The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Jay Shetty: 8 Rules For Perfect Love & Amazing Sex!

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

Coming from the minimalist lifestyle of a monk to the power and luxury of a mogul, people may assume that Jay Shetty has all of the answers. But as Jay will say himself, he is still learning and progressing on his life’s journey, and with his success has come some of his hardest challenges. Already a global sensation through spreading his wisdom of mindfulness, Jay now wants to change the world with his lessons on love. In todays world of dating apps and one night stands, many people need to relearn all they knew about love in order to have deeper, richer and more satisfying relationships. In this enlightening conversation with a Jay Shetty you’ve never seen before, he gives his fundamental rules on every aspect of love, from rejuvenating a marriage to laying the all important foundation of self love. Jay: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3JoXh0p Twitter: https://bit.ly/3Jr6cP6 Jay’s book: http://bit.ly/3DpoxZ3 His tour: http://bit.ly/3wCtEB1 Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. All the stats show that people are having less and less sex. Most of us only do one thing with our partners, and it's watching TV. Jay Shetty! He's a former monk whose wisdom has truly gone viral. On purpose, the number one health and wellness podcast. He's sold like a million and a half books. Jay, you know how much I love you. I think we live in a world where we think sacrificing our purpose

makes us a better partner, when actually it makes us more resentful, guilty, more upset. So I believe that there are four important decisions that we all get to make in life. If you can do that, everything else is going to work. The first one is... Let's talk about sex. The truth is most people are not getting any. We've lost intimacy in relationships.

Great sex is a byproduct of great connection and intimacy. It's not a replacement for or a source of. I promise you, that relationship is not growing. It's actually falling apart slowly and you have no idea. The only thing that makes you feel close to someone is when you... What have you struggled with this year? Big question. A lot of the time when I come up against any resistance, it's like, no, Jay, you used to be a monk. what have you struggled with this year? Big question.

A lot of the time when I come up against any resistance, it's like, no, Jay, you used to be a monk. If you do anything else, you're false and you're lying and you're not allowed to be anything else. Every time I do an interview, I feel like people wanted me to fail. I was just waking up feeling sick and I just had to be alone. I don't think I've shared this with anyone. I'm at a point where... Jay. What's up Steven? It's good to see you. This is a question that people ask so flippantly right because that's just the way society is and the way we all are but i mean this question in the most

deep possible way um which is how are you big question i'd say that i'm at a point and i'd only give this answer to you. I don't think I've shared this with anyone publicly, at least right now. I'm at a point where I'm really reflecting, reviewing and reassessing where I want to be, what I want to do, how I want to give my energy. And so I'm in this really evolutionary stage in my journey, which I probably haven't felt like this for six years, which is when this all kind of started externally. And so it's been a really interesting six year cycle. And I feel like I'm back to where I started I definitely feel like this year I pushed myself to limits that I never thought I could when it came to work productivity efficiency effectiveness impact like the quality of the impact this year was higher because everything else was booming higher and at the same time there's this natural sense of wanting to renew wanting to reinvest in myself

and grow again it's almost like i feel like i did a lot of growing and i poured it all out and now i'm ready to grow again and pour that out again. But I've got to go and refill that cup, got to go and rediscover what that is and what that next thing is that excites me, that drives me, that moves me to that level that brought us here today. So when you ask me how I am really or how I am deeply, I'm in that regeneration stage. But what's beautiful about it is that when you've been there before, it's a familiar feeling. Whereas when you were there for the first time, it was scary. Now I'm like, oh, I've been here before.

