Good Life Project - Stop Trying to “win” in Your Relationships, Do This Instead to Be Happy | Yung Pueblo

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Have you ever struggled to build truly fulfilling connections? In this profound conversation, bestselling author Yung Pueblo (How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion) reveals life-changing insights on healing yourself to transform your relationships. Discover how overcoming attachment, communicating with understanding, and balancing intimacy with independence can open the door to authentic bonds.You can find Yung Pueblo at: Website | Instagram | Episode TranscriptIf you LOVED this episode, you’ll also love the conversations we had with Yung Pueblo about finding clarity and connection in life.Check out our offerings & partners: Join My New Writing Project: Awake at the WheelVisit Our Sponsor Page For Great Resources & Discount CodesADHA Aha! is a podcast hosted by Laura Key that explores pivotal moments when people realized they or their loved ones have ADHD, sharing both touching and humorous stories of ADHD discovery. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, I'm here because I've been lying to myself. Like I'm on the floor right now because I just didn't want to admit that I didn't feel good. When you have a very big reaction to a particular emotion, all that stuff gets imprinted in the mind and it's reflected in the body. Have you ever wondered how to break free from old patterns and truly deepen your connections? Today, New York Times bestselling author, poet, and renowned speaker, Young Pueblo, shares powerful insights from his latest book, How to Love Better, revealing how healing yourself first is the key to transforming every relationship in your life.

I went into meditating because I needed to save myself. Things only improve when I gather the courage to just feel them. But it's also just helpful to be able to feel emotions without necessarily giving them a narrative every single time. One of the other things you're right in the context of attachment also the greatest enemy of love is attachment because it tries to disguise itself as love. When we try to approach our relationships with attachment we're literally squeezing the life out of the relationship. Girl Life Project is sponsored by Aveeno Baby. So you know there's something remarkable

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So ready to start your journey with Avino Baby? Learn more at avino.ca. It's been a minute since last we connected here and we talked back then a bit about your backstory, a bit about love and relationships because that's, you know, really fundamental part of your story and who you are. And it seems like in the last couple of years, this has really taken a front seat, a deep dive into really trying to understand what is this thing that happens between people. I'm curious what, was there an inciting incident for this or was it just a gradual evolution that said like, I think it's time to start going deeper into this

and maybe write about it more? Yeah, there was two things. There was definitely a moment of shock. I think when I started meditating, I went into meditating because I needed to save myself. I needed to find a way to really sort of reformat my mind and almost hit a reset because I had been working towards developing better habits

and I had already started towards developing better habits and had been already started that self-love journey and this was before the self-love word even erupted into the world. But I was improving my habits but I still felt the heaviness of mind and I went into meditating as an opportunity to see, let's see what happens. I have nothing to lose. And I was shocked that the same skills that I was developing to really help myself, you know, compassion, understanding, listening, patience, acceptance, that immediately

those skills transferred and I was able to use them almost to like start a new chapter in my relationship. That where I was personally able to show up better. And as my wife started her own journey with meditating, she saw the same thing. But so I knew that this, there was an upbridge there, but I wanted to, instead of immediately writing a whole book on it, a whole nonfiction book,

I wanted to wait and see, I wanted to see how building our self-awareness was going to continue developing and enhancing our relationship. And I also needed time as a writer to continue just like, you know, I was working only in the poetry and prose format and like short essays back then when we first talked and I needed the time to just, you know,

learn how to write chapters. Like, you know, what really like is clear writing and that takes time to develop. Yeah, I mean, it is really interesting that time thing a couple of years back I had the opportunity to sit down with Daniel Kahneman who you know this legendary behavioral economist and researcher and with this massive book thinking fast and slow and we were talking about a book that he had worked on called noise at the time and Later in the conversation we're talking about some of the ideas of it And he kind of started hedging on some of the ideas in it.

And I was kind of like, I asked some version of what's going on here. And he looks at me and he's like, I wrote the book too soon. And he's saying this about a book that's out there. And then the sentence that came after it floored me. He's like, I've only been working on this topic for about five years and you need a good 20 years

before you're ready to write a book. And I'm just like, oh man, I'm completely busted because nothing I've written, no book I've written have taken 20 years to really digest things. But in truth, it feels like this is something where maybe you've been focusing on the form for four or five years or something like that. But the topic and the practices and the skills,

this has been a part of your life for a really long time now. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, you know, the relationship with my wife. I think we've been together now for 17, 18 years, and we've been meditating now for almost 10 of those years. And it's, no, a little more, I think actually 12. And it's been a long journey,

and it's honestly been nice to be able to see the two different sides of our relationship because the old part of our relationship before we started meditating was quite chaotic. It felt like we were living in a hurricane together and we were really fortunate to be able to, you know, build the emotional skillset

that it needs to be able to even hold a relationship, to be able to hold your own tension and not immediately project it onto another person and place the blame, which is what the mind really likes to do. It just doesn't really want to accept responsibility for itself. Yeah, I mean it's interesting also, right,

because you, tell me if I remember this story, right, you came to the practice sooner. There was a whole bunch of stuff kind of crashing and burning in your life. You ended up somehow stepping into the practice and embracing it, it was making real changes, and then she came to it after. I'm always really curious about the synchronization of this also, because I've seen so often, especially in romantic partners and life partners,

when one person comes to something that just in some way reaches deep inside of them and starts to incite change, and the other person quite isn't there yet. And of course we know we can't push another person to get there. Like is there a gap that forms simply because of that, that sometimes you have to figure out how to close or how not to close, how to leave open, and maybe even form a chasm that splits people apart? Yeah, I think it's really challenging where there's

a lot of different varieties because every individual has such different conditioning. So like what works for me may not necessarily work for you. You know, I say this to people all the time, like I really love meditating, but it's not necessarily right for every single human on earth. You know, some people would better benefit from therapy

or whatnot, there's so many different modalities out there. I was fortunate that we learned about it at the same time. When one of my best friends, Sam, wrote to us about it, I told Sarah about the email, we talked about it. I ended up signing up to a course and was so excited to hear about the great benefits that Sam got and how important he saw that love, compassion, and goodwill are.

