Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 263: Protect Yourself In Dating With This Mindset

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

Do you find some relationships and situations in life that just drain you? Maybe there are people you're investing energy into in your dating life that make you feel burnt out, frustrated, and make you want to withdraw entirely. So if you want to spend your time in a happier, freer, more productive way that leaves you uplifted, this episode is for you. Matt gives 7 key insights from the book "Protect Your Peace" by Trent Shelton that will change your mindset and stop you surrounding yourself with toxic people that add to your stress in life. ►► Answers Tailored to You, In Real Time, When You Need Them Most. Ask Matthew AI Your Biggest Dating Question for Free at . . . → http://www.AskMH.com ►► Order My New Book, "Love Life" at → http://www.LoveLifeBook.com ►► FREE Video Training: “Dating With Results” → http://www.DatingWithResults.com

Welcome to the Love Life podcast with me, Matthew Hussey, author of the book Love Life, the New York Times bestseller from earlier this year. And we are back with another episode today. I want to talk about the seven ways that you can protect your peace in love and life. And this podcast is going to be great for anybody who is maybe scared to put themselves out there in love because you're worried that someone is going to come along and rob you of the hard won peace that you've created. Or maybe you're dating right now and you feel like your peace has already been robbed by the experience of being out there and dating and dealing with all of the things that come up in dating. You can also apply these to life in general.

If you feel overstressed, if you feel chronically anxious, if you feel like peace is the number one thing that would make your life better and it feels so elusive now today's episode was inspired by a friend of mine trent shelton who this year released a brand new book called protect your peace and what i thought i would do because i've been reading this book this year i thought i would go through some of the principles that I really enjoyed from this book and supplement them with some thoughts of my own for each principle. But it might inspire you to go and read this book because I've been really enjoying it. And it might also give you some things that you can use right now to help protect your peace in your life. By the way, if you want something right now to help specifically with getting out there,

creating opportunities and getting results in your love life, my free masterclass, Dating With Results, is something you can watch right now by going to datingwithresults.com. This is an hour that will change your love life. So if you get the chance today, and if not today, do it tomorrow,

go watch this datingwithresults.com. It's completely free, and it is the most popular free masterclass I have ever released in the 17 years that I have been doing this. So go check that out as well. Let's get started shall we Let's get to our first principle. One of the things that Trent talks about in the book is this idea of who and what is draining you. This comes under the section he titles

Protect Your Energy. And you may know already as I've started talking about this that there are certain things in your life that just routinely drain you of energy. It could be social media. It could be certain things you do every day that may be a non-essential, but you just do them habitually without even thinking about it at this stage. It might be things you're saying yes to that you don't actually need to say yes to. Maybe it's arising out of a need to please people. There might be certain people in your life

that you go, these people are not a value add in my life. Why do I keep seeing them? Why do I keep hanging out with them? I can remember specific moments in my life where I realized that there was a certain person that I called a friend, but every time I hung out with them, I felt worse at the end of hanging out with them. And eventually I said to myself, I don't want to hang out with this person anymore. This relationship is not a value add in my life. And that doesn't mean that every relationship is just about someone adding value to us. Of course it's not. It's a mutual thing, but there are situations where we go, I am giving to this relationship and I'm not getting, or I'm

trying to bring a more positive version of myself to everything in my life these days. And this person is very negative, or this person always brings me down or leaves me feeling more insecure about myself. So the key question I want you to ask here, as we look at what and who is draining you, is what are you doing in your life right now or who are you giving time and energy to that is not a value add in your life and be very honest with yourself about that a lot of people burn out in dating because they're not managing their energy well in terms of who they distribute it to. So much of dating success is energy management. So where are you leaking energy in the wrong places? Because if you give it to the wrong people, you'll have less available to the right people.

One of my favorite little poems is, For all your days prepare and meet them ever alike. When you're the anvil, bear. When you're the hammer, strike. So much of dating is energy management. Energy management. If you burn out because you keep giving time to the wrong people, then you're never gonna find love.