I know what this feels like. I know how to find the tools and skills that I need. What are the symptoms of that? How do you know you're there? I know I'm there because... are the symptoms of that? How do you know you're there? I know I'm there because what have you been feeling? Yeah. I've been feeling like I want to know where I want to be in five years or which direction I want to move in five years. And I've been looking at that question and I've been trying to answer. And I was speaking at a

conference recently in Mexico. And one of the answers was, Jay, what's your goal for what you want to do in the next five years? And I was like, my goal right now is to figure out what I want to do and what I want to put my mind to for the next five years. And so I'm feeling a sense of accomplishment. I'm feeling a sense of arrival. I'm feeling a sense of satisfaction. And then I'm feeling a sense of satisfaction and then I'm feeling a sense of hunger and I'm feeling a sense of a search for clarity and almost like I can see the next few steps, but then there's a bit of fog and haze and that excites me. So there's a feeling of excitement that comes with that search for clarity, if that helps. So in the short term, you can kind of see how things look. But then as you look at the, maybe the North Star that you're aiming at, that's a little bit less clear.

Yes, yes, that's exactly it. And, but it's coming at it from a point of, that's what I need to do right now, not what I have to. I think if I felt clear about it all, I don't think I would actually achieve what I want to achieve. I think I'd waste time, waste effort. I think we'd spend time doing stuff that didn't really excite me or move me. I think you get to a point where you know you can do something well, and you don't just want to keep repeating that because that doesn't fuel your soul or that doesn't make you into the person who you want to become and so while i know that i can do that that's just not who i would set out to be and that's not how we got here and so i don't want to repeat a cycle that i know i know how to repeat just because i can when that isn't why i set out to do this what is that cycle let's get

really specific on what is that cycle that you've mastered that you think you know that will no longer give me that same you know i'm probably different to a lot of people who set out and say i believed i would achieve this or i had a certain set of goals and I did that. I didn't come from that. I came from this raw passion to want to serve and hopefully uplift the world by sharing ideas that people would listen to that and go, oh, I have that conversation with my friend, but I never thought it was okay to say it out loud. Or I was just thinking about that last night,

but Jay just put that into words. And now I feel comfortable sharing that with my partner. And so I came at this whole thing from the approach of how do I help the individual and the micro? And then all of a sudden it took off and became this thing that was far bigger than I ever imagined and far greater than I could have ever dreamt of or built. And so what I mean by the specifics is you've now learned how to create value for people in a certain way, whether that's with an algorithm, whether it's a pattern, whether it's the ability to communicate an idea. And then you go, yeah, I can either get lost in that cycle and keep delivering because it delivers. But no, that actually came from a

raw desire to serve. That actually came from a place of abundant creativity. That actually came from a place of genuinely listening and genuinely compassionately giving. It didn't come from a place of patterns, algorithms, studying, and research. Like that's not why the impact happened if that makes sense do you ever feel like you've lost yourself in the algorithms i don't people know you as a master of social media of delivering ideas via social media value thoughts thinking um you became you know people see this across their lives they become exceptionally good at something whether it's being a lawyer or whatever and they end up climbing and climbing and then they kind of reinforce to continue to do that thing publishers give them money and say do that thing you did yeah and then they can get so far down that path

that they go wait a minute like how did i get here it's a great place yeah yeah i think i want to give myself credit and i don't do that often but i will for this i think i'm going to give myself credit and it was something you actually raised to me last time we sat down, which by the way, I got so much phenomenal feedback from that conversation. So thank you for letting me go there. But you said something to me last time, and you said, Jay, you're really good at knowing when to quit. And you said that I was a serial quitter and I'd never thought about it that way. And so you actually planted that seed in my head. And so I think what I've been good at doing every time that that's happened is I've chosen to break the cycle. So when I first started out, I was the number one

page and number one creator on Facebook. And we literally left Facebook. And when I say left Facebook, what I mean is I stopped creating the content that Facebook was encouraging me to create. So we used to create these sketch-like videos where we had actors and we would cast them and there would be this scenario. And when I first came up with that idea, it actually came from me watching comedians who were creating sketch comedy. And I was like, oh, wait a minute, if we applied that to inspiration and motivation, that would be phenomenal. So when I came up with that idea, it fueled me. I was excited. I remember we made this video where this couple was arguing and I gave them advice and it was, it went super viral and I was so excited by it. And then after doing that for a couple of years and seeing this incredible growth