I was curious about it because I wanted to taste that and see if it would affect my life positively too. The issue that arose was that I was able to do a course in July of 2012, but Sarah was not able to do her first course until March of 2013. And the tough part about it was not that I had to convince her or anything like that. She innately within herself felt really called to it

and really wanted to do it, but she had just started a new job and she had to just wait. And she was just pissed off about it. It was just like, she saw me go, she saw me get benefits and she's like, I wanna do this, you know? And it was interesting because when she went to her first course,

that's when I did my third one. And I remember that she found it challenging as well, but she had a whole different set of challenges. Like I spent the whole first course thinking about how I wanted to leave, and she was calmly there just facing herself. So she was in some ways just very ready for it and had to wait a little bit.

I actually just love the idea of being pissed off about the fact that you can't start meditating like way, it's like. That's literally what those nine months were like. Yeah. Let's dive into some of the ideas in this new book here. And one of the opening moves is really this notion, and this I'm going to quote you back to you, love is not something small, it's the energy of love that often changes lives and even history. There's a bigness that you really bring to the conversation around love. Take me into this.

Yeah, I feel like love, when we use that word, it will denote anything that we feel is really important. So that can be an idea, a person, just something. I love this TV show, I love these set of values, whatever it could be, but it shows how much we really feel for a particular thing. And I think we've seen that where people will just rise to a whole different occasion to

be able to keep living in love. And I think I've seen that in my own relationship where it was like, we were together, but we didn't know how to care for each other. We wanted to maintain our love and we wanted to be able to hold each other better, but we didn't know how to care for each other. We wanted to maintain our love, and we wanted to be able to hold each other better, but we were in this constant stream of arguments because we just didn't know how to take care of ourselves as individuals. And I think that was one of the initial energies that pushed us into even having the strength to be able to see ourselves and keep digging deeper. And we did it for ourselves as individuals, but we kept seeing the results in our relationship. And that was definitely something that kept encouraging us

to go back to keep doing longer meditation courses and benefiting from it. But I see it throughout all of, I don't know, history. Like I love studying history, and I find that people are always moving together around a set of values that are usually humanistic. Like they want people to live in more compassionate fields, for people to get education and schooling and medicine.

I think people move together to try to make things better. And I find that a lot of our society is built on the framework of our personal relationships. And I think that's why I wanted to really focus in on how to love better because I really feel like there is so much that happens in the home and how we're able to communicate with each other in the home, care for each other in the home,

the people that benefit from the nourishment in the home or the kids that are raised in the home, I think that ripples out into society in a really big way. Yeah, so agree with that. And probably makes sense to frame the word love a little bit here in the context of this conversation. So I think the thing that pops into most people's minds when they first hear is, oh, romantic love, like rom-com love.

It's like the thing that happens. And yes, that's a part of it. But there's a broader context of love. There are different dimensions, different styles's a broader context of love and like there there are different dimensions different styles types aspects of love so when you actually use the word love take me a little bit more into what you actually mean by that there's a few different manners and I think the main ones I think like I said earlier it's something that's very important to you but it's also a form of clarity where you can see yourself

and another person well, and that clarity is usually imbued with compassion. So when I think about love, the apex of love, which is like unconditional love, and that's what you get from people who have really spent a lot of time cultivating themselves, you know, not just like the sort of the higher archetypes of like Jesus in the Buddha, but like so many people throughout history. Like monks and nuns people who spend a lot of time just cultivating themselves and shifting from a framework of ego to a framework of compassion where they are really seeing you with this dense sense of self but they're really allowing themselves to view the world in a way where they see no one as an enemy. in a way where they see no one as an enemy. Like to me, that's sort of a higher level of love.

And I think the relationship of that is that in our intimate relationships, we get an opportunity to practice unconditional love, where it's not going to be perfect, but we have these moments where we get to practice selflessness, where we get to practice giving, where we get to practice stepping outside of our perspective

to see the perspective of another person. It almost feels like training ground to be able to get a taste of unconditional love. It's never going to be perfect because asking someone to be unconditionally loving is asking someone to reach the pinnacle of human evolution from my perspective.

It's very, very hard, but it's good to practice it at times. It is such an interesting phrase, unconditional love, too, right? Because that is, you know, quote, always put on the pedestal as the ultimate aspiration. And it's often pointed to as, well, like, this is what you get from a parent or a grandparent. And A, oftentimes people don't actually get that from a parent

or a grandparent or a caretaker. They sometimes actually get the exact opposite. Yeah. And it is interesting, right? Because you point to these, like you said, Jesus, Buddha, like, these sort of iconic representations of this feeling of unconditional love, and then we hold ourselves up to this aspiration,

I'm gonna work towards this. And on the one hand, what a cool aspiration to move toward. And on the other hand, it's also a little bit the definition of suffering. Because most of us will never achieve that. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a long road and I think a lot of meditators who have spent a lot of time you know, putting many tens of thousands of hours

into their mind, cultivating their minds, it's a path that who knows how long it will take, you know, it may not necessarily be one lifetime, it could be multiple lifetimes of you cultivating these values, cultivating these specific character types in your mind to be able to exist without ego. Like that's a big ask of a human being because we're so ego dominated.