But if you can reserve energy for the right people by not giving it to the wrong people, then you're never going to find love. But if you can reserve energy for the right people by not giving it to the wrong people, your chances go way up. The second principle I want to give you from Trent's book comes from this question. Whose approval do you need to stop looking for? He lists this under the section of the book Protect Your Mind. And I think this is incredibly relevant for anybody who wants to protect their peace, is that there are all sorts of people whose approval we're constantly looking for in both love and in life. In love, we look for the approval of people who don't even show us respect or aren't even trying with us, who aren't even investing. In our life, we often look for the approval of friends

or parents or colleagues who are not always looking out for us in the best ways, or in some cases are still married to an idea of who we were, not who we are now. One of the things I really enjoyed that Trent talks about is this idea of when you have a vision for your life and what you wanna do next, that is like a prescription,

a pair of prescription glasses that are made for you. And if you try and put those glasses, those lenses on somebody else, they may not be able to see clearly, but that's because it's your prescription. Your vision is unique to you. It's special to you. And that's not to say we can't take feedback from people,

but I know that there are times in my life where I've looked for way too much feedback on everything, and I've really lacked the ability to trust myself. Have you ever been there? You consistently look for approval from other people on key decisions or things you want to do with your life or things that you want to create. Or maybe even someone that you're dating who doesn't look like your normal type, but is someone that makes you really happy and you feel the need still to go and ask for everyone else's approval to see if they like them. We have to be very careful with this instinct. I can look back on very

specific times in my life where this instinct could have led me very wrong. I remember practicing for a big event that I was creating back in 2019. And I was going on tour and doing, I don't know what it was, many, many cities across the world. And there was this one bit that I was creating that it was an intricate kind of bit about how in a bad relationship, our conscious mind doesn't really help us because our conscious mind is just having a really good time in the romance of it all and doesn't want to let it go. But our subconscious, it realizes something is very wrong and this person is not treating us very well. And we get this weird feeling in our stomach sometimes, but we don't listen to it. Anyway, I had this whole bit personifying our subconscious

as this SWAT team that had to break into the room and sabotage the relationship for us. I was describing this to a couple of people close to me, and they both looked at me and went, yeah, I don't think that's gonna work I don't really they they both just really deflated me on this and when I came to them I remember thinking to myself this this is gonna work like this is gonna be a funny moment in the event and they really like down they they kind of took the wind out of my sails and were like i

don't get it i don't think that's gonna work i don't think you should do that i ended up sticking with it because i really believed in it and it ended up being one of the funniest moments in the entire show everywhere i went and did this bit in every city that was a moment that brought the house down. And I remember thinking, oh my God, thank God I listened to myself. And I didn't just try to get these people to see my vision for me when it was something that was in my head. I just had to realize it. So whose approval do you keep seeking that by seeking approval is robbing you of your peace instead of just listening to yourself and trusting yourself. One of the great things that Trent says about this

is share your vision by living it. And he has this other line that I like, which is less announcements, more achievements. And I think it's a really great way of conveying that we don't have to communicate our vision for our life to everybody. We can just live it and we can let the results speak for themselves. I remember being in a room of people with one of them being my friend Lewis Howes. And Lewis had been working on a lot of healing

and his own personal growth for the last couple of years by this point. And he came to this meeting and other people who hadn't seen him in a while started to notice that he felt very peaceful. They were like, you have an amazing energy right now. What have you been doing? And it was so fascinating

because it wasn't him all along the way saying, here's what I'm doing to create peace in my life. But the way he showed up to that meeting made the people around him go, what did you do? And isn't that kind of a fun way to live? Instead of trying to convince people of what we're doing, once we've done it and we get the results of it and they can see those results, they're asking us, what did you do? Part of the problem of this that Trent highlights is not just the problem of people not being able to see our vision for our lives. It's also what he calls the too close bias. That there are people who know us really well, who are too close to who we've always been, to the way we've always been, to our habits, to the ways we've grown up,

or the personality we've had for as long as they've known us. And so they're kind of married to that picture of us. And on the 1000th or 10,000th impression that they have of us, it could be very difficult to change their mind about who we are or what we're now gonna focus on or believe in. But people who are much newer to us, it's much easier to share a vision that we're excited about. So ironically, in some cases, a perfect stranger might be more supportive of what you're excited about than

someone who has known you your whole life and deeply loves you. This doesn't mean that the person who deeply loves you is a bad person. It's just what Trent calls the too close bias. So again, one of the ways to protect your peace is to know what's important to you and what you want to do, but to share it with the appropriate people and in other cases, just to live it and let people see the results of what you're doing. The third principle for protecting your peace in life and love is to remember the gift of unanswered prayers. This is something Trent talks about in the book where he says,

any place you're getting rejected isn't the place for you. He says, I don't care who and what is against you. I care about who and what is against you. I care about who and what is for you. And of course, this can be applied to love as well, right? What if you cared a little less about who wasn't into you and a little more about who was into you? The people that actually gave you the time of day, the people that actually showed up for you