on Facebook, that format didn't fuel me anymore. And so we left it and I said, I don't want to be known for that format anymore. Why? Because the format was owning me, right? I was being owned by having to be a specific creator, giving specific four minute pieces of advice and thought. And I didn't want to be that. I wanted to dive into building a podcast and writing a book because I wanted long form. I wanted quality. I just just felt like i felt like there was only so much i could say so there's two angles to this there's two sides to this one is can i just yeah yeah of course the reason i'm asking why yeah i love it i'm thinking of jenny who is in a similar role in her job who's listening to this and it's got like she's just lost the love of the thing

which she once loved so i'm trying to answer this for her yeah yeah i love the question i i think that so anytime you discover something anytime something's new it's attractive you fall in love with it and as it gets old we only keep doing it because there's some part of it that becomes performative So what was raw passion becomes performance. And I think performance is what drains us because performance now isn't a natural injection of the soul into whatever you're creating. It's this false acting version of that same thing. And so I find that when I feel like I'm performing,

I worry and get scared and then I scale back. And so I think that when I feel like I'm performing, I worry and get scared and then I scale back. And so I think at that point, I got to a point where I was like, if I keep feeding the algorithm and feeding this, it's performance. And the quality of what I want to give people has changed. The four minutes videos were a great window into all of the wisdom that I'd learned and all the studying I did as a monk and all the ideas that I'd gained. But I was like, if I can't give that to people in a way that they can practice it, like a four minute video can give you motivation and inspiration, but a four minute video can't help you build a habit. A four minute video doesn't practically change your life.

A four minute video is the injection, the spark, the buzz, but it doesn't transform change your life. A four minute video is the injection, the spark, the, the buzz, but it doesn't transform someone's being. Whereas a program can do that. A book can do that. A podcast that people listen to religiously and build a habit can rewire parts of themselves. And so to me, I was like, I'm more interested in habit change and transformation than I am in ideas and information. I was, I was just thinking about why I quit Facebook as well. You, I mean, you, you quit Facebook, I think later, but I understand why your success on Facebook was you were getting billions and billions of views a month, right? Um, I was making some money, but the point, the thing that I've realized from what you just said there is when I was making those Facebook videos, I actually think they, they might have been doing something for someone else it's not the same

as a podcast which has the depth but I think it might have been doing something for someone else but I tell you why I quit because it was doing nothing for me yes and you think about what you were doing so at the start maybe it was doing something for you but then as you do it a thousand times it feels like work and I was just thinking about that then because I was reflecting on a study I read that when they pay people to do something they loved, they lose the love of it. The minute the motivations become extrinsic, cash or punishment or reward, people lose the love of the thing they once considered a hobby. And do you know why I was thinking that?

Because I've not been able to get bored of doing the podcast. And I thought, well, why? Because it does something for me still every day. I get to meet you. We get to, you know. So if it was just this podcast was going out to the masses and it required three hours or six hours of my time every week, but I didn't get to have the conversation, I didn't get to be privy to it,

maybe I'd lose the love for it. Yeah, and I think it comes back to a part of the definition of success, which for me is doing something that gives me joy and makes me happy that as a byproduct gives other people joy and makes them happy exactly like if i can do that every day then then that's phenomenal but i don't want to keep doing something as you said that has the diminishing returns for me only to live off the validation and attention that comes from the other and And I think too many people have got caught in that cycle for too many decades. And I would like to say we've redefined

what we do every two years. Part of why I dived into love as a fascination and a subject matter, a lot of people said to me, they were like, Jay, why are you going from meditation and mindfulness and think like a monk to talking about love. Like, why would you even do that? And I was like, because that's where I'm at. Like, that's something that I'm, I mean, there's lots more reasons to it that I can share more philosophically, but on a very raw emotional level, this is what I'm fascinated about right now. And I trust that my audience, my community, the people that are following and listening and sharing and observing

