On Purpose with Jay Shetty - The Episode for People Who Are Exhausted By Dating (How to Change Your Strategy and Mindset for the New Year)
Episode Date: December 20, 2024Are you tired of dating? What’s your biggest dating struggle? Today, Jay talks about the complexities of dating, relationships, and building meaningful connections in today’s fast-paced wo...rld. He emphasizes the importance of focusing on trust, emotional maturity, communication, and shared values – traits that truly matter in a partner – while learning to move past surface-level “icks” that can distract us from finding real love. Through personal anecdotes and insights from Match’s Singles in America study, Jay explores why many of us are chasing outdated ideas of love, trying to recreate the romanticized relationships of our younger selves. Instead, shift your focus to the present, to nurture healthy dynamics built on honesty, respect, and mutual growth. In this episode, you'll learn: How to Build Trust in Relationships How to Spot the Right Partner Through Their Actions How to Ask Questions That Reveal True Priorities How to Balance Patience and Expectations in Relationships How to Handle Communication Differences Effectively No matter where you are on your journey –single, dating, or in a long-term relationship – remember that love is a process, not a destination. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:01 Why Dating Has Become Extremely Challenging 06:24 The Core Values Feature 10:28 Questions to Ask on the First Date 12:58 Top Two Turn On with a New Partner 13:55 Are You Being Patient with the Right Person? 17:30 Does Your Partner’s Opinion Bother You? 19:14 Allow Other Forms of Relationships to Grow 21:54 Do You Communicate Properly with Your Partner? 24:01 Most Relationships Has a Healing Problem 25:16 Are You in the Wrong Relationship?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hey, I'm Jacquees Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit,
the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.
Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands
or at the end of a busy day.
From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape
our culture.
Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network,
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Predenti.
And I'm Jamea Jackson-Gadston.
We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline
from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts.
There's a lot to figure out
when you're just starting your career.
That's where we come in.
Think of us as your work besties
you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Morrie Tehary-Pore.
If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit.
Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hi, I'm Se Cup, and I've spent my career interviewing people about politics, presidential elections, and some really tough breaking news.
But now I need a break.
I think you do too.
So on my new podcast, Off the Cup, I'll still be interviewing people, usually famous and
most likely my friends, but about life.
You know, the stuff that consumes us when we're not consumed by politics? So come join me every Wednesday for some conversational self-care.
Listen to Off the Cup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
When you trust someone, it means if you share your emotions with them, you believe they'll take them seriously.
When you share your heart with them, you believe they'll hold it gently.
When you share your dreams with them, you believe that they'll be excited for you.
Trust is when you feel such a safe space that you can truly be yourself without holding back. The number one health and wellness podcast.
Jay Shetty.
Jay Shetty.
The one, the only Jay Shetty.
Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
Thank you for tuning in for another episode.
If you're in a relationship and want to know if it's the right or wrong one,
this episode is for you.
If you're newly dating and you're trying to figure out how to build a deeper connection,
this episode is for you.
And if you're exhausted of dating and it's feeling like a job, a chore,
something you have to get to, this episode is for you.
Now, I want to start off by saying that
dating has become extremely challenging.
We know it's hard.
We know it's complicated.
But here's the thing.
It's not that it's ever been that easy.
Sure, people may have found people quicker.
Sure, people may have found people closer to them easier that knew
their family but that didn't mean it led to healthy fulfilling relationships. I'm
sure you've seen aunts and uncles maybe even parents people around you who
didn't model or have the best relationships and therefore finding
connection is something that requires work it is something that requires work, it is something that requires
time.
And so I think sometimes we have this nostalgia effect that everyone who came before us found
love and everyone who came before us found the perfect person, but that for some reason
for us it has got more hard.
Now I'm not saying that the day to day may not feel harder.
I'm not saying that the day to day isn't more challenging and there are more aspects of ghosting and
gas lighting and everything else that's happening.
But I will add this.