That doesn't mean you should settle for someone who shows up for you but you really don't feel anything for but it does mean that it's certainly draining your energy if The people that don't show up or the people who show up poorly are the people you're investing the most in Is there anyone like that in your life right now? Be very, very careful about this. And in some cases, there are people that passed us up that you may look back on and go, I really dodged a bullet there. Is there anyone like that in your life where at the time you thought it was the worst thing in the world that that person rejected you or that they broke up with you? And in hindsight,

you're like, thank God they rejected me. Thank God they broke up with me. I really did dodge a bullet. That would have been bad. I would have been stuck in that relationship. Or maybe I wouldn't have had the strength to leave myself for a long time. And I could have been stuck in it for many more years of suffering. There are rejections we get that are very good for our life. When I first came to the States, I did a TV show called Ready for Love.

And that TV show aired for three episodes and then it ended up getting shelved. You know, it didn't do the numbers that it needed to do in order to stay in the slot it was in. So at the time, I think it got moved to a streaming service, Hulu or somewhere like that, but it was airing on NBC. And that was at the time the big play. And it felt really disappointing at the time.

It was painful. I'd spent an entire year creating this thing. And yet, I look back now and I think, thank God that show didn't work. Because had it worked, there would have been a level of attention on me that I almost certainly would not have been a level of attention on me that I almost certainly would not have been ready for. And now if, you know, I'm known on some relative scale at this point in my life, but if I did something that made me 10 times more known based on my life experience now and my sense of self now, I'd be in a much better position to be able to handle that.

But back then when I was 25, had that catapulted me into a whole different level of fame, I think that would have been really bad for me. I think there would have been some really bad consequences of that that I got to avoid because the show didn't work out. What are the examples of that in your life? And where is there a rejection or a heartbreak that you're in the middle of right now that five years from now you might look back on and go, oh my God, thank God that person didn't text me back.

Thank God that person said they didn't want a relationship. Either because what you find out they were, you find out that definitely wasn't my person, or because in five years, you're in a relationship that's so much better than that ever was. And you never would have found that relationship if this person today hadn't rejected you

or broken up with you or gone cold or ghosted or whatever version of pain they have put you through. Principle number four, for protecting your peace in love and life, Trent talks about being solution-minded. I love this one because I feel like this is a lesson I return to every week of the year in my life.

There are always things going wrong. And in my organization, there are always fires to fight. In my personal life, there are always things going wrong. And in my organization, there are always fires to fight. In my personal life, there are always fires to fight. And there's always something that when it's first going wrong, you think, I wish this wasn't happening. And there's, for me at least, because my inclination is towards anxiety in life and always has been. I go to a place of anxiety if I don't control my state in those moments. But one of the things that I have always chosen to focus on, or at least in the last few years,

I've very much chosen to focus on, is that anxiety is the opposite of having a solution-based mindset. Anxiety is the opposite of taking some form of action that can actually take away or disintegrate, dissolve that anxiety. Every time something goes wrong and makes you anxious, tell yourself there is some kind of response to this. There is some kind of action that can be taken here that has the potential to not only dissolve this anxiety,

but to make things even better in some way. Nancy Pelosi, I once heard her say, everything is an opportunity. And I believe that woman believes that, that everything is an opportunity, no matter what is going wrong, no matter what seems to be burning down around you, everything is an opportunity. Do you know how this video came to be? I was shooting a podcast with Trent Shelton

because I wanted to talk about his book to all of you. This was several months ago now. And we had a tech malfunction at the end of the podcast that meant that the podcast no longer existed. We had just sat down and shot this whole podcast talking about this book together and all of a sudden it didn't exist. But what that allowed me to do was to step back and go, okay, what's the opportunity in this? What's the action that dissolves my anxiety? Because my anxiety was I have hurt my relationship with Trent because he showed up and put all of this effort into

making a great podcast with me. And then because of a problem on our side, now the podcast doesn't exist. And, you know, it just became, you know, I felt my mind whirling instantly with the, you know, my, the side of me that can get concerned about people pleasing and, oh my God, what am I gonna do came out. But instead I went, you know what? This actually is gonna allow me to go away and get even closer to the content to take the time. Because at that point,