can trust that the journey I'm going on is one of true fascination. One of the reasons why I fought to have the cover I wanted, the fonts that I wanted, to not have my face on the cover of the book was all of these reasons. I know if I put my face on the cover of the book that my publishers

are going to be happier. They believe it's going to sell more. They believe that the less artistic it is, the more on the nose it is, the more people are going to buy the book. My take is I want everything I do to be art. I want everything I do to be an extension of my heart. And this is that. And so I think I'm just at a place now where i've learned that i can trust my intuition every single time and i want to keep doing that i don't want to now become more scared of trusting my intuition someone said to me they said jay like don't haven't you got to a point now where you can't take any risks and i was like no that's completely the opposite of how i see it i've worked this hard by taking tons of risks this is not the point to stop taking risks. This is the point to continue to take risk because that's what creates joy, happiness, abundance, success and everything else I'm looking for.

What have you struggled with this year? What have I struggled with this year? Like over and over again, like fucking why can't i change that so it's a bit of an oxymoron and and i kind of lit i kind of love paradoxes and kind of feel like it's always this way it's kind of like at one point you know that reinvention and rediscovery is constantly needed and then there's the other side that I've probably banged my head against the wall a few times on is accepting that I can't always be scrappy as I was in the beginning all the time. And I'm intrigued at how you feel about this, especially having built something so huge. And now I know you're building something again. I can't.

You know, a few years ago when I was starting out we're building lots of things we built things in a really scrappy quick fast way we made really quick decisions some of them were great some of them were terrible things went wrong things went awesome obviously you know you know the rest of it is is history and all all of that but there's a part of me as much as i need to be reconnecting with that scrappiness there's a part of me, as much as I need to be reconnecting with that scrappiness, there's a part of me that needs to accept that we're not that small anymore and that things do have impact and influence. And I think that that paradox is something that I find myself constantly going back and forth on because I want to be able to be scrappy. I want to be able to start things at the drop of a hat because I feel like I can. And at the same time, I realized, well, no, now I need to think about a lot more people and a lot more things are affected and this could negatively impact this and someone here could do this and all of that kind of stuff.

And so I think that's something that I struggle with is the balance between saying I want to be the Jay that I was six years ago when it comes to starting new things, but I have to accept that we're not there as well. How many people are in your team total? Globally, full-time, 50 people. So it's not huge. But when you look at the people that work with us and the number of people it impacts

and then the scale of all the content we create and everything, there's billions of people every month still in some capacity. And so there's a sense of, and also there's a sense of you know you you become a target like you're not you weren't a target six years ago like no one cared i mean people took shots day one like that wasn't the hard part it's just you become more and more vulnerable in some areas, in some capacities, because now people are not looking at it as if you're starting out. They see what you have and what they can pick apart. So

you're observant and aware of that vulnerability in a way you never were before. That doesn't make me more scared or more fearful. It just means I can't ignore it. And I think that's the balance that I'm always going on is like, how much do you want to operate from a place of ignorance versus awareness and proactivity? What's your biggest, fear is an interesting word, but I'm going to use it. What's your biggest fear as it relates to being a target? Like, what have you, because I mean, I've seen this similar thing in my life obviously the big change in my life was when i became a dragon on dragon's day yeah because then you're then you're like a press target before the newspapers wouldn't write about steven in his podcast or steven on social media

but now it's dragon's den star sneezes yeah on someone you know what i mean it's like because there's a show there which everybody knows and recognizes there's a way to write the headline yeah so that i became much more of a target you know and that that's kept me up at night i've got emails from reporters and i fucking shit myself about things that you know they said they're gonna say about me or whatever but just being honest yeah yeah you know i think my life has just changed so much in the sense of literally I was thinking about this 10 years ago, I left the monastery. And when I look at my life over the last 10 years, and then if I look at it 13 years, including the three years I spent in the monastery, I live like a completely polar opposite life

