. When was the last time that you backed
01:14:59off because you were being lazy? If you're the sort of person that has hit burnout more than
01:15:05two times, what side of the ledger do you think that you typically fall on? And that thing that
01:15:15you're afraid of in yourself, to let too much of it in, it might have more wisdom than you realize.
01:15:25Oh, well, you've drained the fucking well of this side. You've drained the well of the Goggins energy
01:15:30stuff. It's like, well, what's on the other side of something that's truly uncomfortable to you?
01:15:35Vulnerability, openness, sensitivity, connection, intimacy, truth. It's a different kind of power.
01:15:45And you don't know what doors that's going to open for you. That's the thing. That's really scary.
01:15:51There's the fear of getting up early. There's the discomfort, the endurance that's required,
01:15:57the resilience that's required to do that. But what about the resilience required to truly say
01:16:02what you want or what you actually think to somebody about them in a sensitive way?
01:16:08And to just say it and be like, allow it to land. Now you're in no man's land. You're basically off
01:16:19road at that point because you know how to navigate the thing you've always done. You don't know how to
01:16:26navigate. It's like, if someone was always sarcastic in conversation and I say, the key
01:16:33to your power at this point is to start to weave in some sincerity. Now that person, all of change,
01:16:45personal change is contained even just in an example as pedestrian as this and as superficial
01:16:52as this. Because that person developed their sarcasm as a response to something. And it worked
01:16:58for them on some level, which is why they kept doing it. And it became just entrenched as their
01:17:06way of being. But that way of being created their world. So now the way people respond to them,
01:17:12the opportunities they get, the opportunities they don't get that they don't even know they don't get
01:17:17is all a result of that way of being or in part from that way of being.
01:17:23But if they stop doing that, and if they listen to that advice to, hey, bring down the sarcasm,
01:17:32bring up the sincerity, the vulnerability, the connection. That person is going, in sarcasm,
01:17:40they're a black belt. Over here, they don't even know how to walk. So now you're like teaching
01:17:49someone how to walk in an area as a fully grown adult, who's like, I don't want to be in
01:17:55conversation. If I stop being sarcastic, and none of this is really conscious, but in what's really
01:18:02going on is, if I stop being sarcastic as my response system to things, what will I say?
01:18:09I won't even know what to say to begin with. So now I go from sounding slightly clever and maybe
01:18:15a bit witty, at the very least having other people on the back foot. With evidence that this works in
01:18:20the past. Right. To someone says something and I go, yeah, no, it was a good weekend last weekend.
01:18:28Because I don't know what else to say, because I'm not used to going to that
01:18:32style and that way of conversing and connecting with people. So now you're asking, this is why
01:18:38a change is so fucking difficult. It's because you're asking that person to give up maybe
01:18:44temporarily or impart a tool that they know, a weapon they've wielded for so long. And to bring
01:18:51forward a weapon they don't know how to wield at all. And to suck at it. And to live with sucking
01:18:58at it for some time. Not with a leap of faith that doing this is going to get me more or better
01:19:07results than sticking to the thing that I know. It is extraordinarily hard. And it's why, by the way,
01:19:15I think that we should have some sympathy for the members of our family
01:19:22or our friends or anyone close to us who we are so tired of trying to get to change. And we're like,
01:19:32but you could be so happy if you just changed this one thing. Or we would have such a better
01:19:40relationship if you just stopped that one thing. Because it's as hard for that person to change
01:19:46that thing as it is for you to change something that you find nearly impossible to change.
01:19:51And it's why true change in any family system, we're all part of a family system in some way,
01:20:00we all came from one in some way. True change is a fucking miracle. And when you actually deviate
01:20:10from your programming, you're a pioneer. You're the pioneer of your lineage. Because most of them
01:20:20didn't or couldn't, didn't even come close. You carried the torch a little further.
01:20:26If you're finding it really, if someone's watching this out there and going, it's so hard to change
01:20:32this thing or whatever, yeah. That's why most people die not changing. Expect that and you'll
01:20:41realize there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. You're finding what every
01:20:47human being has ever lived has found difficult. You are finding difficult now. And that's what makes
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01:22:00modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. I've been thinking about vulnerability recently.
01:22:08Vulnerability is hard. Fully feeling your feelings gets in the way of life. They slow you down, make
01:22:13you doubt, open you up to mockery and cause you pain. Embracing your emotions sounds great in
01:22:17principle but feels frail in practice. That being said, I want to try and prove to you that embracing
01:22:23vulnerability is true strength. Vulnerability is speaking your truth even when it's scary.