And we see our perspective as so much bigger than this perspective of others. But I think it's nice to have that idea as something that's possible. But even then, whether you're interested in cultiv something that's possible, but even then whether you're interested in cultivating that or not, there's still steps that you can take to overcome the past pain that you carry in your mind that affects your behaviors today and the way that your past can make your perception

really cloudy or self-centered and training yourself. Because when you enter a relationship, that mirror is so big, it will clearly show you what you're good at and what you're not good at. And I remember entering, you know, being in my relationship with my wife, and I can see, oh, well, I'm not that good at listening. I need to improve my patience and, you know,

not be so reactive. So it's like seeing all these aspects of myself, and I'm like, well, it's time to practice. Like, it's time to put energy into specifically cultivating those qualities that'll, you know, help me show a better and not relationship. all these aspects of myself and I'm like, well, it's time to practice. It's time to put energy into specifically cultivating those qualities that'll help me show up better in our relationship. I think for me, often the aspiration is more just,

how can I show up in the most loving way that feels accessible to me in this moment? And sometimes it doesn't feel accessible at all. But at least if I ask the question, if you plant the seed, you're like, all right, maybe I can pause for a heartbeat and just examine how I'm actually stepping into this moment or interaction. And maybe there is some way that I can just somehow be slightly more open-hearted in the

way that I'm doing it. Maybe not at the end of the day, but I find just pausing and asking that question often changes things. Even if it's in a subtle way, it's a meaningful way. I'm curious whether you have practices like that. Yeah, I mean, whenever we're entering a tense moment, like whether I'm entering a tense moment, like with my wife or, you know, with family members or whatever it is,

I'm asking myself, like, what can I let go of? Like, what am I really holding on to that's creating tension in my own mind and could potentially create even more friction in the interpersonal moment? And then I find, I had this interesting moment the other day where it's like, I had this tension in my mind about having a specific person view me in a specific way. And I knew that I was being misunderstood.

And then I thought to myself, I was like, wait, I was like, I'm hanging on to a view. And I remember like, you know, part of the Buddhist teaching is talking so much about how the attachment to views creates suffering, right? It creates division. And I'm like, why am I holding on to this? Like this is not even this view that I'm holding on to is not permanent. Like it's fully impermanent and also just one side of the picture.

And I remember realizing that and just feeling the tension evaporate in my mind was just like wow Like I've been hanging on to this like invisible tension, but I'm always trying to see like why am I hanging on? It's such a great question to ask I'm gonna I'm gonna noodle on that one a little bit also And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors Good life project is sponsored by the podcast ADHD aha hosted by Laura key after a word from our sponsors. is how it illuminates ADHD in a way we don't usually talk about it. Through intimate conversations, Laura's guests share stories about living with impulse spending, wrestling with decision-making, and navigating social anxiety. Listening to Jessica McCabe's episode about motherhood and ADHD medication opened my eyes to perspectives I'd never considered.

So whether ADHD is part of your story or not, these authentic narratives offer powerful insights that can shift how you see the world. To listen to ADHD AHA, search for ADHD AHA in your podcast app. That's ADHD AHA with AHA spelled A-H-A. One of the things that you dip into also fairly early on in this new book is this notion of maybe I'm not going to use this as before, like not necessarily a precondition, but like there is an importance to actually being able to love yourself. You asked the question, are you a friend to your own emotions? Take me into this.

I think it's so fundamental, like whether you're with someone or whether you're, you know, just being able to live within yourself, it's so important to have that courage to be able to just face the ups and downs of your own emotions. I found that my life became havoc, like became so geared towards unhealthy habits of mind and body when I was running away from my emotions. And things only improve when I gather the courage to just feel them, to just be able to feel them. It's valuable to look into your emotions and see why they're there, what the patterns are,

where they came from, are they originated from childhood or whatnot. And those things can help, but it's also just helpful to be able to feel emotions without necessarily giving them a narrative every single time. And I think that's what I found early on because, you know, I had an in my rock bottom moment in the summer of 2011, I realized that I had been pushing myself with drugs and alcohol so much because I just was afraid to feel anxiety.

I was afraid to feel sadness. And when I almost lost my life that one night, I understood, I was like, oh, I'm here because I've been lying to myself. I'm on the floor right now because I just didn't want to admit that I didn't feel good. And then fast forward a week later, you know, luckily I'm still alive and I'm at home

and I feel that strong feeling again, that feeling of like tension coming up in my body and my mind. And I knew that originally, that normally I would go and roll up another joint. But I was like, no, I can't do that anymore. So let me just sit on my bed, you know, and I was just sitting there with my eyes open, feeling my mind and my body, and I would feel the tension, the sadness. And I'm like, I'm fine. I'm okay. I don't like how it feels.

But it's not this scary demon because before it would feel like, you know, when you're a child and you're like trying to go to sleep and you look at the shadows and the walls and it feels like a giant, you know, scary thing. And I realized that it doesn't feel good, but I'm all right. And I think cultivating that ability to just stay in the truth of your emotions to honor that they're even there, that's going to help you in every facet of your life. And it's also, if you do ever go into a partnership,

it's gonna help you be there during the tough moments, because that gives you direct practice. You being there during your own difficulty, during your own down moments, helps you have a little more resilience during arguments. Yeah, that makes so much sense. It's really interesting also is you're describing that, the phrase spiritual bypassing has been interesting,

sort of like part of the conversation on spirituality. But what just popped into my head is like, I feel like we have the phenomenon of emotional bypassing, just on an individual level. What you're describing is like, okay, so I just want to bypass this emotion, but it's two-sided, right? Because what you described here is saying, okay, so I just want to bypass this emotion. But it's two-sided, right? Because what you described here is saying, I don't want to feel this.

I want to bypass the experience of this emotion. That's one part of it. But I'm curious, what about like, in my mind, there's this other mode of, let's call it emotional bypassing, right? Which is, okay, I'm going to let myself feel it for a hot second. And then as soon as I feel it, rather than just sitting in it, I'm going let myself feel it for a hot second. And then as soon as I feel it, rather than just sitting in it, I'm going to go to cognitively, what does this mean?