today. I went from having no money, no idea of the business, no relationship, two sets of clothes, robes, and living and sleeping on the floor and having nothing and thinking that was the rest of my life to now being in the complete opposite point of view where we have multiple businesses, I'm married, I enjoy fashion in my wardrobe, I really enjoy building teams. I love the world I'm in. And I've grown and embraced all of that transformation because I realized that I could only give myself, or I had to be the only person in the world who could give myself the permission to be all of these things all at the same time. So I see myself as much as a monk,

as I do as a manager, as I do as a marketer, as I do as a mindfulness coach. Like I'm all of those things and I'm very happy being all of those things. But I think that a lot of the time when I come up against any resistance, it's like, no, Jay, you used to be a monk. You should be a monk for the rest of your life and you can never be anything else. And if you do anything else outside of that circle, you're false and you're lying and you're not the same person anymore. And I'm like, well, no, I get where you're. And by the way, I actually don't disagree with that. I get where that's coming from. And I can appreciate where that sentiment

comes from because we've all been forced to be like, I'm an accountant, I'm a lawyer, I'm a dad, I'm a mom. We've been forced to be one thing. And I think for me, I've been on the journey of accepting all of my complexity and all of my interests and passions. And I think that that takes a long time for a lot of people to get their head around i'm not saying that my community or my audience feels that way and i don't want to alienate them i think there's a lot of people who don't even care about that but i think when i when i think about the idea of being a target or being it's a lot of that where it's like well you used to be this just be this like you're not allowed to be anything else oh

why and it's like well no but my life's changed like that was a part of my journey i'm telling you a part of my story uh why can't i tell you the story that i'm at why do i have to be the story that i was 10 years ago does that and this you know there's several ways to answer this question but i just want the most honest answer which is does that has that ever bothered you have you ever have you ever received received that kind of critical feedback and it's bothered you yeah there was definitely a couple of weeks where i woke up every day in the morning feeling sick and i've never experienced

deep bouts of anxiety or i've definitely experienced depression when i left the monastery and that whole period was a depressive moment in my life for sure but post that i was just waking up feeling sick and for a week i just had to be alone and i just had to be alone and not see my friends and not see anyone my wife was in london at the time so i wasn't with her. And I literally just sat alone for seven days making sense of how I felt about myself. What happened? It wasn't anything specific.

It was just feeling that there was a lot of, because I wrote a book called Think Like a Monk, which I still stand by the title, I still stand by the whole book. The reason I wrote the book called Think Like a Monk is because i didn't want everyone to have to live like a monk and my whole point was that when you learn to think like a monk you don't have to live like a monk and that you can adopt the same mindsets and practices that monks have in your daily life which is what i believe i took with me but i found that when i would do an interview, you know, the interview would be, oh, Jay Shetty, you know, tells you to think like a monk, but he's selling millions of books or whatever it is. Right. Or like, you know, oh, yeah, Jay Shetty made X amount of money through ad revenue on Facebook and YouTube. But he's talking about being a monk. And so there was this constant like comparison that those two things weren't allowed.

And you were getting that straight away every day. Correct. And I was just like, why is it that I feel like when someone's sitting down with me, I constantly feel like they want me to fail. They want me to not be who I truly am. And they want to find that angle on me constantly because they don't want to accept that someone who is trying to be good at heart is doing good in the work and winning is okay. And that's not a story though, is it? That's not a story exactly. And I think that was hard for me because I'd always believed that people would feel your genuineness and, and,'d respect that um you know i think me and you have not we've we've had deep time together even though we haven't had a lot like yeah we wouldn't say