I hadn't had a chance to read the book fully, to sit down and read the book and go through it in detail and really put together something well-crafted for everybody. And that's what I've ended up doing. And by doing this, my anxiety has dissolved. So remember, you can work your way out of anxiety. You can create your way out of anxiety. Everything is an opportunity. By the way, if you feel like in your love life recently, you have made some kind of a mistake, said something embarrassing, done something awkward, or had an argument that you worry has hurt a potential relationship or dating situation you're

in, and you want to know what is the solution that can get me out of this place of anxiety and into a place of action. Go tell Matthew AI what the experience was that happened and ask for advice. You can literally call Matthew AI or text if you're in a place where you don't want to have sound and you can lay out the situation and Matthew AI can actually give you a way to be proactive so that you don't just sit here ruminating in the problem. Remember, everything is an opportunity. So go ask Matthew AI at askmh.com. The fifth principle I took from Trent's book, Protect Your Peace for Protecting Your Peace in Love and Life, is choose to heal. Now, Trent chose this word very carefully, choose to heal. He talks emotionally about the passing of his mother and how much it affected him and how much it stopped him in his tracks when it happened,

and how there was a certain point at which he had to choose to heal from the death of his mother. I think there's something very poignant about that. I spend so much of my week coaching and helping people who have been through some really terrible things, whether it's a heartbreak, whether it's an abusive relationship, whether it's trauma from the past. Sometimes we go through difficult emotions because we're confronting our grief, confronting our pain. Other times we go through difficult emotions because we're trying to avoid it or bury our head in the sand. And one of them of course leads to progress and the other one leads to this endless cycle. How many people when they have an ex, someone they can't get over, someone who keeps messing them around

saying they don't want a relationship, but still keeps texting them anyway, or watching their stories or whatever they do that keeps putting them on your mind. How many people truly make the choice to heal versus saying they want to heal, but continuing to entertain this person? This person texts, they text back. They go to this person's social media

and still look through their profile. And every time they reopen the wound. We do things that actively hurt our chances of healing. So I want you to think for a moment. Again, the theme of this video is peace. If you want more peace, where is there a situation in your life where you need to make a conscious decision

that I am going to choose to heal? I am going to heal. And that might mean some very practical decisions. I might need to block someone. Stop answering. Finally, send them a note or a letter and say, I'm done. This is it. This is the last time you're going to hear from me. Get rid of anything in our house that reminds us of them. Stop putting our focus in other areas of our life. Stop talking about this person. What do we need to do? If we were choosing to heal, really choosing to heal,

what would we do differently from what we're doing now? Because maybe what we're doing right now, we say we wanna feel better, but really underneath it all, we are still trying to hold on to this situation that by holding onto, we are still trying to hold on to this situation that by holding on to, we are hurting ourselves. The sixth principle for protecting your peace in love and life is to create simple happiness in your life. I love this because in this part of the book, Trent invites us to think

about what are the simple things that we can get back to doing in our week that connect us to what makes us happy? What are the phone calls we can make? What are the activities we can do? What are the things that are important to us, the people who are important to us, the activities we really enjoy doing that nourish us? If we're stripping away so many of these chronic stresses that make us unhappy or that drain us, what are the things that we can start to add in that nourish us? Simple things, simple practices that make us happy.

And this is different from what are the things that if you had them, you feel like you, your life would be complete. You know, if I just had met the love of my life them, you feel like your life would be complete. You know, if I just had met the love of my life already, I feel like I'd have everything in my life. I'm talking about the simple practices, the simple things that make you happy that can form part of your life now before that goal is even realized. I know one of the little practices I have is I wake up in the morning and like many people I try to write down a couple of things that make me feel grateful and a couple of things

that I'm excited about in my life that are coming up or even that are happening this week it could be something small like weekend, me and my brother, Steven, for his birthday, I'm taking him to Universal Studios. And he hasn't seen Mario World yet. So he's, I'm really excited to show him that for the first time and to watch his face as we go around these different things that I know Steven, when we were kids lit up at anything Mario.

