Love Life with Matthew Hussey - The Ultimate Secret to Overcome Weakness
Episode Date: March 6, 2017Recently, I picked up an iconic book for the first time that you likely read in your youth. (You’ll have to listen to this episode to find out what it is.) In this book, and the actions of its famou...s main character, I uncovered one of the most important life lessons that I also teach in my live seminars. I want to share it with you today because it’s a quick illustration of exactly what to do when you’re feeling low, abandoned or depressed… and gives you the secret recipe for overcoming weakness any time you feel it taking over. So grab a glass of wine and join our own (5-minute) mini book club for two!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I'm Matthew Hussey and this is Love Life.
If you've ever felt like you didn't know the right words to say to a man to create attraction and chemistry,
then you can't afford to miss what I have for you at the end of today's episode.
Stay tuned, because I'm going to hand you five phrases that are so simple yet so powerful with men
that you're going to be furious at me for not giving this to you years ago.
I wanted to do something a little different today in talking about a book, a book that many of you,
if you're listening to this in the United States, will have read very young. I didn't. It wasn't on
my school texts, but I did read it later in life, and that's Catcher in the Rye. I was reading this book recently on holiday, and like many people, I think, during the first half
of the book, I found myself wondering if there was anything to like about the character Holden.
If you haven't read the book, it's about Holden Caulfield, a young schoolboy who is growing or is becoming an adult, is in the cusp of adulthood and is very angsty and finds himself often depressed by life and by people in life and often disappointed in people and their behavior.
And he's often inside his own head,
giving himself all these reasons that he doesn't like anything. And I wanted to talk about this
book today because I think it teaches us actually a very valuable lesson that I'm often mentioning
in my coaching. And for those of you that have read it, you'll, I think, get a kick out of this.
And for those of you that haven't, I would suggest that you do read it because even though
this feels sometimes like it's about an angsty teenager, by the end of the book,
actually, you find that there is an incredible amount to relate to in this person. And sometimes
part of the reason we don't like a character is that they reflect too much of ourselves.
Now, spoiler alert, if you haven't read the book and you want to know nothing about it,
come back to this once you've read the book.
Now, I'm going to jump straight to the end of the book.
We've been through this whole journey with Holden, where he has dropped out of school.
He's traveling around New York, visiting various venues, bars, hotel rooms,
and having very little luck in being able to get anybody to talk to him or socialize with him.
He has an incredibly difficult time. And through all of this, he's inside his own head,
telling himself all of the reasons that he just wants to leave it all, that he wants to leave school, that he just wants to go far away. And we get to the end of the book where in his mind,
he's resolute. He's going to leave. He's going to take a train and he's going to go far away and leave all of this behind him and try and live a
more simple life somewhere else away from his family, away from the people that he knows,
his friends, his teachers, everyone that he feels on some level has left him to one side,
who doesn't pay him any attention or doesn't understand him, isn't on the same wavelength.
And there's this beautiful moment where his sister, who he wants to say goodbye to before he leaves, his sister is kind of this icon of someone that he wants to protect, someone he cares about,
someone he loves, even though he's not quite comfortable with love or feelings of affection,
he does feel them towards his sister Phoebe. And just as he's leaving he goes to her school to pass a message to say
you know have phoebe meet me um and so that i you know he comes up with an excuse but he really
wants to say goodbye because he's leaving and she comes out with a suitcase and it turns out that
she's packed her stuff and she's telling him that she's going to go with him.
And he tells her that she can't come.
And she gets very angry and stroppy and upset and won't talk to him.
And they go for a walk down the street.
They walk on opposite sides of the street.
She won't walk with him because she's so upset with him.
And she feels like he's going to abandon her.
And they walk until they get to this carousel in the park, in Central Park.
And she makes him promise that he's not going to leave, that he's going to stay.
And in this moment, he initially thinks, no, I have to leave.
But at the same time, he has this precious soul in front of him that he doesn't feel like he can abandon.
And even though he wants to leave himself,
which I would argue is a life that he knows underneath it all, isn't going to be a good one
if he leaves. He doesn't want to bring her with him because he knows that it's not going to be
a great life. And perhaps he knows he's not even going to go, but he knows it's not going to be
something that's pleasant for her. He knows that he couldn't do that to her. So he needs her to stay, but she needs him to stay. And because she needs him to stay and
he feels needed by somebody else, he finds himself staying. And it creates this very beautiful moment
that I think is an extremely important learning point for life. Very often in my seminars, and if
you've been on my tour, if you've been on any of my live
events or my retreats, you will have seen this. Sometimes people feel so low, so weak, so abandoned
or depressed that they want to give it all up. You know, for the extreme, there are people that
decide that they want to end their lives. And at the more lukewarm level, there are people that
feel like they just want to quit,
quit their job, give it all up. They want to leave their family. They want to go somewhere else. They,
they, in a sense, want to travel far, far away. They don't know where they're going,
but they know they want to go away from where they are now. One of the greatest, and I'm going
to give you a little secret to coaching right now, something that you can both use on yourself and the people that you care about. One of the secrets is to find someone else who you know needs you. Find someone else
you know you need to be strong for. Because very often when you're feeling weak, the key is to put
yourself around someone who's in more need than you are. Someone who's got a bigger problem than
you are or someone who needs you to be strong for them. Because when you do that, it's incredible the strength you find. When you find
strength out of necessity for somebody else, you'll do things for them that you would never
do for yourself. And in doing things for them, very often you can end up liking yourself and
respecting yourself more for getting strong again. Holden Caulfield found the strength because his
sister required it of him. And this guy who
was lost, this guy who needed to leave it all, finally found strength in this moment when he
realized it was for someone that he cared about. Now, you may be listening to this and think of
someone that you care about who needs you, that you need to get strong for in those moments where
you're weak. Or you might find that there is no one that comes to mind. But I'll say this to you, the world's a big place and there are many people in need.
Some of them aren't people you know, some of them are people you're yet to meet,
but there are many people who need your charity or your love or your kindness or your strength
or your lessons that you've learned in life. There are many people who need what you have.
And as long as you stay weak and want to abandon it all and want to leave it all
and want to travel far, far want to leave it all and want
to travel far, far away, you're abandoning those people too and the people that you could actually
serve. So I'll say this. One of the great recipes for overcoming weakness is find out who you need
to serve and who you need to be strong for. That's it for today. Maybe sometime soon we'll come back
with another book and a little life lesson from that book.
But thank you for listening.
I hope you've enjoyed this.
Leave a comment.
I'd love to know what you thought of this episode.
Something a little different,
but I continuously challenge my audience and give them things that I think so many people
on so many shows would think are too highbrow for people,
but I don't think this is.
I think people will appreciate it.
Prove me right.
I'll see you soon, guys.
Take care.
Now, before you get too mad at me for not giving you the five phrases years ago that could have saved you all that high, this guide is based on years and years of studying the
exact words to say to trigger deep chemistry with men.
I'm happy to say that all of my effort was worth
it because these five phrases work so incredibly well with men. So let's not wait another minute
to download these five phrases. Just go to lovelifepodcast.com forward slash compliments.