01:22:28It's Joe Hudson's definition. Who is truly the braver person? The one who lets themselves feel
01:22:34or the one who flees? The second an emotion gets too close. The ones strong enough to carry the
01:22:39full weight of their emotional experience or the ones so fragile that they have to suppress it.
01:22:44Without vulnerability, there's no courage. If there's no uncertainty, no risk, no exposure,
01:22:50you're not being that brave because there's nothing on the line. We're so quick to praise suppression
01:22:55as strength. We call it control, discipline. We pretend that emotional detachment is a sign of
01:23:00maturity. But fully living your life means actually feeling what happens, not just performing composure
01:23:06while something inside you quietly breaks. The enemy here is toxic stoicism, not the grounded,
01:23:11reflective kind. The hollowed out kind. The kind that rewards shutdown that teaches you to be proud
01:23:16of how little you feel as though restraint were the same thing as resilience. Fearing vulnerability
01:23:21turns your inner world into a minefield. It teaches you to treat emotions like threats so you tiptoe
01:23:26carefully through your life trying to not set anything off. Proud of your control but slowly
01:23:31growing more disconnected from life around you. This isn't strength, it's avoidance rebranded.
01:23:37That's very good. I'm trying to make vulnerability strong again.
01:23:43But I just think that point there. I'm enjoying your writing.
01:23:51Thank you. You write beautifully.
01:23:53Thank you. I do this newsletter every week and it's a thousand words so it's like everyone
01:23:58can write a thousand words a week. But after a while I've done it for five years so that's a
01:24:02quarter of a million words. That's a lot of fucking writing. And a lot of this stuff is
01:24:07I'm not very good at journaling. Never really been very good at journaling but it turns out
01:24:11that if I have to write for an audience I'm much more consistent than if I have to write for myself.
01:24:15And much of this is me like huh. Okay I've conceded the fact that I'm a sensitive guy.
01:24:21Even if I present like a budget Andrew Tate. I've conceded that I feel shit more deeply than
01:24:33some people. Maybe most people. And maybe that I've let myself in the past realize that I feel
01:24:41stuff as deeply as like I've suppressed that. There wasn't much room in the northeast of England at a
01:24:46state primary secondary and sixth form college. And then you know university living with lads.
01:24:51There wasn't much room for oh this conversation I had today sort of like really made me a bit upset
01:24:58and I felt excluded and hmm like that's whatever. Or I watched a Christmas movie and I cried because
01:25:03it was like really cute or like I saw a photo of a dog or like this girl that whatever you know.
01:25:08There's not much room for that and I think again it's because emotional mastery is an element of
01:25:16almost every definition of masculinity that exists cross-culturally. Some sort of emotional mastery
01:25:24and that's because if you are unable to effectively control the things that you feel you cannot show up
01:25:31and operate reliably because you are going to be ragged around at the winds of whatever you feel
01:25:37as opposed to I just get done what needs to get done. And again this praises suppression as
01:25:43strength right and restraint as the same thing as resilience. But this fleeing from emotions it sort
01:25:51of comes back to what we were talking about before okay you realize where you're what are the things
01:25:59that you're really hiding from. Like what are the things that you're really unprepared to face
01:26:03and it's not more of the same. It's not more bench press or Brazilian jiu-jitsu or even more time
01:26:09meditating. All of these things are actions that you have done. They're a intentional control
01:26:21an agentic approach to the world. They are not a release. They're not you letting go of of that
01:26:28control. They are not you sort of turning inward and facing. They're not it's not about exposure.
01:26:32It's not about opening up. And this is there space for it in the world? Well very rarely have you had
01:26:43someone that certainly very few people's parents are sufficiently educated in accepting the
01:26:52complexity of a young sensitive person's emotions to be able to really give you a safe space. You
01:26:59don't even know how to navigate it. How the fuck are they like you're a different person. So you
01:27:04grow up learning well I should probably just like not talk about that stuff or not open up in that
01:27:09sort of a way because it scares people or it does something else. I learned this thing from Joe
01:27:14Hudson. Fucking awesome story. His daughter was seven years old and she was crying in the bathroom.
01:27:20She'd been crying a little bit recently over the course of a few months and he went in and was
01:27:27having a conversation with her about why she was crying. He said you you don't sound very sad to me.