The possibility for you to attract love into your life exists every single day. But it's important that we come at it from a place of love, not
from a place of anxiety. Anxiety doesn't attract peace. Anxiety attracts more anxiety. It attracts
more nervousness. It attracts more awkwardness, it attracts more discomfort.
But when we're in a place of peace, we're able to spot and attract more peace.
Now, Deeper Connection and my fascination with it is what led me to partner up
with Match. And something I've always loved about Match is that they've done their
annual Singles in America study and last year they revealed the top traits singles are looking for
in a partner. 94% said someone they can trust and confide in. 92% said someone who's comfortable communicating their wants and needs.
92% said someone who is emotionally mature.
And 92% said someone who can make them laugh.
Now I just want you to take a moment, if you've just started dating,
how many of you say this thing, but then an ick gets in the way when you're actually dating?
Maybe you don't like the fact that they wear jewelry, maybe you don't like their dress sense,
maybe you don't like their hairstyle, maybe you don't like some weird quirk they have.
But what has that got to do with someone you can trust and confide in?
Sure, I'm not saying to ignore attractiveness or chemistry,
but so often we get fixated on this one element,
this one idiosyncrasy of theirs,
that it kind of cascades across the rest of who they are.
How does the fact that they wear jewelry
affect whether they're comfortable
communicating their wants and needs?
How does the fact that they have a terrible dress sense relate to them being emotionally mature or immature?
It's really interesting to me how we get caught up on these icks and these idiosyncrasies
that just distract us away from what we actually set out to look for,
what we actually set out to focus on.
And we all know today more than ever, are times valuable.
The study shows that 73% of singles only want to go on in-person dates
with someone they already know they have good chemistry with.
And this can be really, really challenging because how do you
quickly figure out whether you have chemistry with someone? And I think chemistry has been the
red herring or the distraction. Chemistry has been that thing, that elusive, ethereal idea
that almost keeps us single because we keep looking for it.
We keep searching for it.
We want the relationship we wanted at 16 years old.
We want the relationship we wanted at that age.
We want the person we were attracted to at that age.
We want the person that we dreamt of at that age.
And because we didn't find them at that age,
we're still looking for them today.
So we're now 36 trying to date that 16 year old.
We're now 28 trying to find that teenage romance that we were looking for.
There's a lot of us that are living in a younger love story than our current age. We're living in a mental
reality that's younger, that isn't real right now and it's keeping us distracted and keeping us
fully fixated on the wrong things. So one of Match's most popular features that I worked on with them is the core values feature,
where singles can share what matters to them most and find people who prioritize the same
things as they do. Just for signing up, I will send you my 10 deep dive questions to get to
know someone on a deeper level. We want to help people shift from a superficial mindset to a values mindset.
In addition to our bespoke core values feature on match, we've added deep dives, a way to
choose a topic and share what you value and why it's important to you.
I want to invite you all to put these lessons into practice with me.
I'm partnering with Match to create something that has never been done before.
To be the first to know more about our new Dating Reset,
sign up for the waitlist at datingreset.match.com.
datingreset.waitlist.com
Now that's so important to me,
because if we're saying the number one thing we want is someone we can trust and confide in well that starts on day one
right that starts on day one and
among the match community
honesty love and loyalty are currently the top values chosen across all demographics and
That says a lot about what people really want in a relationship
And hey if you connect on that at the beginning,
you have the chance to build the rest of it.
I think this is the part that's really interesting for me,
that you're with the right person if you start in the right place.
I'll give an example.
If I plant a seed and I plant it in terrible soil, it's not fertile,
I plant it in a way where it's not going to get
sunlight or water. Sure, it might grow and sure I can try and save it later, but I'm not giving it
the best chance of success. And a lot of our relationships are like that, they start with the
mind games, they may start with the manipulation, they start with the playing hard to get. That's like having no sun, no water and no fertile soil
and hoping that we're going to grow love from it.
And then we try and rescue it, right?
