High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 653: Building Relationships that Last with Annie Lalla, Relationship Expert and Coach

Episode Date: December 17, 2024

Annie Lalla has spent her life studying the world of emotions -mapping the complexities of communication & subtleties of relationships. A philosopher, speaker and a thought leader, Annie is known as the “Cartographer of Love”. In her coaching, Annie helps individuals attract, create and foster extraordinary connections that maximize freedom and minimize shame. She has professional certifications in Coaching, NLP and Clinical Hypnosis. In this episode, Cindra and Annie discuss:  How to minimize shame in relationships  The biggest barrier people experience in building relationships How to upgrade your beliefs about relationships What creates conflict in relationships Her top advice on how to address conflict in relationships    HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE TO CONNECT WITH ANNIE LALLA  REQUEST A FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH DR. CINDRA AND/OR HER TEAM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode.  

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Cindra Kampoff, and welcome to Episode 653 with Annie Lala. My name is Cindra, and I'm the founder of the Mentally Strong Institute, where we help leaders, entrepreneurs, and increase your influence, I invite you to sign up for a free coaching call with one of my team members at freementalbreakthroughcall.com. We will help you create a breakthrough, a moment of more clarity and understanding to help you practice the high-performance mindset and see if coaching is the right fit for you. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call. Today, I have the amazing privilege of interviewing Annie Lala. She spent her life studying the world of emotions, mapping out the complexities of communication and the subtleties of relationships.

She's a philosopher, a speaker, and a thought leader, and she's known as the choreographer of love. In her coaching, Annie helps individuals attract, create, and foster extraordinary connections. She has professional certifications in coaching, NLP, and clinical hypnosis. And in this interview, Annie and I talk about how to minimize shame in relationships, the biggest barrier people experience

while building relationships, how to upgrade your beliefs, what actually creates conflict in relationships, and her top advice on how to address conflict. To see the full show notes and description of this interview, you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash 653 for episode 653. All right, without further ado, let's bring on Annie. Annie Lala, thank you so much for joining us on the High Performance Mindset. I'm so excited to talk to you about relationships because those are so key to our happiness and our success. So thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Yay, love talking about my favorite subject. Oh, and I'm excited to

talk to you about it. So we're just going to dive in and let's get started. And, you know, the podcast title is The High Performance Mindset. And I'm curious, how do you think relationships are connected to mindset? Well, you know what they say back in the 60s when they would take psychedelics it's all about set and setting and mindset is the the belief the beliefs the come from the thoughts all the things that give rise to an experience and so I think love is the strongest psychedelic known to man and so your mindset literally governs how successful you are on a date, in a conversation with your partner, during a fight. Like literally, what are the beliefs? What are the frameworks that

you're using to interact with? And that's a lot of what I work with people on is mindset, belief upgrades. But really, I'm teaching people tools so so they can keep their heart open just one second longer just one minute longer i really see myself as um creating maps and technology so that human beings can keep their heart open to their own love and to the love of others more because most of the problems that people have in their interpersonal dynamics is because their heart closes. And a heart that's closed doesn't function. And in fact, your mind and your heart are two halves of the same thing. Your heart brain, your heart mind. And if your heart's online, sorry, if your brain's online,

but your heart isn't, you only have half of your intelligence working for you. So that's a lot of what I do is teaching mindset, but also pragmatic, practical habits and behaviors that help relationships move through conflict, create collaboration, and strengthen deep intimacy. Thank you. I love that. And I think about a couple of things, like when you just said belief upgrades, and I think about so many times in relationships, if we don't believe in ourselves, or if we don't think that we're worthy, that impacts our relationships and how we treat others

and how we react to others. With our intimate relationships, I think with our family, with our friends, right? So can you talk a little bit about what are some of those belief upgrades we might need to have the best relationships that we can in our lives? Yeah, well, it's interesting you mentioned worthiness and deserving. I've noticed that self-esteem, which is domain specific, right? I might have high self-esteem around helping couples, but low self-esteem around cooking, which is true. And so it's domain specific. And around relationships, a lot of the people I work with are high profile, high status CEOs, entrepreneurs, millionaires, billionaires, but they have low status, low self-esteem, I should say,

around relationships. And so you always attract another person that matches your self-esteem in the relationship space. And so that's a very interesting thing. So what I'm trying to do with my clients is help cultivate and edify their self-esteem. And self-esteem has two parts, according to Nathaniel Brandon, who wrote the book on self-esteem.

Six Pillars of Self-Esteem is his book. He says that self-esteem has two parts. And the first part is believing that your future self can cope with what life brings. Like, are you resilient? Can you hang? Second part of self-esteem is believing that you deserve to be happy, right? It's about worthiness and permission. And so I'm always systematically trying to upgrade the self-esteem of my students and my clients because every outcome that they get in their life, romantic or otherwise, is governed by their internal sense of dignity, worthiness, and audacity. Like you won't fight for something if you don't think you deserve it. You won't stand for something. And basically most of the issues that show up in my clients' lives is because of a ripple in their self-esteem. Either they can't cope with a situation and so they're guarded against it or they don't believe they deserve it. So I'm working on those two parts at all times. And tell us a little bit about how you might work with somebody on that, because I know people are listening and they can relate to what you're saying. I think about my own relationship with my husband. I think about my kids as I'm listening to you. I think about my sisters, my friends, you know, like all the people I'm thinking about as I'm listening. Yeah. So we're talking about building your coping strategies and your worthiness. So let's talk about coping first. 90% of the work I do and teach

is how to be with intense sensations that arise in your body when you're interacting with someone. You're in the middle of a fight. They criticize you. You get a feeling. Most human beings don't know how to be with, breathe with, and integrate their feelings. So feelings are a set of physical sensations in the body. If you're hungry, there's something going on down in your belly, gurgles and crunchy feeling. And if you have to go pee, there's a feeling in your body. If you're thirsty, you're not calculating how much tea did I drink? Do I need some lemonade? Feelings are literally sensations in the body and they let you know an indicated action.