01:27:33Are you pissed off? She said yeah. It's like hang on you know when you cry how how often are you
01:27:42pissed off and how often are you sad? She's like about 50 percent. It's like okay so half the time
01:27:48when you're crying you're pissed off not sad. Yeah. Why why don't you get angry? Says well
01:28:00when I cry my sister comes and comforts me but when I get angry everyone runs away.
01:28:05Like wow there are certain emotions that are more pro-social than others. Anger is one of them and I
01:28:15think that for men sensitivity is one of the things like a particular type of sensitivity especially
01:28:20if it's messy. Like if you see a guy who's like out of control with his emotions not in an aggressive
01:28:25way almost when that happens it's like oh there's respect out there. Like you know he's like there's
01:28:31wrapped up in the sort of warrior mindset and like yeah maybe he's lost his chill but it's done in a
01:28:36sort of directional agentic kind of way you know what I mean? It's lean in 10 toes down type shit.
01:28:41Oh this guy's this guy's like struggling and down. Most people don't know what to do with that
01:28:49and I think that that makes in the same way as Joe's daughter said like
01:28:55when I'm angry people run away but when I cry my sister comes and comforts me.
01:29:01I think that that's kind of the similar lesson that a lot of guys have learned which is
01:29:08when I feign strength people respect me and when I embrace sensitivity people turn away.
01:29:18It's what makes like the most important decisions you'll ever make will I think are who you put
01:29:26yourself around, who you choose as your friends, who you choose as your partners because
01:29:33there are people on this planet who are good with emotion, who have really evolved ways of being
01:29:47around someone who's emotional because they're in touch with themselves too. And
01:29:55we often masochistically continue to put ourselves around people who
01:29:59don't allow themselves to be that way let alone us. So it's like we're taking people who
01:30:09are not good at this thing and we're basing our behavior on their acceptance of us. I think we
01:30:20should get around people who are emotionally emotional black belts and make more friends
01:30:26with those people, make more friends with people who aren't afraid to be vulnerable.
01:30:33And by the way, I think there's a couple of things I'll say. Firstly, when it comes to being
01:30:41attractive because one of the things we're afraid of is being less attractive if we show too much
01:30:47emotion or vulnerability or sensitivity. I've been talking for a long time about a concept I call
01:30:55unique pairings, which is that what makes someone really attractive is not one dimension of something.
01:31:06It's when you see two different qualities in the same person that you don't normally find in the
01:31:13same person. So you have someone who knows how to be resilient, knows how to be strong, can lead but
01:31:23who at the same time can be intensely vulnerable and sensitive. Like there's no doubt to me, not to
01:31:31kind of analyze why you're where you are, but there's no doubt to me that one of the reasons
01:31:39that your audience has done this and your success has done this is because you have unique pairings.
01:31:49If you had simply been the guy who came along and banged his fist on the table and talked about
01:31:56masculinity, it would have got you somewhere because you have certain traits that are always going to
01:32:04make you successful to a degree, but this doesn't happen. What you've built doesn't happen. This is
01:32:12what I mean by there's wisdom in that part of us that we're afraid of. There's no doubt in my mind
01:32:17that your sensitivity, your ability to speak to people's hearts and men's hearts especially,
01:32:23has opened doors for you that would have never opened if you hadn't tapped into that side of
01:32:30yourself. I think it's why men won't just watch a podcast with you that they enjoy once. They'll be
01:32:39on the journey with you. They'll be on the journey with you for years to come because they're brought
01:32:43in to those unique pairings. Also, I hope, an underserved market because in order to be able to
01:32:52say, "I cry at Christmas movies," there's a shame that kind of comes along with that if you live
01:32:59within a particular kind of ecosystem or a particular plane of the world. Yesterday,
01:33:04a conversation with Tucker Carlson went up talking about men and masculinity. Tucker Carlson is not
01:33:09the guy to say, "I cry at Christmas movies" to, but if I can be like, "Oh, well, I'm able to hopefully
01:33:16hold my own at least with Tucker in the kind of conversation that he wants to have about men,"
01:33:22and then sit down the next day with Matthew and be like, "Yeah, man. Fucking sensitivity, dude.