When we see a little glimmer of hope, we start watering it,
we start giving it the right sunlight, we start giving it everything else it needs.
And we're almost always hanging on
But what if you're with the right person because you made it right?
What if that's what it meant to be with the right person not that you found the right person
but you found a person and
Decided to do it right and you both decided to do it right. That's actually what a healthy relationship is. I think we're perplexed 72% of us believe in Tussolme.
And when we say that we mean that there's someone who's perfectly formed,
perfectly created, perfectly crafted just for us, destined for us.
What we're saying is we're going to potentially go through 8 billion people to find that one person.
The reality is that most healthy relationships are not perfect relationships.
Most healthy relationships will agree that they weren't made for each other.
They may feel they were meant for each other, but they'll recognize that there's the ability that they both
choose to make it right. Stop looking for the right person. Find your person who
wants to make it right with you and you want to make it right with them. You both
want to make the right choices together. You both want to make the
right choices together and that's why you're right for each other. Not because
you're perfect. Not because you were designed, made or crafted perfectly for
each other. But because you chose together to make good decisions. And you
know I get it sometimes you're thinking well how do I do this on a first date?
Or if I just started seeing someone, how do I suddenly ask these questions?
Don't they seem a bit too aggressive?
And chances are you're probably right.
At the same time, you want to ask curious questions that actually give the person the opportunity to say where they're at.
actually give the person the opportunity to say where they're at.
So if you say to someone, Hey, what's been, you know,
what's been exciting for you lately? And they talk about their job.
You're getting a sense that that's their top priority. Now, if you say to someone,
what's your top priority in life? Sure. That's a heavy question to just ask off the bat, right? You may ask that.
And by the way,
that's a great question to ask someone
that you've been seeing for a few months
and getting to know quite deeply.
And you may say, what is your top priority in life?
Now, my answer would be,
you should actually already know that.
And a lot of us don't actually know
what our partner's top priority in life is,
or we believe what they say in answer to that question
and not what they do.
We believe what people say and not how they behave.
When their actions tell us so much more about their priorities than their words.
What someone does with their time, money and energy shows you what they care about,
not what they say they care about.
they care about, not what they say they care about.
What someone does and how someone treats you says so much more than how they say they think about treating you.
And so I want you to ask yourself, when are you ready to ask that question?
Hey, what's exciting you the most now?
When you say that, it could be their career, it could be their family, it could
be a personal endeavor, it could be anything, but you're actually learning
so much more. And here's the basic thing that we do. When we hear someone say, oh, I'm really,
really excited about, you know, the holidays right now, we go, oh yeah, I love the holidays,
right? We make it about the holidays, whereas we're not recognizing that they're showing
you what they prioritize. If someone says, oh yeah, I'm absolutely loving this project
at work right now.
You then reflect on what you're doing at work right now,
rather than recognizing they're showing you it's a priority.
And so I think questions start,
hey, what's most exciting for you right now?
And evolve into,
hey, what's your priority in life right now?
And then by the way,
if you've been with someone for quite some time, it's what's your priority in life right now? And then by the way, if you've been with someone for quite some time,
it's what's your priority this year?
That same curious question never stop.
It simply evolves.
Right. It simply evolves.
Now, the study found that a top turn on with the new partner conversation,
38 percent, and that included deep conversations, self-disclosure, compliments and debates.
That's what was considered good conversation.
And 52% of singles feel a potential partner is serious about dating them when they're
willing to talk about their feelings.
Now I find that a lot of us struggle to talk to certain
people if we're comfortable talking about our feelings, there's a lot of people who
aren't comfortable about talking about their feelings. And that can often feel like they
don't care about the relationship. And I just want to say something in defense of all of
those people, because I think a lot of people are in that bucket where they just don't feel comfortable.
They've never been made to feel comfortable.
And that doesn't mean they don't care. It means that you may need to be more patient with them.
And this is something I've realized over time. When we talk about the right and wrong people,
a lot of the time the wrong person is just someone that we're impatient with.