And even fun fact about Steven had a nightmare once where he woke up saying Mario's dead. It's not relevant to the video but it does give you an idea of how much Steven really enjoyed everything Mario. That he was even dreaming of Mario dying. But we're going to Universal Studios and I'm gonna get to see him be a kid again. And I'm so excited about it. And I literally wrote it in my journal this morning.

I can't wait to see my brother's face and him be a kid at Mario World. You know, we have to connect to these things because guess what? My day to day is actually really, really busy. There's so much to do. And if I just focused on how much there was to do today, I might get overwhelmed.

But instead I woke up and I connected to this thing I'm really excited about for this weekend. What are the simple practices that can bring you back to a place of happiness in your life. The last principle that I took from this book is this idea of what's right for you right now. What's right for you right now. And the two operative parts of that sentence for me are you and now,

right? Because it's specific. No one can tell you what's right for you. You have to get in touch with yourself and connect to what does my life really need? And the now part is important because it's not what did I need five years ago or what would have made me happy 10 years ago or in a different era, it's what would make me happy now? It's one of the questions that I start my bigger programs with. When I do a retreat, one of the biggest things

I encourage people to start thinking highly contextually about is forget all of your blueprints that you have brought with you from a previous chapter of your life to now and instead get in touch with what's right for you in this chapter. I think this is a form of presence to get really present with what needs do I need to satisfy now? How have my needs changed? When it comes to a partner, how have my needs changed? You know, maybe part of what's robbing me of my peace is that I keep chasing this old idea of what I'm looking for instead of just being very present to who makes me feel good right now? Who do I feel

at home with? Who do I feel comfortable with? Whenever I make this point, Audrey is quick to remind me of a couple in Sex and the City, which I can't pass off as an example that I know a lot about, but I'll give you what Audrey has told me. There is a couple, Harry and Charlotte, right? Harry and Charlotte. Charlotte is, she has sexual chemistry with Harry, but Harry does not look the part, or at least he doesn't look like the person she's always dated or thought she would end up with. So even though she has this amazing sexual connection with him and she really enjoys being

around him and he makes her happy, she's afraid to bring Harry around her friends because egoically Harry doesn't feel right for her even though on a soul level, if we can call it that, he does. But understanding what's right for us is also about shedding society's expectations of what we should be doing. In many cases, our family's expectations of what we should be doing. Our ego's expectations of what we should be doing, our ego's expectations of what we should be doing, and getting in touch with what's really gonna feel good for us to do. Maybe everyone else is working harder around us

in this part of their life, and what we need is to take a step back, which is a very hard thing to do when we see everyone around us working really hard. Our ego says, I need to be working harder. But maybe we need the opposite. It could be deciding what's going to be enough for us. That there's such a thing as good enough. There's such a thing as happy enough.

Maybe that's with a project that we're working on where we can let go of the stressful need for perfection and let something be good enough to actually put out there to the world or to our team. It might be how we approach our day and the stress that we put on ourselves to make the day perfect and get the optimal amount done and to squeeze every drop out of every hour of the day

before we go to bed, which is something that makes us just feel miserable all the time and has us coming from a place of deficit. Instead, we might say, what does good enough look like today? Defining these things and being able to put down all of these expectations is a fantastic way of bringing back our peace. And if you're ever wondering what makes you feel good, just pay attention. Pay attention to certain moments where you hear something and you breathe a sigh of relief.

Maybe it's this podcast. You're listening and as you're listening, you almost feel this sense of relief that this feels like truth or it speaks to some part of your soul. Listen to that, that's telling you something. You know, we have to connect to these things, whether it's in nature going for a walk or meditating,

moments where we just quiet the noise of the world and get back in touch with what is right for us. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. I really appreciate you being here with me on the Love Life podcast. Let me know what you thought of this episode. Podcast at MatthewHussey.com. Pick up a copy of Trent's book, Protect Your Peace. Nine unapologetic principles for thriving in a chaotic world.

And I will see you next time on the Love Life podcast. Be well, my friends, and love life. I'll see you soon. Outro Music