01:33:30Vulnerability is real strength." I would happily, if I'd had more time, happily try to make that case,
01:33:35that thesis to Tucker even if he didn't agree with it. But I think that you're right with what you say
01:33:40about these unique pairings. What's interesting is I thought you were going to go unique pairings
01:33:46between people. I think both of these things are true. Naval's first episode is only episode on Rogan
01:33:52where he says, "You see a bear, that's kind of interesting. You see a unicycle, that's kind of
01:33:58interesting. You see a bear on a unicycle and you go, 'Wow, look at that.'" When you have hard-hitting
01:34:04philosophical insights with, "I've made some real money in the world," you go, "Oh, that's a unique
01:34:08combination." You see somebody who can crush it in the boardroom and is prepared to be a puppy dog in
01:34:13the bedroom. "Oh, that's interesting. There's tension there. There's complexity. There's layers
01:34:17and multitudes." Brilliant. Another element here is a lot of people, I think, especially the guys
01:34:27and the girls who have an issue with, let's say, sensitivity or have an issue with stoicness on
01:34:34whichever side of this equation you are, like, "I have a preference or a demeanor and my partner
01:34:38doesn't accept it or isn't able to reciprocate it." I think what you're talking about there is just a
01:34:45lack of compatibility. And so much of what is being navigated in relationships is just a straight-up
01:34:55lack of compatibility. I had this idea that it's far easier to date somebody who compensates for
01:35:02our shortcomings than it is to fix them. So if you are the sort of person that likes to go to bed at
01:35:079 p.m. and your partner wants to go out clubbing three nights a week, there is going to be tension
01:35:12there and you're going to have to navigate it. Now, maybe the rest of the relationship is so
01:35:16good that this slightly major thing of a different fucking sleeping pattern can be navigated through
01:35:22because everything else is great. But for the most part, there's going to be other stuff that comes
01:35:26along for the ride that you also don't agree on. Now, if you have to compromise your sleep
01:35:31two nights a week and they have to not go out one night a week,
01:35:36both of you aren't getting the thing that you want, right? There is somebody out there who would love
01:35:41to party three nights a week. Allow them to find them. There is someone that would adore going to
01:35:45bed with you at 9 p.m. every single night and wants that homebody life. Go and find them. And so much
01:35:51of the issues where people are trying to navigate this stuff is a lack of compatibility. Same thing
01:35:57goes for this. I think a lot of the guys who say, "I opened up to my partner." Okay, so you feel
01:36:02feelings. That's good. Congratulations. You faced the scary thing, right? As a man, you face the
01:36:06scary thing. And my partner was turned off. They weren't for you. That partner was not the person
01:36:11who can hold you in your wholeness, right? In your truth, in your full expression of who you are.
01:36:17Allow them to go and find someone who is never going to open up their emotions to them.
01:36:22They don't need to worry about those icks. They're never going to get that ick because homeboys never
01:36:26going to fucking talk about it. Enjoy that. Enjoy this emotionless, barren wasteland of no one ever
01:36:33talking about their emotions. And maybe that's the guy that if you put him on a fucking poster,
01:36:37you can say, "He's masculine and he's going to stand up." It's like, "Great. You can date him.
01:36:41I'm going to go find someone who melts at the prospect of me being able to feel my feelings
01:36:45and then allows them to be a springboard for me to go and fucking destroy it in the world outside."
01:36:50Like that amount of compatibility and so much of like the memes that exist online are basically
01:36:57people saying, "I dated someone whose demeanor and disposition did not match mine and my preference.
01:37:04And look at how everything broke apart. Allow me to create a broad rule of human nature overall
01:37:12from what is actually just you mixing vinegar and baking soda together."
01:37:17Yeah. What you just described is, I think, how people get more and more into these
01:37:25hyperpolarized echo chambers online because they've had an experience. It's been a very painful
01:37:33experience. They then go in search of other people who've had that experience and they hear more of
01:37:39it. And I'm not saying communities where people talk together about what they've been through
01:37:44aren't powerful because they are. But what it can be instead is this... I talk in my book about this
01:37:53idea of the wall, like staring at the wall, the very famous self-development trope. The race car
01:38:01driver Mario Andretti said his advice for race car driving, "Don't stare at the wall. Your car goes
01:38:09where your eyes go." But I don't think people take that concept far enough in terms of what it really
01:38:17means. We all have our wall. Let's say women don't like when I'm vulnerable. That's my wall. I was
01:38:28vulnerable with someone once and they ripped my heart out. And so now I go in search of other
01:38:34people who have that wall as well. And all of us together stand there and point at the wall.
01:38:40And we keep talking about the wall. And we find more evidence for the wall. Everywhere we can find
01:38:47it. We go out and search for it. Anytime we hear a story about it, we say, "Here, look, this has
01:38:51happened again." And the wall becomes the world. It's no longer a wall. It's a law. It's life. Yeah.