Like how do I interpret this? So it's almost like we immediately try and psychoanalyze the feeling rather than just being in it. I mean, what's your take on that? My take is I wrote a poem about this, I think it's in Clarity and Connection somewhere, but the main idea of it was about how your healing My take is, I wrote a poem about this, I think it's in Clarity and Connection somewhere, but the main idea of it was about how your healing

is more so going to happen in your ability to feel your truth as opposed to thinking about your truth. And I think it's really fundamental. I feel like what, everything that happens when you have a very big reaction to a particular emotion, all that stuff gets imprinted in the mind and it's reflected in the body. So ultimately, you know, when we hear something, and this is part of the Buddhist teaching as well, when you hear something and you don't like what you're hearing, you're not necessarily

reacting to what you're hearing. You're reacting to how that thing makes you feel like physically feel in the body. So a lot of our problems in terms of being in the present moment and accepting something that's agreeable or disagreeable is in the act of like having the resilience to feel whatever's happening physically. And I think it's an important lesson because sometimes like things will happen and memory is very murky. Like it's so murky, so it's hard to know

exactly what happened when you were seven years old. But you do know how it felt and you do know the feelings that you like and you don't like. So I think it's valuable to have an understanding of where your patterns are coming from. But if you really want healing, you gotta get really good at feeling. I think it may have been in Pema Chodron,

in her book, Comfortable with Uncertainty, just all these short little aphorisms where she told the story. So I think it's kind of one of these classic Buddhist parables also, where there's the teacher who's got a thousand monks assembled and sharing teachings, and just in the middle, just holds a flower up.

And all the other monks are like, oh, this means this, oh, this means this, oh, this means this, oh, this means this, and trying to understand, what does it mean? Why is he holding up the flower? And then one is just sitting there with this just gracious smile on his face, just experiencing the beauty of the flower.

And I think this is what we're talking about. It's not just the negative emotions that we need to experience, but often we bypass the good ones also, and immediately we're like, what is this saying? Like how do I, rather than just being in it. Yeah, and this also just points to the fact that there is no future and no past, right?

Like we're swimming back into the past, but the echoes of the past are felt in the feelings of the present. So if you really want to deal with what happened in the past, you have to feel it right now. That's where the moment really is. And I think that's ultimately a lot of the training.

It's like, am I okay in this moment of boredom? Am I okay in this moment of whatever's happening? Am I present in this joyful moment? And I think that requires a little bit of mental training. Does this go back to the yearly part of our conversation? Because I think the question on somebody's mind hearing this is like, okay, I get that and it makes sense to me. What is that training?

And it sounds like your take is, well, for me it's meditation, but each person kind of has to figure out what it is for them. Is that right or would you have a different take? I think it's exactly that. And I would only add that whatever method it is, it's going to require repetition, because that's what the mind is. The mind is a series of patterns that have been repeated over and over again. And if you want to build a new way of being, you got to repeat it. And I would think back to the moments, you know, is that I love meditating and it's helped me develop particular qualities like, you know, awareness, non reaction and compassion.

I think of meditating as the mental gym. Like, I literally take myself to the gym, and I'm cultivating these qualities. But other than that, there are other moments in life where, like, when I realized that I was bad at listening, what would I do? I would literally take my attention, whenever I would go way back into my own ideas,

or think about, you know, what am I going to retort back, I would take my attention and move it back to what the person's words. And this would be back and forth, back and forth. And now over time, it's just become a little easier because you're just literally building a muscle. Yeah, I think that makes so much sense. And we are such a instant outcome oriented culture

that it's a bit of a foreign notion for most people to say, wait a minute, so you want me to do whatever the thing is and then repeat it and maybe it'll take months, maybe it'll take years, maybe it'll take decades to really deepen into the quote, the benefit of it. And they're like, dude, just give me the app instead. I know, it's the pain, the pain of the apps.

I think it's so insidious in our culture, and I don't know if enough people are really talking about how all of our apps are geared towards faster and easier, faster and easier, and you're not gonna like Uber and DoorDash your way into happiness. That's just not how it works. You know, like real fundamental happiness where you have access to joy, where you feel content,

where you feel some degree of peace, where you can like literally live in your own energy. Those are all things that you have to develop over time. You have to literally put effort into them and you know, your personal growth, enhancing your relationship, they're slow and beautiful things. So you have to be okay with it being slow.

It's just like going on a long hike. It's just gonna take time. Yeah, I love the hike analogy, by the way. I can't remember whether we were living, I'm in Boulder, Colorado now, and I can't remember where the last time we talked, I was in New York or I was already out here already. But it's funny, I hike on a regular basis here,

literally outside my front door, some of the most beautiful trails, the front range of the Rocking Downs. And I just get, and I hike often alone. So I'm out there with nature and solitude. And I just take my time, like I'm not there to get the hike done. Yeah, exactly.

You know, I'm there actually just to be there. So, and then every once in a while, I'll have a friend from New York come visit, and they're like, let's go hike. And they want to know the route, and they want to know how long it is. And then it's like, they're constantly checking, like how far into the route are we?

You know, like, we got to get the hike done. And I'm like, that's actually not what it's about. But we are, it literally took me years, I think, to start to unwire that just by being out here to a certain extent, but we are just so wired, not to experience the thing, but to get it done. That's really true. One of the things that you explore also

is this notion of attachment. You write attachment as a deep form of inflexibility. I thought that was a really interesting frame. Take me into this. And we're talking about old school attachment, not like attachment theory and all that. When I think of attachment, I really see it as the craving to have things happen

in a very certain way. And wanting your loved ones to be a certain way, wanting particular outcomes to happen, and to be attached literally means that you have to be static, you have to be inflexible. You are not allowing more opportunities to arise, you're just trying to force things to happen in a certain way.

Now we all carry these attachments in our minds and the tricky thing is that these attachments, they'll manifest as the attempt to control in daily life and they can even go further into manipulation, coercion. I mean, they can really take manifest into pretty, you know, negative behaviors. So we have to understand that if you want to live a happy life, and if you want to have a harmonious relationship,

you have to work with the universe and not against it. What that means is our universe is ever flowing change. We're literally just flowing forward as a gigantic river where everything is changing at the atomic level, the biological level, the cosmological level, everything's in motion. So if you're static, if you're being inflexible, if you're hanging to particular ways of things to be,

then life is gonna hurt. Life is gonna be quite hard because we have to understand that we don't have control over our loved ones. When we try to approach our relationships with attachment, we're literally squeezing the life out of the relationship. So we have to be quite mindful of that. Are there any, I'm curious,

are there any particular moments or experiences, tough points in a relationship that you can recall where you're like, oh, I'm deep in grasping mode here and sort of like consciously said, what happened if I let go? It meaningfully changed the nature of the relationship, the interaction. I think it's, I mean, it happens often.