I want to dissect this for a second.
When you're attracted to someone,
you'll be much more patient
than when you're not attracted to them.
But the challenge is, your patience isn't real.
It's just the halo effect.
Because you're attracted to them,
you assume they have better qualities
and you really want it to work.
And we've gotta be really careful about this bias
because it actually can mislead us away from the person who's good for us
and towards the person who's not good for us.
And so when you're talking about the right and wrong person again,
recognize that patience is something you need with anyone.
Just make sure it's for the right person.
And often we apply patience to the wrong person because there's other qualities
we have that we're enamored by.
I'll give an example.
Someone was telling me recently that they can't see how their partner doesn't
recognize that their friends don't give them good advice.
And what I was saying to them is that, well, that person's been friends with those people for like 10, 15 years.
And even if they are getting bad advice from their friends,
it may take them another 10, 15 years to realize that.
Now, you may say, well, I don't have that time and that's totally fine.
But you're going to find that the next person you meet may need 10 years of unwiring and unlearning their relationship with their parents
Someone else may need to unwire their relationship with food
Someone else may need to unwire their relationship with something else
So what I find is whoever you end up with, they're going to have to rewire their relationship with something
And by the way, you do too
And often what we're saying is I just want to be with someone who's not
working on anything at all and that doesn't exist, right?
Everyone's healing.
I remember in the monastery, we were told you're in a hospital.
Everyone's healing.
Everyone's diseased.
Everyone around you is on their own journey.
And so it's almost like the right partner is figuring out who are you okay
healing with, right?
Who are you okay sharing an area with?
Who are you okay sharing a space with?
And when I say okay, I don't mean that it can't be beautiful and wonderful
and amazing, I mean, that's a healthier question to ask is is this someone that I trust
that I can heal with if I share my feelings with this person are they going to take them seriously
if I share my heart with this person are they going to hold it?
Let me really dig into this.
When you trust someone, it means if you share your emotions with them, you believe they'll
take them seriously.
When you share your heart with them, you believe they'll hold it gently. When you share your dreams with them,
you believe that they'll be excited for you.
Trust is when you feel such a safe space
that you can truly be yourself without holding back.
And create that space for that person as well.
Hi, I'm Essie Kupp and I have spent the last 20 plus years
knee deep in politics and the news.
I've covered some really tough subjects
from war to genocide to six presidential elections,
way too much Trump.
And you know what?
I need a break, like a mental health break. From the news. From the triggering headlines.
And I kind of suspect some of you listening out there might need a break too.
So my new podcast is going to be just that. A fun and loose space where I talk to my famous friends
and people I admire about all the stuff that consumes us when we're not consumed by politics.
I did not really rebel in the 60s. I had no sex in the 70s.
I made no money in the 80s.
So when true crime came along, I missed that trend too.
So many great guests are joining me from Josh Mankiewicz
to Larry Wilmore to Molly John Fass to Josh Gad.
I'm so excited that you have this platform, and I am just, like, hoping that I don't destroy the platform
in its earliest stages.
Listen to Off the Cup on the iHeart radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows.
Hey, I'm Jack Bees-Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit,
the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.
I'm Jacquees Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary
enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories.
Black Lit is for the page turners,
for those who listen to audio books
while commuting or running errands,
for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom,
and refuge between the chapters.
From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry,
we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.
Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works
while uncovering the
stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of
Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeart Radio
app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, I'm Gianna Predente.
And I'm Jeme Jackson-Gadsden.
We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart
Podcasts.
When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions.
Like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed?
Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job?
Girl, yes.
Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions.
Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know
the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner.
The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person
who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What
is it like you miss a hundred% of the shots you never take.
Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself.
Together we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career
without sacrificing your sanity or sleep.
Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
podcasts. So one of the ways in which you know that the place you're in may be challenging for you with a person
is your partner's opinions bother you, right? It could be anything. For example, the way they
talk about other people. It could be their political affiliations.