01:38:58And that's the truly dangerous part. Anytime I hear women generalizing about men, men generalizing
01:39:11about women, I'm like, "Be very, very careful of the little worlds that you get into." Turning an
01:39:19individual experience into a globalized law. The other day I was on Instagram. My algorithm
01:39:27fed me a guy, one of those little skit videos where it was a guy saying, "Me doing XYZ because
01:39:36I don't have kids." So it was like me waking up at 8 a.m. because I don't have me eating pizza at
01:39:43night. Me checking my bank account that's so high because I don't have kids. It was like all of that.
01:39:48And there were thousands of comments on this. And I was waiting for that. I was like, "Oh,
01:39:54and people are going to be tearing the sky to shreds in the comments about how this is such
01:39:59a one-dimensional view and blah, blah, blah." No. Thousands of comments from people just being like,
01:40:05"Yeah, me too. I don't have to do anything on my weekends." I'm facing the wall along with you.
01:40:12Yeah. But it was just like everyone who had that wall, apparently the algorithm found them.
01:40:16It picked you wrong. You're ready to pop at the moment.
01:40:21For sure. Yeah. In the next couple of weeks. But it's a funny thing for me as someone who
01:40:27is having my first child with my wife who's watching this and going...
01:40:35And by the way, looking at it and going, "I know that there was a me that was scared of commitment
01:40:40and having kids and all of that." That really would have related to the things in this video.
01:40:45Well, the problem that you have with these is that there is a cohort of men out there
01:40:50for whom that is the life that they want and probably is the life that they should lead.
01:40:55You're like, "You'd suck as a dad and you shouldn't make yourself one. Please continue to do that."
01:41:02Right? It's the same as women that say all men are trash or whatever. If you make these
01:41:07sweeping statements, one of the wonderful ways to neutralize the conversation, and also it makes you
01:41:14feel pretty good too. It's like men are trash and I'm done with men. It's like, "Okay, feel free."
01:41:19And you allow somebody to take the route that they want. The same thing with that guy. It's like,
01:41:23"I'm so happy living this life." It's like, "Dude, great for you. You'd have been an awful dad anyway."
01:41:27"Okay, well, which one is it, big boy? Which one do you want? Do you want to be able to have
01:41:35the counterculture fucking black sheep heterodox cynicism points? Or do you want to be able to say
01:41:43that you could have been this, would have been good at this, but have chosen the other one?"
01:41:48I don't think that these two worlds are compatible. And allowing someone to like,
01:41:52"There's enough rope, dude. Crack on."
01:41:55Yeah, well, we don't like the complexity of life. And so we do kind of gravitate towards
01:42:02this very simple argument. When I was single, I remember watching Guardians of the Galaxy,
01:42:09the first one, and seeing Chris Pratt playing Star-Lord. And it became like this emotional
01:42:16button for me for why being single was awesome. Because of his renegades.
01:42:22Yeah, I was like, "Yeah, I'm Star-Lord."
01:42:24So stupid. But you know how these funny things get in our head and they make sense to... We're like,
01:42:33"Yeah, how great is it?" And I get it. I really understand it. It makes a lot of
01:42:39sense to me why we do those things. Now that I'm having a child, I'm looking at finding Nemo
01:42:46and going like, "Oh, that movie's now got a whole new meaning to me and how exciting to..."
01:42:51So I get it. I get why we... It's a kind of survival mechanism. It's also a coping mechanism.
01:42:58That we go to these places to lean into our choices or to our lack of choices. And so I get it.
01:43:10But it's a very dangerous... We're living in a really dangerous time, belief-wise,
01:43:18where your algorithm will really pull you into these little worlds of people who all have the
01:43:27same wall that you do and celebrate it together. And in some ways, those are exactly the kind of
01:43:35people sometimes that you need to be able to stand back from. Because the people... When I want to go
01:43:41somewhere different than where I've been, the people I want to be around are people who don't
01:43:46have my wall at all. They're not even aware of my wall. If I explained my wall to them,
01:43:54they'd be like, "What? Wait, really? You've had that experience or you feel that way or whatever?"
01:43:59It's not real to them. And I had a boxing trainer who told me a story of going into...
01:44:10This was in London. He was training a lawyer. And this lawyer took a shine to him and was like,
01:44:18"Come out for a drink one night." And he took him somewhere really nice.