I think the mind just jumps into attachment so quickly where it's like, oh, this is the ideal outcome for me. You know, this is what I would like to see this person do. I remember like a key moment was sort of with my little sister when she was applying to university and was, you know, doing her applications. I just like had my own experience of it and all I could really relay at the time was like,

oh, this is how you do it. This is what you want to do. This is how many places you should apply to. And I never stopped to ask how she wanted to be supported. You know, I didn't stop. And that was a mistake. And I remember recalling that and being like, wow, I was only I was arriving with this like really attached way of how things should be instead of just approaching the moment with curiosity and asking her like, what do you want to happen? How can I help you? As opposed to, I know everything.

Yeah, did you ever talk to her about that? Or just say, hey listen, can I step into this differently? How can I support you? Yeah, I mean we've talked about it since, but this is sort of the old version of us. We're much more grown up now, so this was, she's like 27 now, I think this was when she was 17, so 10 years ago, so like the best version of myself.

Yeah, but it is interesting, right? Because that was, this was a decade ago, and that story's still in your mind. Yeah, and you know, and we've talked a lot since about, because it's interesting, and you must imagine this with, I mean, people have this with their siblings all the time where you have certain relationships with them. And part of the issue was like, I'm 10 years older than her.

So she was a baby for such a long time. And then actually seeing her as an adult, like took some mental training where it was like, oh, right, like we don't have to like fully take care of her all the time. And she has very valuable opinions. And like, you know, we should really take heed what she says because she's a smart individual and I think that was something that we've been talking about and it's like you know just recreating our friendships as

siblings. Yeah it is such an interesting phenomenon right how we tend to freeze people in time especially people who are really close to us who we've known for a long time. We're sort of like no like you're still 17 until something happens. Maybe 20 years later, we're like, oh wait, the person standing in front of me right now is really different human being than the person like that was before me 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And I guess it's a form of attachment, right? Like we're literally attaching to the future representation of who they used to be and then like transposing that

into the present and responding to that like old representation rather than just saying, who's right in front of me? Yeah, and I think that's another way to work with the universe instead of against it is like, you know, when you're talking with your partner or with your roommates or your family members and you're, you know, whomever you're in proximity to, you're going to have a very big relationship with. So whoever's closest to you, like they're going to see the best of you, they're going

to see the worst of you. So I think having these conversations to see how do we care for each other? How do we support each other? They're really valuable, but it's also important to realize that what happened, the conversation that you had about it two years ago is not necessarily going to be valid today because things keep changing, like their preferences are gonna evolve over time. I think owning that, the fact that, like how I cared for you a few years ago,

it's not gonna be the same today. Yeah, I feel like sometimes we are more open, we kind of look at ourselves as ever-evolving beasts, but we don't look at others around us. We're like, oh, I'm capable of growth and change and evolution. But those other people, they are who they are. They don't change. Maybe we should point the finger back at us there. And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. One of the other things you write,

in the context of attachment, also the greatest enemy of love is attachment because it tries to disguise itself as love. Take me into this a bit more. I think that's sort of the old way that we saw relationships where things were much more expectation based, that you do this, you do that, and we have this sort of pretty binary relationship about like, you know, what the roles are and how we're

doing things. I think nowadays when people like so many people have spent a lot of time focusing on their personal growth. And because of that, this like sort of giant wellness movement self love movement that's happened over the past 10 years. I think it's then helped people cultivate themselves, but then that's shined a big light on relationships and how can we grow relationships? How can growth itself become a part of relationships? And I think when you're approaching relationships through the lens of attachment,

attachments get really sneaky where parents will think that they know what's best for their child and their child should absolutely be a doctor because they can see the traits that they would be really good at it, but maybe the child doesn't want to do that at all. And that's sort of like the common example, but that happens in all facets where we think we know

and we think it feels like love, but you're actually just totally subtracting the freedom from the equation, and what a person needs is to be heard. Maybe they want some advice, but they don't want you making decisions for them. Nobody likes that. Yeah, and we'll tell ourselves,

oh, but look, I'm just doing this because I love you so much. Exactly. And that's not doubting the fact that you may in fact love that other person that much, but the behavior actually isn't about that often. It's about our own anxiety, about the fact that things aren't going to stay still, things aren't going to stay safe, things aren't going to be the way that they are.

And if I let this person make this decision, maybe it's the right thing for them, maybe it's the wrong thing for them, but we confuse their suffering from whatever the outcome is of their decisions with our anxiety that we'll experience when we observe like vicariously participate in that suffering. And we don't want to feel that. It's funny too, going back to the earlier part of our conversation, that would be another

really good question to ask ourselves when we feel tension in the mind is like not only where can I let go, but like am I coming from a place of fear? Because I find that so often whenever someone wants to really do something risky, I think, you know, it was really, I found it quite challenging when I first started writing

and, you know, friends were learning about that I was gonna spend time writing as opposed to like getting another job at a nonprofit. People were like, what are you doing? You know, like that's so and then it was coming from a place of care. Like they wanted me to be okay and they wanted, you know, like for me to just not like waste my time. And I understand that. But it's also important to support people in their risk, especially if they're like calculated risk.