So similar to sadness, jealousy, fear, excitement, these are all feelings. But most of the time when we're in a feeling, we're confusing the actual feeling, which is the sensations in the body, with the story about the feeling. Yeah, so true. Explanations, reasons, justifications, narrative, shame, blame, make wrong. All of that stuff that has story that is about the feeling, that's not you being with your feeling. And so the way I help people learn to cope is what are we trying to cope with? There's only one thing to cope with ever and that's the feeling happening in your body well even if someone's yelling at you the reason

it's a problem is because it produces a feeling in your body so if you can work directly with the feeling and learn how to breathe into stay connected to your physiology and track the feeling in your soma in your body then you will be able to cope. So I teach a lot of technology around regulating your nervous system, emotional attunement to your own inner world, so that I'm helping people learn how to cope with the intense sensations of all the different feelings. If you can't cope with jealousy, then you'll be aggressive. If you can't cope with sadness, you might have shame around it. And so that's the first part. I build self-esteem by teaching people how to cope

with feelings that are currently made wrong, marginalized, pushed down, or repressed. So that's how we build coping, is becoming powerful with your feelings and able to dignify and honor whatever feeling is arising in your body as if it's a messenger and a teacher sent to offer you an indicated action that will update, upgrade your life. So that's the coping. So if I'm trying to build self-esteem around worthiness, I have some other tools. Basically, a lot of people think you need to earn worthiness, earn dignity. It's like there's something you have to do in order to be worthy.

And we got trained by that probably in our childhood, parents requiring us to do things in order to feel their love. But I've never seen a child, a young child, apologize for their life force. Like when they're really young, they just literally, a baby just, apologize for their life force. Like when they're really young, they just literally, a baby just thinks they deserve to be fed. They deserve to be warm. Raw life, whether it's a human baby or a caterpillar or a mushroom or a cat or an antelope, they just move through the world and go, I'm here. I deserve food. I deserve love. I deserve warmth and attention. And then they get really upset when they don't get it. Because there's an inherent dignity and audacity that comes with life that goes, listen, the reason why I deserve is because I exist. Right? I don't have to do anything. Every little blood cell and muscle cell in your body isn't sitting there going, oh, do you think I should get some glucose? Oh, I need some nitrogen. Do you think I should take it? They're all just sitting there going,

I need this nutrient. I'll take it from the bloodstream. I need this. And every cell is just taking what it needs, taking care of itself. And then it can function as part of other cells in a tissue that gives rise to your consciousness. So there's no part of nature. Every tree root is just taking what it needs. And so the native come from of our being is, I deserve to be here. Why? Because I exist.

Do you know how hard it is to exist? There's a million more ways to not exist than to be in existence. So I feel like to get into this world to exist, you had to get past the most intense custom officers. Like if you made it into existence, you won the lotto. You're here. You deserve to be here.

How do you know? Because you're here. The universe wouldn't have let you in if you didn't already deserve. So there's that shift in the come from. And to just notice every blood cell, every animal, they don't have a problem with this. And then I like to give people some training around noticing moments in their life that are laced with poetry, beauty, enjoyment, delight, gratitude. Some people get hooked on gratitude and that's great. Gratitude lists are amazing. They definitely upgrade your sense of aliveness. But beauty, poetry, delight, I have my clients literally scan their life and report to me on their phone. I want them to report like three to five moments of delight during their day or their week. Like literally

anything I saw, like, oh, I walked in from the hot sun into an air conditioned shop and I could feel the cool breeze on my neck. Oh, I was washing my hair with this new mango shampoo and I could just smell it in the shower. What your mouth feels like after you just brush your teeth. These microscopic moments of delight, they're not like big winds. The tinier and more subtle the delights that you can excavate from your life, the more you fall in love with your life at the moment to moment, and the more you love your life, the more you love yourself. And the more you love yourself, the more you feel worthy. And so I send people on a reconnaissance mission through their reality, through their life, to notice moments of beauty, poetry, and delight. Not just in their external world, a sun ray, a shadow on the sidewalk, a child laughing in the playground, but in their own mind.