01:44:25And he takes this rough-and-ready boxing coach from the east end of London into the west end,
01:44:31and they go out to this really beautiful place in Soho. And he's at the bar. And my boxing trainer,
01:44:39the guy that I know, is explaining the story to me. He said, "I was standing at the bar.
01:44:42And all of a sudden, this guy that my client, who's just taken me out for a drink,
01:44:48looks at me and says, 'What's wrong with you?'" And my friend went, "What do you mean?"
01:44:54He goes, "What's wrong with you? You look like you're about to fight someone."
01:44:57And he said what he realized in that moment was that he had walked into this bar
01:45:03immediately scanning for threats and was looking for like, "Who's the person making bad eye contact
01:45:14with me who's got mean intentions towards me?" And by the way, this boxing trainer is a sweetheart.
01:45:20He's a sweet inside. He's a softie. You get him talking about emotions, he'll talk.
01:45:24But something happened. He went into that bar and he started looking for the wall because he's a guy
01:45:32that's grown up around in a rough time, rough childhood. He's had some things. He's like looking
01:45:39for that threat. And this guy, this lawyer who's just boxing for fun, is like looking at him going,
01:45:45"I've brought you to a nice place. We're having a nice drink at the bar. And you're standing there
01:45:49like you're about to fight someone. Like what's going on with you?" But there's so much getting
01:45:56around someone. Did you see that clip of Shohei Ohtani when it was like three months ago or
01:46:04something? By the way, I'm going to say this as someone who knows nothing about baseball. So for
01:46:08all you baseball fans... I know everything about baseball, so it's fine. Okay, good. You could
01:46:11correct me along the way. Forgive me for butchering the rules of baseball. But I assume there is some
01:46:19scenario where throwing at the batsman actually makes sense in terms of like actually launching
01:46:28the ball at their body. Okay. Actually makes sense. Okay. Yeah. If you want to walk them. It's a foul
01:46:33ball. Yeah. So the pitcher just launches it, Ohtani. And he turns around and it cracks him on the back.
01:46:44And I'm only watching this clip with the commentators, but there's this really interesting
01:46:49moment where all of his teammates, they've already got one leg over the wall of the dugout where
01:46:55they're about to rush the field and start fighting someone. And he just stands them down. In this very
01:47:03classy way, he just says like, "No, no, no." I got it. And the whole team stands down. And the
01:47:10commentators are just like this. I remember it because I thought it was such a beautiful moment.
01:47:16He goes, "This is why this guy is going to be a legend." He transcends the sport. This is something
01:47:24that a normal thing, the team would rush out and then his teammates just stand down because he's
01:47:30like, "I'm fine." He makes nothing of it. And there was a guy, I read the comments and there was a guy
01:47:35in the comments who was like, "I'm a hothead and this is exactly the kind of situation that I would
01:47:46have turned into something." And he said, "Watching this is an example of a different path. This has
01:47:53taught me so much." And what you have is a guy who knows what his wall is, but he's watching another
01:48:03guy who doesn't have that wall. He hasn't got that thing that says, "Someone just wronged me.
01:48:10Let me turn this into a fight." It's all good. You have to get around people who don't even
01:48:20buy into your frame of reference because those are the people that are going to take you into
01:48:25new worlds. Those are the people that make you realize there's no one reality. There's so many
01:48:32different realities. And get around people who, by being around them and by understanding the way they
01:48:40think and the way they process things, it puts you in a different reality altogether. There is a
01:48:45difference between being around people who teach you stuff from a different perspective and being
01:48:50around people that you can't be yourself around. There's a difference between education and
01:48:56incompatibility. Dude, I love you. I love your work. I think you're fantastic. Everyone needs to check
01:49:02out everything that you're doing. You're going to have a kid by the time this comes out as well.
01:49:06You're going to have a brand new little hussy in the world. It's a crazy time, man. My whole life
01:49:12will change in a matter of the next two weeks from this episode. I said my wife already, she's at
01:49:18term, so it could have happened. I could have got that call in the middle of this podcast to say,
01:49:23"It's time to go to the hospital." But I love you too, brother. I get excited about the
01:49:30conversations we have. I think you're doing something really, really different. You know
01:49:35I feel that way. I think you're doing something special and you're special and it's something
01:49:40unique you're bringing to the world. So thanks for having me. I appreciate you. Until next time, man.
01:49:44Thank you very much for tuning in. A very deep conversation with Matthew. I loved it. I thought
01:49:51it was great. I really hope you enjoyed it. Mel Robbins, also just phenomenal. You need
01:49:56to go and watch her. So hurry up. It's great.