And, you know, they have a good plan about it and all that, but we don't want to just like push people back into like a sense of normalcy just because we're afraid and we want them to not stray too far from the herd. Yeah, no, I so agree with that. And I think there's this overarching desire for us to like we want to feel connected to people that are close to us in our lives. We want to feel that sense of emotional connection. And the more emotionally connected we feel with them, the more we tend to experience what they're feeling as our own. I mean, that's

sort of like the definition of empathy, right? So it's like compassion is understanding it and then having an altruistic instinct to help in some way, but that can sometimes also lead to a misguided altruistic instinct. We think we're doing the helpful thing, but in fact, we're causing harm by just trying to lock down possibilities for that person. Yeah, that's really true. I wonder too, I've been thinking a lot about how one of my big goals this year has been to be able to be cognizant of what's needed from me in an interpersonal situation, but still live in my own energy.

So it's being able to feel empathy, and I don't even know if it has a name, but being able to feel the empathy, feel what another person's feeling, but not get sucked into what they're feeling, not get like, you know, because a lot of people there, they will, like emotions like to spread. So I find that people will invite you to join them into their anger, either by saying something

mean to you or by telling you this is what happened. And then, you know, you're telling your best friend about the thing that got you angry. And then all of a sudden they're angry with you too, you know, like for you and joy does something similar to, you know, happy people often will, like it's infectious. You can feel their happiness and you feel lighter around them. And I've been thinking to myself that, you know,

you come across all these people, people that you know, people that you don't know, and how valuable it is to, especially if someone's inviting me into their attention, to just reject the invitation and just like, keep living in my own energy. And it's been a powerful practice that I have not perfected, but I need to keep repeating.

One of those long-term practices again, years ago I remember I was talking to a friend who was a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and he made this distinction between what he called emotional empathy versus cognitive empathy. And he's like, emotional empathy is where you actually feel the thing that the person is feeling, and he's like, the risk of that is that if that emotion

is in some way paralyzing or damaging or immobilizing, you may become similarly paralyzed or immobilized or unable to actually help. You can't bridge the gap between empathy and compassion because you actually lose the capacity to help also if you're feeling it on the same level where it's like cognitive empathy is more, you feel it, you feel some of it,

but you also have the ability to distinguish and to sort of like stay in a place of inquiry and understanding and you have enough boundaries so that you're then capable, if the person wants you to intervene or to help or offer advice to actually do that. And that, yeah, like you were just describing, that's a dance. Like the ability to sort of like understand

how to move between both sides of that line is not the easiest thing, but it's an incredibly valuable skill, like when you can cultivate it over time. Yeah, that's beautiful, cognitive empathy, I'm gonna remember that. And I think it's nice, I've been finding more and more that a lot of what will benefit us is in the gray area.

Like our minds will just swim between black and white, this or that, but often whether it's inside yourself or interpersonally, or even when you're looking at the world, it's usually something in the gray area where it's like this is the real sort of answer and way to move forward, where things are just not that black and white. Yeah, let's talk about the gray area a little bit then,

because this is often the area that conflict arise in relationships or arguments arrive in relationships. You have this other gray thing that you shared, victory is not winning, understanding is. When we're in this gray area, where there's so much opportunity for misunderstanding, for conflict, for arguing,

take me into how you look at this and how you think about more constructive navigation of these areas where there's potential for conflict. Yeah, I wrote this chapter in How to Love Better called The Art of Arguing, and it was really inspired by this tiny little sentence that Thich Nhat Hanh wrote. He said, love is understanding. And as I've been meditating,

and as my wife and I have been learning how to like create a culture for the two of us, like literally create a culture in our relationship, we were realizing that we had spent years just playing the blame game, where tension would arise, and my mind would quickly try to figure out how this tension is her fault and vice versa.

We were just constantly blaming each other. Nobody else has ever experienced that before. Yeah. That's it. That's it. And it's just, it came from a sheer lack of awareness from the both of us. And as we learned over time,

we started seeing that it just doesn't make sense to go into an argument with their energy where we're both trying to win. Because usually if we go in that manner, then eventually, someone has to yield, one person sort of wins dominance over the narrative, and resentment builds over time. So instead we started realizing that why don't we try to understand? Like, why don't we try to just take a moment where I can listen to your story

and you can listen to my story. And as opposed to just trying to win and point fingers, let's just say how we felt. Like how did the series of events move for the two of us and how do we arrive into this moment as individuals? And I think approaching it from that place created a new sort of string of awareness for the both of us where we would see ourselves and each other better. And once we could really understand each other,

there was this beautiful thing that would happen where the tension would just evaporate because it was like, oh, now I finally see you. Like I see why you were upset. And I see why we sort of slipped into that argument. And I think it's been so helpful because we, you know, we're not really trying to seek dominance anymore. We're just trying to, it's like, oh, an argument has arisen.

It's really an opportunity for connection. Let's sit down and try to hold it. And I think doing simple little things like reminding yourself in the middle of the argument that your partner is not your enemy, like you're okay. Sometimes it feels like so heightened that we get really scared, but it's really just a discussion. Yeah, I love that.

I'll find myself sometimes, if know, if I'm in a heated conversation or a disagreement, just pausing for a microsecond and almost like zooming the lens out a little bit and asking myself, what's really going on here? Do you have any kind of mechanism or something where like you're in a conflict, maybe it's with your wife or a dear friend or a family member or something, where you actually care about this person, you value the relationship, you're not fighting in a way that's gonna,

like you're in this and you wanna stay in it. Is there a mechanism or a skill or a tool or a question or a practice or a circuit breaker where when you start to find yourself going there, you can kind of go to this thing and it sort of like, it stops you in your tracks and makes you zoom out a little bit.

Yeah, there's a few things I think, and I try a few of them depending on what's happening, but the first immediate one is if it's a very serious argument and we're like really kind of going at a particular topic, I think reminding myself that as my tension's increasing that this person is not my enemy, this person is my best friend, my roommate, I care about them profoundly, I'm not in danger.