What's something you said today that was particularly clever or loving? Did you include someone in a conversation when they felt left out? Did you go out of your way for a friend? Every time you do something that is poetic, contributing, beautiful, can you acknowledge it? And I think it's a habit we have to build. I've literally built in my mind an imaginary audience filled with people I admire, fictional and non-fictional. And whenever I do something with a client or with my daughter or with my husband that's particularly clever or funny or loving, they clap for me in my mind. I literally create a celebration to mark out so that I move through reality going, yeah, I'm smart. I'm clever. I have beauty in my life. I am a contributing force in the world. It's our job as humans to always use our imagination to

create an empowering stance for ourselves. Okay. Because each human listening, you are happening once and for all and never again in the history of the universe. You are unique in all the world. And every time you forget that, you're literally out of integrity with the truth. So how do we remember that? And we have to, you know, we're conditioned by our evolutionary nature to scan for what's wrong. What's wrong in the horizon? Because it could be something that's going to hurt me. So we were natural selection pulled for noticing what's wrong,

external and internal. So we scan for what's wrong in ourselves and in the world. If you want to be successful and happy in your life, you can't just rely on what evolution gives you. You have to build out a new skill set, which is scanning for what is beautiful, what is amazing, what is poetic in your life and in the world. And you have to do affirmative action

for that underdeveloped skill. According to John Gottman, for every one grumble towards reality, you need five appreciations just to be square. So it's a skill. How can I scan for what I like about my current moment, including how I'm showing up in it? Yeah, I love that. I love there's so many things I really appreciated what you just said. When you love your life more, you feel more worthy, right? And just like continuing to notice the things that you love about it. And it'd be these small things like what you said about the air conditioner on your shoulders or on your neck, right? And two questions I have based on what you just said.

Hi, this is Cyndra Campoff and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker, visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. First, let's go with the coping skills that you were talking about. And I think about what would be your advice for people who are in a conflict, either if it's small or big with a person in their life. And I'm

thinking about something that happened to me and my husband a couple of days ago, where I went shopping on Sunday and I came back and I had some flowers, but they were, I couldn't take them out of the car because they were too big. I really love flowers. Like the one bouquet was too big? Or you had too many flowers? No, like outside, outside like a big pot. And so I came in and I was just so excited that I bought some flowers. And like I couldn't wait to put them in the backyard.

And I was like, hey, can you help me? And then he was involved in something and he didn't really want to help me at that point. He snapped at me and I snapped at him and I thought, oh my gosh, this isn't how I want to show up, you know? So we've been married for about 25 years. We're celebrating our 25th anniversary in a couple of weeks, right? But I think people can relate to what I'm saying is these little small moments that you don't expect to be a conflict. So I don't know. What advice would you give for us who want to just have a stronger relationship? Well, first of all, I just want to normalize that. I just want to say that I brought flowers. He's in the middle of something. You kind of didn't realize you were interrupting him and

you asked for help out of the joy of your heart to go plant the flowers and he's like i'm in the middle of something woman that whole dance that's what love looks like right i just want to reprogram everyone to not to let go of love is some fancy ideal where we get along and smile and hug and skip through the garden no that doesn't exist i'm a love coach i'm just telling you i see all the behind the scenes. When you're snapping at each other over the flowers in the middle of a Saturday, that's what actually what love looks like. And to just start noticing love isn't some other thing. Love is this. So that's the first thing. The second thing I might say is having a husband who doesn't like to be interrupted myself. One time he taught me, he said, you know, when you ask me to do something,

you sometimes don't attune to what I'm doing in the moment. Right. And it looks like I'm just sitting on my computer doing nothing, but I'm like working on a Rubik's cube problem in my mind and everything is very delicately spinning. And when you call my name, the whole thing comes crashing down. Or he said, it's like I'm riding a motorcycle and I'm trying to focus. And then you stick your foot out and the motorcycle goes tumbling. So with this description, I was able to realize, oh, he's doing something up there that's taking a lot of focused concentration.

And my sudden, hey, babe, can you help me? Hey, hey, can be very disruptive. And so I started to realize that I was unconsciously trespassing on sacred, pristine mental terrain by just calling across the house or saying, hey, can you help me? Because in that moment, you're like, you're excited. You're anxious. I was so excited. I got the flowers. You got the flowers. And in that moment, just for a moment, you didn't check to see where his reality was.

Right. Right. Now, it's not like you sat there and said, I'm going to plot to undermine his happiness. You literally were just excited about your flowers. So there's nothing you did wrong. There's no problem with how you behaved. If we wanted to add some more finesse to it going forward, it could be you come in and you go, hey, love, are you in the middle of anything? Just a quick check. Then they have the prerogative of going, I actually am. And then you're like, okay, either I get the flowers or I delay the flower retrieval for

10 minutes, half an hour until he's done. So that the dignity of honoring the sacredness of his solitude and what he might be doing in that moment, kind of like if someone busted in right now, hey, send your, I have somebody to tell you to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm in the middle of something. Right. Absolutely. And you might be a little irritated by it. So there's an upgrade on your end with micro adjustments to the attunement.

And I don't know how your voice was, but maybe you were just excited. And sometimes when we're excited about something, we think everyone should be as excited as we are. Absolutely. I didn't even know how excited I was, but I was. And then for him, if I had him here I might say hey um and he snapped right at some point he snapped snapping means I got frustrated or irritated and underneath frustrated and irritation is some kind of owie some kind of I didn't feel honored, respected, tracked. And so he may not be able to speak from the owie, but if he in that moment could have said,

you know what, I notice I'm feeling a little triggered right now because I was in the middle of something and you just came in here and abducted my attention and I notice I'm like four out of ten frustrated. But he was meta to his frustration. Instead of snapping, he can communicate I'm like four out of 10 frustrated, but he was meta to his frustration. Instead of snapping, he can communicate, I'm frustrated, but he's not putting the frustration on you and blaming. And so there's an upgrade for him to be one step removed from his upset by actually feeling his frustration. You see, when someone doesn't feel their frustration, they end up snapping.