we've had the amount of time together but i felt very early on that i could just be myself around you hence why i've never talked about any of what i've just said to you anywhere else anywhere ever even on my own podcast um because i don't like meeting people thinking they want me to fail and i and i and if anything i close off to that because it's defense from day it's defense from day one and i realize i don't defend myself very well because i don't i don't want to i i just want to be who i am and i'm comfortable with that but that seven days was me doing all that work to process it bring me into this bring me god man steven only steven only with you man only with you literally bring me into those seven days um and what it was like if i was a flower on the

wall in your world what would i have seen the seven days for me weren't mapped out in being seven days like it wasn't like i'm gonna take seven days and this is the program i'm gonna go on it just happened to be seven days and for me i'd say the first day i spent reading everything that was making me feel that way so you're reading all the comments you're reading the tweets you're reading all the comments, you're reading the tweets, you're reading the articles, you're seeing articles come in

that you've just interviewed for and you're like, wait a minute, that's been completely misconstrued. Like you're feeling this way. And I'd say a lot of this was, you know, UK based, not really international to be honest at all. And you're feeling that way. And I was just reading all of it i was completely immersed

in it for a day and i gave myself a day i said i'm gonna let myself do it today because i want to be informed i want to be aware and you know you just said this to me you were like you know jay i didn't see any of this i didn't even know about this and we've talked about this before and that's what's really fascinating right like for me that day felt like the worst day because it felt like that's all there is. That's all I'm seeing, even though there's everything else going on. So I'd say the first day I spent just reading everything and you feel terrible and horrific. And there's a part of you that feels defensive and you're like, but I'm not like that. Oh, I wish they could just understand this. And

oh, well, they just read that differently. And I wish I could talk to this person who feels this way and like hold their hands and look into their eyes and for them to feel my real energy I wish they could give me a chance I wish I could actually talk to each one of these people maybe I should maybe I should actually like book a room and just line up everyone who feels this way about me and actually sit down with each of them and talk to them about what my passion is and who I really am as a human being maybe maybe that's what I need to do and you're kind of doing this whole defensive and explaining and that all of that was day one maybe even day two and I think day three and four were really the hardest because you start to believe some of the criticism so there's a part of you and i think this is a good part of me i'm i'm

happy that this part of me exists where i have the ability to be really critical and harsh of myself to the point that i kind of embodied some of those ideas and i was like maybe maybe i am maybe i am not fully genuine maybe maybe i do have that part inside of me like god maybe i am. Maybe I am not fully genuine. Maybe, maybe, maybe I do have that part inside of me, like, God, maybe I am wrong. Like, you know, maybe, maybe, maybe I do need to take a look at myself. Maybe I haven't, maybe I'm, maybe I'm not doing that enough. And so I'd say that was day three and four. And that was the hardest because you're now taking someone else's words to be your worth and you're taking someone's writing to be who you are and so i think day three and four were just kind of processing like do i really agree with that am i that what part of that is me i can't just shut i never i've never wanted

to be someone who doesn't take something as feedback like or doesn't look at something or try and understand it more deeply and anxiety how do you feel on these days you talked about I feel like throwing up in the morning really like waking up and feeling like physically sick uh and and wanting to throw up but trying not to and how and that feeling last all day was it just when you woke up I think it was mainly when when I woke up. Like it was a strong feeling when I woke up and I'd have to work through that over the next couple of hours and then get over that and then try and progress the day. And I think day five and six were making sense of what was feedback, what was shots fired, and what I believed about myself. Run me through those three.

So the way I, and even deeper than all three of those and i'll talk about those three but even deeper than those three of those was this idea of compassion of why do people feel the need to do this like what role does it play in their life in our? And why does someone feel the need to, without never having spent genuinely quality time with me, to feel any way about me? Also not knowing anyone in my universe either. So, you know, and so, so trying to have compassion and developing a sense of perspective of what role does this play in our society that's the most difficult point um to understand which is i remember someone tweeted something at me the other day and they just like they just you know because it's funny because we get you know so much wonderful feedback and then some guy at 3m he's just like he just took a shot at me.