I think these things really help calm the nervous system a little bit, because it's like, okay, you're fine, you're really okay. The other end of that is, I like to check in with myself and see how attached am I to this? Is this really important? Am I holding on to something that's very little? Is this even worth my time to be attached

and adding to this argument? The other thing is am I the problem? Am I really the one who's causing this because I'm ignoring that I feel so tense and I'm adding to this energy of attachment to the, to the argument. And the other thing too is like, as a meditator, I feel like one of the most, you know, fortunate and accessible things I have is the breath. So if I'm really sort of heated, I can always like, you know, come back to the breath and

that'll help me just, you know, be aware for a little while. And another thing too, it's really helpful to just like argue slowly. Like, you know, where you don't need like an immediate answer right away because especially if you're so heated, I find that when my wife and I do have serious arguments, they take a little while. They could take like an hour or an hour and a half, or sometimes we're, you we're talking seriously for 45 minutes

and then we're just kind of quiet and then we kind of go back to it when we're a little more level headed. So not moving so quickly through an argument, I think is it helps you just get back in touch with yourself. Yeah, I remember hearing, talking with John and Julie Gottman,

sort of like legendary love researchers, and one of the things that they said oftentimes when you're in conflict with your partners in particular, it's actually okay for you to sort of like both say, or even one person say, I need to step away. And not to say like, make it really clear, like I'm not opting out of this conversation. It's not that I just like, I'm done with this,

I don't wanna hear you like, not just walk away, but actually say like, you know, look, this is important to both of us, but I'm just like, I'm a little too hot right now. And I just need to step away for a little bit, for 15 minutes, go for a walk for an hour, and then let's come back to this. But I need to kind of like, I need to do something

to reset myself right now, so I can step back into this in a healthier way. Yeah, I think it's really productive, and that's do something to reset myself right now, so I can step back into this in a healthier way. Yeah, I think it's really productive. And that's like an act of love right there, is like in the middle of the heat to just understand that, you know, you need space and the other person, you know, you support them in having the space,

because ultimately like, what you want is resolution. You don't want victory. You want like the establishment of some type of positive piece. And that's why I think like removing that framework of just trying to win has been so helpful because when we were both trying to win, we were both losing. We were losing constantly. And now it's just like, oh, there's tension here because I don't understand you in this moment. Something is missing. And it's really, it's just been quite nice,

you know, being able to give each other that space to tell our full story. And then we find a way to move forward after that. Yeah, and that push to win can be really devastating also. And some people are just kind of softwired that way. Somebody once told me, like when I was talking about arguing, they said, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? No, it's really, really true. And it's also like, it when I was talking about arguing, they said, do you want to be righted?

Do you want to be happy? No, it's really, really true. And it's also like, it's not always fair too, because like one person may be better at talking than the other person, you know? So it's like, come on, if you're like married to a lawyer, like you're going to lose every time. Yeah, I'd say it's so true.

Like you may have somebody who's just sort of like a quieter, less aggressive, or just because of their family patterning, just really uncomfortable with verbal conversation with like, so like when there's disagreement verbally, because maybe there's a pattern as a kid, as like that led to really bad things. Yeah. You know, so it's like, brings up such an interesting point.

It's like, how do we actually also observe and then create sort of like a healthy mechanism where we feel like we can both step into this conversation? It's important we don't agree, but we want to have this conversation and see if we can, even if we don't come to the same place, at least come to see and understand each other's points of view. but like the mechanism itself can be really harmful to one person where it feels like it's the perfect place and perfect way for this thing to happen for the other. Yeah, and I think it's really important to have a healthy detachment from your view where you understand that your view,

meaning like the way you see things, it's not perfect. Like it's not automatically correct it's it's really imperfect information that you're holding because you can't see everything and Having that healthy detachment from your view helps you respect that other people have views that are just as legitimate and Understanding that another person's view is legitimate doesn't necessarily negate the legitimacy of your own view. So having that mental flexibility to respect and value what's happening in the minds and hearts of other people,

it's really essential for harmonious relationships. Yeah, it's that magical quality being able to, you know, hold two opposing points of view as both being, equally holding the potential for truth. It's a really hard thing for us to do. Yeah, but that's living in the great, like what we were just talking about. Yeah, 100%. One of the things that you speak to also in this new book is, okay, so what if actually we're doing all this work? What if we're meditating? What if we're learning how to argue? What if we're

stepping into relationships? We're seeing each other, we're meditating? What if we're learning how to argue? What if we're stepping into relationships? We're seeing each other, we're understanding each other, and we get to a place where even with all of this, we start to feel like maybe this isn't right. This context, this relationship, the way that we are together, maybe it actually shouldn't keep going. You're right, gather your courage and be bold and following your intuition. These can be stunningly hard moments. Even when both people realize it's time to move on. Talk to me about how to navigate these moments.

I wrote an article a few months ago called When to Break Up. And I was just pointing out all these things and sort of the main idea of it is understanding that ups and downs are a normal part of a healthy relationship. And one of the big signs that something isn't quite right is if you're going from one down moment to another down moment to another down moment, and you're never really seeing the light of joy.

You're not really feeling that nourished. You're not really feeling that safe. You're not really feeling that nourished. You're not really feeling that safe. And you know, you're not really feeling this that connected to a person. I remember writing that and then someone wrote this comment that was so powerful. She said that she finally gathered the courage to tell her husband that she wanted a divorce. And this was about like a year ago. And she said that now they're such good friends

and that he's also so happy because like they were both kind of like hovering around both of them wanting to open up a different chapter of their lives. And now a beautiful friendship has, obviously like this doesn't happen all the time, right? Like sometimes, you know, divorces happen or breakups happen and people go their

separate ways and they don't really talk again anymore. But in this case, I think this moment of honesty where she didn't let it drag on it drag on anymore and understanding that you can still have something powerful, beautiful, and something that was a big chapter in your life and still be able to move forward into something new. It was nice to hear that she had the courage to just move on because I think a lot of times when we look back on our relationships,

to be able to fuel us, to have the courage, to just make a break in the relationship, we usually fill our minds with animosity. And now there might be some animosity there that's rightful, that's righteous, but sometimes we'll turn someone and like almost paint an even darker picture of who they really are so that we can have the energy to move away from them. And usually there's definitely like abuse and things like that to happen in relationships, but often there's not often people are just not that compatible and,

you know, and they, or maybe they were compatible for a few years and then they decide to move on. So it's interesting to see things happen in many different ways. Yeah, I mean, what you wrote in that article then, also this notion of if you're basically going from low to low to low to low without ever really moving up to even the experience of joy,

I think it's a really interesting signal to start questioning, like, actually, is this something where we need to just keep doing the work, or is this just not right anymore, if it ever was? And maybe there's actually a harder but more right decision that we need to make, or I need to make, in order to actually process and move on, like, and actually, and gain access to those moments of joy again.