You think people snap because they're frustrated. No, they snap because they have frustration in their body. They're unwilling to go be with the sensations of their frustration. And instead, they avoid that because that's too stressful and painful. And they go up into their mind and go, Sandra shouldn't have interrupted me. They go into a story. Absolutely. Blame, make wrong. Whenever your shame, blame, make wrong is going, you're not in the sensations of the feeling. You're avoiding that pain and going into blame. Blame is a way that you avoid the pain of being with your sensations.

So he doesn't have that technology or in that moment, he didn't have access to it. And so he went into the snap is a subtle blame game, right? And then you feel blamed and you get defensive and now we're in a, in a, in a, in a. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate a couple of things that you just said, Annie. I do realize, Hey, I could have sent him a text message on the way home and said, you know, like, Hey, would you be able to help me when you're ready? You know? So I realized after that, I was like, Oh man, I did interrupt him and that wasn't very kind, you know? So I guess what I'm, why I'm saying that is to take responsibility for myself too. But, and we're talking about these small

moments, right? But there's bigger moments where people can get really frustrated or angry. And I love what you said about taking a step back and, and just trying to understand your emotion in the moment. What's some language that we could use when we're feeling agitated, frustrated, where we want to blame? And like, what advice would you give us for that? Start calibrating your upset and your frustration. My husband literally just drew this two days ago on a napkin in our kitchen. He's like, I think, he goes, I think you think when I'm upset, I'm in this category called angry. And I was like, yeah, isn't that true? And

he's like, no, I have frustrated, annoyed, angry, rageful, hostile. And I'm like, oh, all those things. I didn't have all of the distinctions. So starting to calibrate and track, because we don't just have angry. We get a little bit irritated. Then we're a little more irritated. Then we're really frustrated. So I teach all my clients, and in our house we do this. We track with numbers, 0 to 10. So if my daughter's hungry, my mom, I'm hungry.

I go, what number? She'll say 3, 4, 7, 2.3. I fell down in the backyard. What number? What number say three, four, seven, 2.3. I fell down in the backyard. What number? What number is the owie? Everything's calibrated in our house. So if I'm sad, I might say to my husband, I notice I'm feeling sad, two out of 10. So I'm reporting.

First of all, you have to start tracking that there is intensity levels. So before you start tracking, there's just I'm fine and now I'm mad. I'm fine and I'm frustrated. So you have zero, one, like on, off. Then as you pay attention, the digital switch becomes an analog switch and you start to see that there's gradations. And then you'll have five or higher upset or five or lower. So now you have two chunks. And then as you start to refine that, you'll be able to discern, I'm 2.5 out of 10 frustrated right now. And you become more and more refined as you attend to it. Now, in order to give a number, you have to actually attune. You can't just start blaming and grumbling. You have to actually go, what number am I? Oh,

I'm irritated. I'm not raging and I'm not super angry. It's probably like a four. And as you practice, what you're doing is training yourself and your partner to notice what different levels match different behaviors. But what subtly you're doing is making yourself one level removed. So you're meta to the feeling, which is the ninja move. So the feeling abducting and puppeting you, you are not just being puppeted by the feeling. You are like, oh, there's this feeling over there. It's five out of 10. Can you help me with it? Not it's your fault. You caused it. I got this feeling. Got myself a feeling here. Can you help me with it? Yeah, that's so helpful and powerful because I think about how many times when we're upset or frustrated, right, our amygdala just gets hijacked and we don't even realize that part of our brain where our fight or flight lives. We don't even realize how we're feeling. And so what you're encouraging us to do is take a step back and label it and also put a number on it to help us understand it, to help the other person understand how we're feeling as well. Yeah. And you just mentioned the amygdala.

We evolved from reptile, monkey, human, and the amygdala, we call it the reptile brain, the lizard brain, because it's concerned only with physical survival, food, sex, staying alive. Then we have the next layer of the brain, which is the emotional limbic brain, which evolved in complex tribal animals, like monkey tribes.

And that's, you know, tracking the emotional dynamic. And then we have the cognitive brain, which is the very recent developed brain in evolution, which is responsible for language and problem solving and high abstract thought. And so one thing when people are fighting, I like to encourage them,

is always work a fight in the order of evolution. So you first work with the lizard. So there's two people fighting. There's two lizards going. So until those two lizards feel safe enough, physically safe, then we go to the emotional level. So what I do when my husband and I fight is we have this thing where I go and I touch his body. He'll come and touch my hand or I'll touch his foot. I'm still grumbly, but the touching allows his lizard and my lizard

to go, okay, we're physically safe. We're still going to work through this. Once the physical animals are safe, then we go to emotional resonance and validation. I might say, I can see you're really frustrated right now. I too am frustrated, but your frustration has an intelligence. And so I just want to honor it. And then he can say, I get that you're upset as well. So we validate each other's emotional state without making it wrong. Then you go to problem solving, cognitive, anatomy of the fight. How do we not have this happen again? Most people go straight to the cognitive. And meanwhile, you've got a scared lizard and a terrified monkey.