It could be about men and women's roles in society.
It could be how they treat someone at the restaurant.
Right. And these are all important things, but they're also things that you can learn to address and have more thoughtful conversations about.
And I think this is the challenge.
I think we're now living at a red flags, green flags time.
And what I mean by this is we're saying, hey, if you take any of these red flags, you're
out.
And if you take any of these green flags, you're in.
And the crazy part about that is we're basically saying that there are amazing traits and terrible
traits. What we're not recognizing is that everyone is complex and everyone's
going to have some red flags.
Like the fact that your partner has different opinions from you isn't a sign
that they're the wrong person.
It's a sign that maybe you need to engage deeper to actually understand them.
And if they're willing to, that's great.
And if they're not willing to, that's great. And if they're not willing
to, that's more of a sign, right? Someone having different opinions is not an issue. It's about
whether that person's willing to engage and you're willing to engage in a respectful way.
So much of a relationship is about how you choose to engage and respect as opposed to having the same ideas and the same thoughts and the same beliefs.
Now one thing that you should never ignore is if your friends have reservations you should take
them seriously. The reason I say this is because a lot of friends and you have to know your friends,
a lot of your friends will struggle to tell you the truth about your relationship because they don't want to lose their relationship with you.
A lot of your friends may struggle to be real with you about your relationship
because they're wondering if you choose to be in it forever
then they will also have to have a relationship with that person
which is why if your friend opens up to you
it's worth taking seriously
which is why if they have the courage to share something with you
it's worth listening.
Because it was so hard for them to do that in the first place.
Now you have to know your friends.
You may also have friends who just love to have opinions about anything, everyone and
everything and that may not be valued at the same level as what I was just talking about.
But most of the time we call people our friends for a reason.
They know us.
They've seen us at our best and our worst.
They know everything about us.
They might even know things about us.
We're not even aware of ourselves.
The point is, our friends look out for our best interests
and want us to succeed most of the time.
And that's why they're our friends.
So why are they acting so strange around your partner?
Why do you find yourselves by mutual agreement
seeing your friends solo most of the time?
Now, it's really important to use that data
to ask them because what most of us do,
and this is another challenge, this is how you know
you're getting something wrong is you isolate yourself and by the way it's natural when you like someone you isolate yourself from your friends and you only hang out with that partner
right and by the way we all do this and if we're sitting here going well that person should be
reminding me to spend time with my friends I'm here to tell you you should be reminding me to spend time with my friends. I'm here to tell you, you should be reminding yourself and them to spend time with their friends.
If someone is too clingy or if you're getting too clingy or attached,
it's important you remind each other and most of all you remind yourself
that it's important to keep deepening your other relationships, right?
It's easy to get lost in a relationship with your partner.
It's more important to make in a relationship with your partner.
It's more important to make sure that you have other friendships that are healthy as well.
Now, an important part of whether you're with the right person or not
is whether your communication needs match or don't match.
Maybe you're someone who enjoys chronicling your day with another person.
Or maybe you're someone who likes checking in via text with your partner throughout the day.
Are you and your partner of the same mind about this?
Or does your partner get annoyed when you text them?
Or are something important to say?
Or worse, don't respond?
Or perhaps you're a person who's upfront and honest about your feelings
and you find yourself involved with someone
who has a lot of buried, unexcavated stuff going on or who seems defended or uses humor to
distract from their emotions. Maybe you like to go deep,
whereas there's someone who likes keeping things light and superficial.
Now this isn't an issue in the sense that you can't be in a relationship with
this person, but the question mark is,
are you patient enough for them to change?
And are you okay if they don't?
That's really the question we have to ask ourselves in a hard relationship.
Are you patient enough to wait for them to change?
And are you okay if they never change?
That's the real truth, right?
That's the real truth, right? That's the hard truth.
And if you think about it carefully, this is quite common.