Totally, it takes a lot of courage, but I think that's one of the, especially if you really feel like breaking up is something that has to happen, I think that's one of the most powerful things you can do, is once you know, then not letting it drag on is really valuable because life is very finite. Even if you live to be 100 years old,

that's like a speck of time when you look at cosmological time scales. So giving people back their time, giving people back their agency to build a new chapter for themselves, it's a gift, you're giving back a person the opportunity to create a life that is actually meaningful and powerful for them.

Yeah, I mean, it may not feel like it in the moment, but yeah, it's really a reclamation for both of you at the end of the day. Towards the end of the book, you focus your energy on this interesting dynamic between love and deepening the connection and individualism and freedom. And I feel like so often, there's that classic rom-com phrase, you know, like, well, what was it? You complete me. There's this notion that when we're in this deep relationship that we surrender our freedom,

we surrender our individuality, and we become this one thing. And you have a different take. It's like, actually, many of us really need a healthy amount of individuality, and sometimes solitude and time by ourselves. And that freedom, your personal freedom actually doesn't have to threaten a loving union. Yeah, I think it's so funny because whenever people see the word love and freedom next to each other, they get scared because they think, oh, does that mean

that my partner can just cheat on me and do whatever they want? No, no, no, we're not talking about that. We're talking about basing a relationship around commitments and around feeling like I'm fully committed to this person. I wanna be with this person. I wanna be with them for as long as possible

in this lifetime. But then simultaneously understanding that you have no control over this person's interests, over their preferences, over what skills they want to develop, over, you can just go on and on, but each individual has their own focuses, has their own sort of,

where they decide to put their energy into. And that's actually one of the funner parts of relationships because that means that you always have to get to know your partner. That their preferences are gonna continue evolving over time and what they're into, what they're not into, it'll keep changing. And my wife and I, that became really clear to us

when we would go to these longer meditation courses for, you know, 30 or 45 days in those courses when we're totally silent and we're like apart during that time, you know, in our own rooms and we don't see each other for the whole time. During that time, because we're meditating so deeply, a lot of conditioning gets erased. So what, you know, this experience I had repeatedly

where at the very end of the course, I get back home and I'll start working out again and I'll listen to the playlist that I used to listen to in the past. And the sound, the music wouldn't feel right anymore. And I'd have to look for a different taste in music or look for something else that's a little lighter. And the same thing would happen for the tv shows that we want to watch and just like how we wanna use our time it was a beautiful experience so like not only. At the end of those longer retreats get to know ourselves again as individuals but also get to know my wife again and see like what is she interested in now because it feels like we've been apart for a long time and now it's a new version of us. And honestly, it's pretty fun to have that period

of getting to know each other again. I think a lot of us, a lot of people are sort of like a little bit terrified, but what if we each allow ourselves to evolve as we need to as individuals, our interests, our tastes, our expression, our values, all these different things. And we evolve in a way where we no longer sink. Like we're not the same two puzzle pieces that just fit together. And they want the puzzle pieces to fit together for life

because they don't want to endure the uncertainty or the change rather than saying, God willing we do. But if we follow the path that is right for each of us individually, we continue to have those like puzzle pieces that keep fitting together. What an amazing blessing. Absolutely. And if it doesn't happen, it's a different kind of blessing, maybe a blessing that has

some pain and some separation that is a part of it. But at the end of the day, if honoring the union means limiting individual expression and growth. It's going to fall apart anyway because resentment is going to build, you know, and we have to own that too. Absolutely. That's really well said. And there's also the, you know, the other aspect of everything is impermanent. So the relationship will come to an end at some point.

And whether it's breaking up or whether it's death, something will happen and everything is finite and it's okay to understand that like, let me be present now. Let me create the conditions for freedom and joy in this relationship as much as I can, because this is all very temporary and I think it's, it's powerful to not be afraid of change, but instead to let change inspire you to be more present than before. Love that.

It feels like a great place for us to come full circle. It's always such a joy to spend some time with you. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? I think to live a good life, it means really accepting the fact that happiness requires a little bit of training. And you know that you have access to some degree of happiness by knowing that you have a little bit of access to joy. Like when joy appears, you can revel in it, be a part of it, be present with it, that

you're content about the work that you do, you know, what you're putting out into the world, the way you're using your energy, and that you have some degree of peace, that you can live in your own energy, even as tumultuous people may be around you. But I think a good life is really cultivating these qualities. Thank you. Thank you so much. If you love this episode of Safe Bet, you'll also love the conversation we had with Yung Pueblo about finding clarity and connection in life. You'll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsay Fox and me, Jonathan Fields.

Editing help by Troy Young, Christopher Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelly Del Bliss for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app or on YouTube too. If you found this conversation interesting or valuable and inspiring, chances are you did because you're still listening here. Do me a personal favor, a seventh second favor, share it with just one person. I mean, if you want to share it with more, that's awesome too, but just one person even,

then invite them to talk with you about what you've both discovered, to reconnect and explore ideas that really matter. Because that's how we all come alive together. Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. Good Life Project is sponsored by Aveeno Baby. So you know there's something remarkable about how nature protects newborns, that natural moisturizing layer babies have in the womb. It got me thinking about how delicate baby's skin really is. So I've learned it's actually about 30% thinner than adult skin, and that is why Aveeno Baby

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