And it doesn't work. I think of a human being is standing on the back of a chimpanzee. It's like a cowboy is riding on the back of a chimp that's riding on the back of a Komodo dragon. And you as the cowboy, you need to make sure all of the layers are working in order to navigate through reality. So always work a fight in the order

in which the brain evolved. I appreciate you saying that. I had never thought about that. And I feel like it's a really good way to come together and not just stay in that lizard brain, where it's like the main purpose of that lizard brain is to keep you safe. Yeah. And if you've ever seen, if you had a little baby that's upset, you can't philosophically talk the baby out of being upset. It doesn't have the cognitive and

it doesn't even have emotions really well being upset. It doesn't have the cognitive and it doesn't even have emotions really well developed online. It needs physical soothing. You have to rock and sing the baby. And so work at the physical resonance, then emotional resonance, then intellectual. And that's basically what I do when I guide people through conflict resolution. Conflict resolution is basically turning the conflict into a collaboration, which is what all conflict is. It's a collaboration trying to happen, collaboration between two different perspectives. And these two different perspectives can't find their shared reality. So that's my job is to help them find the overlap in the Venn diagram.

Is there any other advice you'd give us when we're in conflict situations with those that we love? Well, I like people to think of conflict as going to the gym. When you go to the gym, you literally lift barbells and your muscle rips a little bit and then it grows back stronger. That's how you build muscle. You don't want to lift weights that are so heavy that they tear your muscles and then you're out of commission for months at the gym. So there's an art to conflict and there's an art to fighting that ends up making the conflict resolution like a workout. So how can we turn this fight into something that after we resolve it, our relationship is stronger and better than if we hadn't had the fight at all? Cool.

And there's heuristics and maps and tools for fighting in a way that doesn't damage the relationship fabric and take you out of commission. And we can talk about what those, you know, those distinctions are, but one is do not threaten the relationship during a fight. Okay? If you're mad at your kid, no matter how messy their room is and how late they came in, you don't threaten to kill them in the night. No?

You don't say, well, I'll stab you tonight them in the night. No, you don't say, well, I'll stab you tonight while you're asleep. No, no, that's off limits. You never threaten the life of the child. Well, a relationship is like a child co-parented by two people. And that relationship is a living, breathing entity. It's alive and it listens to how it's talked about. And so when you're upset, no matter how angry you are, frustrated, do not threaten the relationship. You can say, this doesn't work. I'm 7 out of 10 angry. I'm frustrated right now.

I'm really upset with you, but I love you more than I'm angry, which is always true, by the way. No matter how angry you are, you always love the person more than you're angry because in the middle of the fight, if they started having a heart attack or coughed up blood, you drop your issue right away. Absolutely. So we want to start communicating the truth, which is I'm angry. Seven out of 10 frustrated. And I love you more than I'm angry, but I'm fucking angry. So let's

work out this shit. People can hear you're upset once they know that the love is bigger. And you can say, our relationship is bigger than this issue. Our love is wider than this problem. But let's figure it out. So you don't want to threaten the relationship. And, you know, if you are actually thinking

this relationship isn't right for you, it's not healthy, then you don't want to do it in a fight. You want to break up, which I don't call it breakup. I call it graduation because all relationships are a school. And when you graduate, it's a moment of appreciation and celebration. And every relationship is like a dojo or a school. And when you come to the relationship for a nutrient or an education, and once you get that nutrient or that education, then the relationship becomes complete. Now, there are some relationships, some schools that you stay in forever. And that's true love,

lifetime partnership. But if you do feel like, oh, I actually feel like it's time to graduate for both of us to have the best lives, then you do that from the height of the poetry of the interaction, not from an angry, upset state. You want to graduate by conserving the dignity and the self-esteem of both partners. It's easier to break up in a fight because you can just close your heart and pretend you don't love them anymore. But the truth is, once you love somebody, you never stop. Not if you really love them. Now, you don't love them anymore. But the truth is, once you love somebody, you never stop. Not if you really love them. Now, you don't have to be with them.

As Byron Katie says, you can love someone with all your heart and never want to see them again for the rest of your life. Okay, so that's true. But if you love that person and you no longer are with them, demonizing them means the part of you that loves them now gets demonized. So you actually turn yourself against yourself. And so I don't think demonizing someone in order to separate is the right way ultimately. Because in the memory of your mind, all your past relationships are like pieces of art on the wall inside your psyche. I don't want any piece of art that's ugly or not

empowering. So every relationship was a school. You came, you learned, you graduated. And so don't threaten the relationship. If you need to break up, break up from a really beautiful, heartfelt space with everyone's esteem intact. I appreciate what you said about the dignity of both people, right? And what we're talking about is such powerful ideas and people don't necessarily know all of these ideas or the ways to move forward. And I loved actually hearing about your own love journey. And I'd love for you to tell the listeners about it because I think they could relate to it and also understand even where you're coming from. So tell us a little bit about that. And what did you learn about love in your own journey? Well, I fell in love with a man at Burning Man. I was literally at this festival and I went, all my friends at my camp went to see a

talk to some marketing guy who was talking. And I was like, I don't want to see no marketing guy. Peace out. See you later. And I went off riding in the desert dressed in diamonds and feathers. And then I waltz into the place where my friends were going to see this talk two hours later. And he's still talking. Three hours in a dusty dome at Burning Man. And as I walk into the dome I see this man he's got a cowboy hat and he's got the Shiva Nataraj tattooed on his chest I'm like who's this guy he's kind of cute this is the guy and then I sit down and I start listening and basically within 15 minutes I I was completely overwhelmed with awe at what he was talking about.