It's very normal for one person in the relationships to not be able to open up.
And a lot of the times the other person wants to open up too much, right?
We're both at either end of the spectrum.
One person wants to talk about everything all of the time and the other person doesn't want to talk about anything. And so those are the areas in our life where we have to strike a healthy balance. We
have to recognize that maybe some of our wanting to check in all the time is anxiety based and maybe
some of their not wanting to check in is anxiety based. Right? That's the kicker.
That's what's so interesting that we want to check in with them all the time
and know what's going on because we're anxious.
But they don't want to talk about things because they're anxious about something else.
And this is what I really want to encourage.
Relationships are about healing.
As long as they're not emotionally, verbally, physically abusive, those I'm not including
in this conversation about what I'm talking about.
Those are ones that you should seek professional support.
You should not stick around out of pressure.
But when you really think about it, a lot of the stuff we have challenges with with our partner is because
we're not letting them heal and they're not letting us heal. Most relationships have a
healing problem that causes hurt as opposed to another type of problem. It's a healing
problem. We don't want to give the person space to heal.
We expect them to be healed.
And they're not giving us the space to heal.
And the challenge is we think we're trying to heal and fix that person.
Not realizing we're being pulled and pushed to heal parts of ourselves.
That's really what's being demanded in a relationship.
What's really being demanded in most relationships is can we heal?
Right?
Now, a relationship can be the wrong relationship if they don't respect you.
Right? If they don't want to give you an opportunity to pursue your career, if they don't care about your professional life,
if they expect you to support theirs,
and these are all common things, sadly,
I've known a lot of people who sadly wear men in a patriarchal society
have certain expectations of women that are unfair.
They expect that the woman should not work.
They expect the woman should take care of their parents.
And there are all of these old fashioned views.
And they cause rifts in relationships because the person doesn't feel heard.
Do they treat you like a human?
Right? That has to be what the right relationship is.
And if your dreams are diminishing, you're in the wrong relationship.
Maybe you've always loved to travel.
Maybe the future fantasy of yourself in the wilderness.
Maybe you've always wanted to spend time in Italy, or you've had your eye on
taking a teacher training course in yoga.
Maybe you love to dance and maybe just maybe your partner isn't into any of
these things, but that's okay.
But now they're dismissing it.
They dismiss it as an unrealistic fantasy.
I think also there are so many of us that just don't feel our dreams are supported by
a partner.
No, I don't mean financially because that's a conversation.
But what I've realized is a lot of people don't believe in our dreams because they don't believe in their own.
They never had someone who believed in them.
So they don't have the capacity to believe in you.
And the question you have to ask yourself is, am I willing to be the one to shift because this person has so much depth.
This person has great qualities, great abilities,
or am I not ready to do that?
And you're well within your rights to make that choice.
Well within your right to make that choice.
This is why I think when you start dating or restart dating,
or even if you've been in a relationship for a while,
find out someone's values quick.
And that's why I created the values space on match.com where you can actually find out
your values, your partner's values and connect on that.
And I also want to say that in addition to our bespoke core values feature on match,
we've added deep dives, a way to choose a topic and share what you value and why it's important to you.
And I want to invite you all to put these lessons into practice with me.
I'm partnering with Match to create something that has never been done before.
You will have the opportunity to join other singles to date with intention based on your
values and a deeper connection.
If you're not single, please share this episode with a friend to help them change their mindset.
Join the waitlist at datingreset.match.com.
datingreset.waitlist.com.
And I'll say this too, this episode's for anyone, even if you're with someone, you're not with someone, because a lot of us don't really know our partners that deeply.
And it's never too late to start. Thank you for listening. Remember, I'm always rooting for you and forever in your corner. I hope this helps.
If you love this episode, you're going to love my conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get over your ex and find true love in your relationships.
People should be compassionate to themselves,
but extend that compassion to your future self.
Because truly extending your compassion to your future self
is doing something that gives him or her a shot at a happy and a peaceful life.