And, you know, I give the example of every man I'd ever seen before or met or dated were all like really nice cars, like a Lexus or a BMW or a Ferrari. And then I saw him and it was like a Starship Enterprise. It was like a new class of vehicle. And so from that moment on, I was smitten, but I was way too shy to go up and talk to him after. And some of my friends went up after to chat. He gave out his email. I got his email. And then I started the conversation online and I'm a little more confident in my writing. So we started this dalliance. But when I met my husband, he was a very famous dating coach. His name, his pen name was David DeAngelo.

And he had turned that business into a success and now was teaching online business to entrepreneurs, teaching sales and marketing. And so I thought, okay, you know, he's a dating coach. But turns out he's a dating coach because he didn't actually believe in love. He had never been able to make a relationship work. He didn't believe in love. He didn't ever want to get married. He was terrified of having kids, like all the things. So I was like, oh.

But he was also dating someone when I met him. So I was just like, okay. He's the most extraordinary man I've ever met in my life. So whether he loves me back or not even notices me, I just want to be an amazing friend to him. So I was, you know, writing him and supportive of him. And I even coached him and his girlfriend because I was just like, add value, add value, just be, be amazing. They can really love someone. You don't love that. If you love me, then I love someone. You don't love the, if you love me, then I love you. You just love them.

And if they don't choose you, then you're just going to keep loving them the best you can. And I thought we'd just become great friends. But eventually broke up with that lady and then there was an opportunity. And the truth is I was one of several women on this rotation.

He wasn't into commitment. He didn't really know how to do that. And I was trying to get his attention. Sure. By being smart. Like quoting things and having all these book references and being really cool and smart. But it never seemed to work. He liked me.

He thought I was attractive like all the other women in his life. But he wasn't falling in love with me. And it wasn't until one time I was visiting him in L.A. I was living in New York. And something came up where there was this other girl that he was seemingly interested in. And it really broke my heart because I realized I realized oh I think he's in love with her and not me and I had to just cope with he's not my guy I just have to honor like his attachment pattern or imprint has him fall for her and not me and I can't argue with that so we we we hung

out for a while and basically I had the courage to admit to him once I realized that he wasn't that into me. I had the courage to admit to him that like, you know what, I was really into you, you know, and I really support you and your relationship. But like, I'm kind of in love with you. I was kind of in love with you. But without any need for him to do anything. I was just like confessing and letting him know like that it was really hard emotionally to see him choose someone else even though I was honoring it yes and at that point I remember him stopping in the mid conversation he goes wait a minute wait a minute you are in love with me and I was like yeah yeah

I've been I've been spending with you for several months. And in that moment, something transformed because I went from being cool and smart and I could teach you some things to just being a vulnerable woman with her heart online. And that's when he recognized me. That's when he said, he said there was a shape in his heart that had been dark and it lit up for the first time in the shape of me, like a silhouette. And he was like, oh, that's her. Now, he told me later, I didn't fall in love with you in that moment. I just knew you were the one. And I knew that the feelings would follow later, which is so weird. But like, I just knew you were the one and that I'd fall in love with you subsequently. So that was just an interesting anecdote is that oftentimes women can feel this is my partner because they're the visionary leader of the relationship.

And sometimes the male partner is like, yes, I know this is right, but the feelings haven't come online yet. But basically from that moment onwards, we were in love. He wrote a letter to all his friends and basically said, I found her. She's the one. One of his friends wrote back and said, is this April Fool's Day? Because he was least likely to ever find a partner. And so that was the beginning of our love story. And systematically over time, I helped him believe in love. I helped him see how his fear of marriage and having kids was actually rooted in unresolved trauma with his parents.

And I worked persistently to help him build a more empowered, healed relationship with his mother and his father. Because I think that's the job in a romantic relationship. Your job is to help your partner get complete and heal any pain left over with their mother or their father. Because any pain that's left over with their mother and their father that hasn't been healed will necessarily impact how they relate to you in romance and how they parent your future children. So that's the highest ROI work I could do. And I was very efficient at it. And his relationship with his family just got better and better because of the pain left over by your mother or your father. So how could you, how do we use that?

And how can we help our partner or someone we love work through that pain? Well, first realizing that your mother and your father are your first guardians. They become your attachment figure. And attachment figure is just a fancy scientific word for place you go for soothing and safety. So this little kid wants to venture out in the playground and it looks back at mom and mom's like, yeah, and then it walks a little farther and it looks back to the secure base. And there's an imprint that happens in your attachment dynamic with your mom and your dad, most of your mom, but you get an imprint that happens in your attachment dynamic with your mom and your dad,

most of your mom, but you get an imprint, and there's good parts and difficult parts. And then you grow up, and then you fall in love, and every person you fall in love with becomes your new attachment figure to your nervous system. So all the glory and the ghastly of your original attachment imprint ports right over to your romantic partner. So here you are dating someone, you're 25 years old and you're in this relationship and you don't realize it, but you're expecting your partner to soothe you,

rescue you, make you feel emotionally safe in all the ways that you didn't get when you were a child. So your child self is like, hey, you're the attachment figure. You're supposed to do this. Didn't you get the memo? But they're seeing a grown-up adult acting entitled for something that doesn't even make sense because a grown-up is supposed to create their own safety. And that's actually my definition for an adult.

An adult is someone who takes radical responsibility for generating safety in their nervous system and does not rely on someone else to make them feel safe. A child does rely on someone else. But to qualify as an adult, you have to realize, oh, nobody's coming to save me, like ever, including my partner, and I need to save myself. And so what does that look like? It means learning a set of tools and technology to bring your awareness into the present moment and attune to your body. Like we were talking about earlier, what are the sensations going on in your body? And basically learn to

regulate your nervous system. So most of us are having conflict because our nervous system gets dysregulated. What does that mean? We have a feeling that's too intense and we don't know how to cope with it. So remember I talked about learning how to cope. Learning how to cope with these feelings is what makes you powerful in a relationship. Because if you can cope with anger, jealousy, shame, then when your partner brings something, you can still have your wits about you and navigate from an adult self. So when we're talking about working with your parental dynamics,

when you make one millimeter of shift in your partner's relationship with their mom and their dad, if you can stand for that and support that, you get like miles of ROI upgrade in your current relationship. So when I was helping my husband have a more empowered relationship with his mom and dad, it wasn't because I was just some altruist and wanted his family to work. That's true. But it's because I knew every millimeter of upgrade that he gets with his parents, it's less drama and work for us in our relationship and when we have children. And so one of the things that's really important to take on as a romantic partner is you never side with your partner against one of their parents.

So he'd bitch about his dad, my husband. Oh, my dad's so insensitive. And I would listen and I would honor and dignify my husband's frustration with his dad. And then I would slowly try to show him how his dad was actually in a fumble bumbled suboptimal way, just trying to love his son. You know, my husband's very health conscious, so he doesn't drink pop or anything with sugar in it. We'd go over to his dad's house. His dad would have out orange juice, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, seven up and trying to get my husband to drink it. And because that's what he drank and he bought five different things so that his son could have choice.

He's not trapped that his son doesn't drink anything with sugar. So my husband would be bitching in the car home, why is he trying to give me pop? Doesn't he know I don't like sugar? And I'm like, actually, he doesn't. He doesn't live in a world where anyone has I don't drink sugar. He went and tried to get five different varieties, and that's him trying to love you.

Can you see that it's a suboptimal fumble bumbled attempt at love but it is coming from a good place and he's like oh he's trying to love me okay and so i was just systematically trying to show my husband how his parents were trying to love him but fumbling ball and helping him see that this was the best technology they had. And that if he wanted them to love him better at higher quality ways, he would have to train them and train them from teacher stance, not the WTF, what's wrong with you stance,

but like you train a child to use a spoon, you educate them. And so what I was trying to do is make sure that my husband's relationship with his father got better because I was there. My husband's relationship with his mother got better, healthier because I was there, which didn't mean he had to pander to them. It sometimes meant he had to hold more boundaries with them to create a more safe, unenmeshed dynamic, less codependent. So I'm managing the health of his relationship with his parents so that we have a better dynamic and so that how he parents our future children will be healthier. So that's the game.

Thank you. Thanks for sharing that. I've just been smiling the whole time listening to you because I feel like what we're talking about is so important. And, again, people don't necessarily have these tools. What about, Annie, someone who thinks, because I know there's people who are listening that say, you know, I can't find the right partner. I don't deserve love. Or, you know, finding love won't ever happen for me. What advice would you give for them? Well, the first thing I'd say is every cynic is a failed idealist.

So anyone who has a cynical, oh, it's never going to happen, bittersweet, curmudgeony, like bitter, grumbly, it means that they had a dream of true love, of possibility, and their hopes got dashed to the curb. And it was so painful that they pretended they don't have that dream anymore. But because they're cynical, I know there's still a little tiny flame burning in their heart for that dream, for that possibility. Otherwise, they wouldn't be cynical and grumbly. They'd be neutral. They'd be just like neutral. So whenever I see that cynicism, I'm like, oh, there's an idealist in there. How do I get in to blow on that ember of possibility and reignite their belief that true love is possible for them

in this lifetime? And so I help skeptics believe in true love. That's one of my favorite things to do. So that's the first frame is no matter how cynical you are, just know if you're cynical and not neutral, that you're actually really committed to a dream that somewhere inside you still believe is possible. And then the second thing I would do is if someone's single and they're wondering if they'll ever find a partner, first you have to see something in your imagination before it can happen in the world. You have to at least vision it.

We can't find something we don't believe in. We just can't. So first thing I have to do is help the person take their magic wand out and just open up possibility space. Have the audacity to vision something without having any clue how to get there. Okay? The point of visioning is not to extrapolate

from the past or the present moment. The point of visioning is to jump and leap into possibility space and conjure your ideal outcome just to see what it is. And then once you conjure that future vision in high-def granular specificity, blueprints of how to get there gets downloaded into your mind. But only after you go from nebulous, foggy, someday, one day, maybe I'd like to fall in love to I want to be in love. I want to have a relationship that's a trampoline for my dreams and a sanctuary for my heart. I want someone who

supports me in this and it's evolutionary and we grow together. What I tell my single clients is to every time they're at the sink, male single clients is to, every time they're at the sink, male or female, I say, every time you're at the kitchen sink, just imagine you're washing a dish. Just imagine your partner bringing their arms and putting it around your waist and slipping their chin in the nook of your neck. You don't know what they look like. You don't know anything, but you feel that feeling of what it's like to be embraced and you feel the softening and just run that visualization every time you're at the sink. Start creating a reference experience of what it's going to feel like when they come.

Because what happens mostly is they go, oh, if I think about someone hugging me, I conjure the feeling of longing. What we want to do is conjure the feeling of, of course, but you have to visualize it as if it's already happening. So that's one thing is I'm always helping my single clients hold a vision as clearly as possible

without needing to know how to get there. And then if it's a female client, I tell her, listen, sweetheart, every man you meet is either the one or practice for the one. So you want to bring your A game. Every man, every six-year-old boy, every 80-year-old grandpa at the pharmacy holding the door open for you, every man you meet, treat that man as if they are an avatar sent back in time from your future soulmate, to interview you and see how you relate to the divine masculine today. So every man you meet, imagine right after you meet them, they're going to go home and send a little energetic email that goes to your soulmate and reports on how you're doing and how they feel

after that interaction. Now, it doesn't mean you flirt with them, but whether it's a six-year-old boy or an 80-year-old man, and even if it's a 30-second interaction at Starbucks, did you leave them dignified? Did you interact with them the way you would interact as if their mother was standing right beside them watching? So every man I meet, I imagine their mother is standing right beside them and she's watching me and I'm going to interact with him in a way that honors her. Okay. So that's the first piece. That's what I tell women to do. And I do the same thing for men. I go, every woman you meet

is an avatar from the goddess. And can you relate to her? Even if she's an 80 year old woman, can you see the goddess in her and just acknowledge it? And how would you treat this woman in front of you, even if it's your best friend's girlfriend or a Starbucks barista or the cashier at Whole Foods? Every woman you meet, how would you relate to her for that small interaction if her father was standing right beside her watching. How would you treat her? Treat her that way. Because as you practice treating women that way, you become a king. Because you're treating every woman

with the queenness in their nature. So the way your future queen recognizes you is by how you treat the feminine at large. It builds your self-esteem. It makes you more attractive. Even if the Starbucks barista is not your girl, her girlfriend might be. And so you are practicing the dance

with the divine masculine, with the divine feminine, and every single dance is a practice until you find your partner. And if you're an Olympic medalist and you're practicing for the Olympics and you go to the gym every morning, you're not going to do a half-assed practice.

You bring your A game to every rehearsal so that when you hit the Olympics, you're running at full tilt. So every woman or man you interact with, bring your A game so when your soulmate shows up, they'll recognize you. Thank you, Annie.

That was so powerful. And I could imagine if you just have that standard in your head, you start treating people very differently. How can people learn more about you, follow along with your work, work with you? Just tell us a bit how we might reach out to you. Yeah, well, I post every week on Instagram all my best ideas. So Instagram handle is Lala Bird, L-A-L-L-A-B-I-R-D, lalabird.

I've got a website, annielala.com, A-N-N-I-E-L-A-L-L-A.com. And you can reach out and join my tribe. You get a whole free booklet and expose on love, sex, and conflict resolution. You can do my love test on my website to see if you're really in love with your partner or they're really in love with you. And I also teach my own relationship coaching school. So I teach all my cutting edge technology for conflict resolution and collaboration and building intimacy aimed for support people who are coaches or teachers or facilitators.

That's called Heart Coach. And you can check that out at www.heartcoach.com. I just literally today started a new three-month cohort. So if anyone's like, I want to learn how to be a relationship leader in my life, check out heartcoach.com and join me. I basically packed 20 years of my experience into my programs. And so I'm really on a mission to change the source code on how love is done in our culture. And that's why I teach and that's why I coach. And so if anybody wants to join Team Love, you're welcome to join me.

I love it. All right. So heartcoach.com and AnnieLala.com. Annie, do you have any final advice or thoughts for us? Maybe something that we didn't talk about that's really important around relationships or love. I said earlier that you can't find something if you don't believe in it. And so whether you're in a relationship or you're looking for one, having the courage to be able to believe that the kind of love that you dream about is possible is the main work for falling in love. And it requires faith.

I could give you tools and techniques to resolve conflict and to not get into fights, but ultimately if I could distill down what makes a long-term relationship last forever, it's that each partner has the algorithm, has the facility inside their own mind to generate faith in this relationship, even and especially when their feelings are filled with terror and anguish and jealousy and rage and shame. There are moments where I'm feeling a lot of intense feelings and I can hear the part of me that goes, run away, leave, break up. I hear it. It still courts me.

But I have a part of me that knows how to literally generate faith that's not based on the present moment, not based on the past. Faith is based on the audacity to vision something so true, good, and beautiful that it cannot help become true. And you can't extrapolate it from what's so. So cultivating the ability to believe in something, like Steve Jobs, when he built the iPhone, right? There was no technology. There was no reason it should occur. He just had a resolute vision. And that vision corrals an entire industry into making something happen. So can you be the Steve Jobs of your relationship and believe in it when all is lost? That's what gets you through the dark times. And that's what I love to teach

people how to do. Generate faith from nothing because that's what separates those who stay and those who leave. Excellent. So go check out AnnieLala.com, HeartCoach.com. Annie, thank you so much for joining us and giving us such powerful insight and aha moments to help us think about our own relationships. Thank you so much for being here today. You're so welcome. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump.

Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can add over to Dr. Sindhra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.