He was like, I wish Steve was more authentic. His PR team write all of his posts and script his podcast. And he's da-da-da-da-da-da. And the challenge of trying to make sense of this, this like statement, where it's coming from, why they felt the need to tweet it at 3am, what I've done to them, is an impossible challenge to try and solve.

It's a riddle that doesn't make sense but the only way that i've come to understand it is by looking at my own imperfection yes looking at my own jealousy yeah looking at my own envy and my own inadequacies and how sometimes i'm ugly and then i go i understand we will have it in us probably somewhere in the right context yeah especially if you've had a bad day and the wife or the husband is giving us a hug you know and then i go i understand i'm ugly too yeah you know um but going to those three those three stages what feedback did you i i think the feedback that i've taken on is that i definitely have changed externally like in the sense of it is true that uh my life is very different externally very quickly

that that's true to me it's not quick because it's 10 years since i left and 13 years since i was a monk and everything but it is it is quick and it is a lot to you know it's been a crazy journey for me internally, let alone everyone else who's just watching. And the feedback that maybe I should explain and probably why I feel so open today doing this with you and comfortable going there is maybe I do need to explain my intentions more and not just do the work. And maybe I do need to spend my intentions more and not just do the work and maybe i do need to spend more time giving context do you think though because there's so many people that do the content the helping people the you know the genius stuff you do there's so many people that do that and they don't get the same criticism it's the monk piece isn't it it's it's the monk piece and it's it's the monk piece and it's also the um the scale there's people at scale i'm thinking like the biggest in the world in in the in that

game you're you're the biggest in the world i guess in what you in the specific thing that you do i guess but is it the apparent contradiction of two labels that the society have given you where they go successful rich nice stuff but then because it's the same with me no one's ever going to do it for me because they think of me as businessman yeah so if i was balling around in private jets and helicopters people are going to go yeah yeah and i'm not doing private jets and helicopters by the way but yeah but but yeah no i think yeah i think that's i think that is a big part of it. And, and I recognize that that's a massive paradox. And by the way, I'm living that paradox, which is even crazier because it, there's all that, there's so much of that self guilt and transformation that I've had to go through. I've had to rewire my deeper relationships with every aspect. Like, and I've realized that the monk teachings actually hold true. They're just

misunderstood or misconstrued. It's kind of like when we, you know, when we keep having everyone who keeps saying, oh, money doesn't buy happiness, money doesn't buy happiness, money, you know, that statement's just lasted for so long. And you and I know that that's not, you know, when it comes to the monk's philosophy, the monk's philosophy was very much that everything in the world was simply energy and it could be used for something higher or could be abused. Pretty much anything in the world could be put into that way of thinking. But the perception is monks don't have money therefore it's bad but that's a simplistic version of a far deeper idea uh there's

a beautiful story that i love that we would often be shared in the monastery where where the teacher asks a student, if you could give one person a hundred pounds or give a hundred people one pound each, which would you do? And the student says, I'd give a hundred pounds to one person because it would be really impactful. And the teacher says, yeah, there's nothing wrong with that answer

and that's totally fair. Another way of looking at it is, I'd give one pound each to 100 people because it helps me learn how to become better at giving, and it gives 100 people an opportunity to grow. And so the idea is that the answer isn't whether money is good or bad. The answer, some people would say, is, well, they shouldn't give any money out at all. Like, I think the idea that something is bad or evil or something is wrong is a far more simplistic idea than the depth of the idea that anything can be used for good or for worse. I remember that, you know, we've been able to do so many beautiful things, whether it's things privately or even publicly when, you my wife and i did this fundraiser for covid for india um

and i remember like it took a lot of money to just organize the fundraiser and it wouldn't we wouldn't have been able to do that if we didn't have what we had and i was thinking to myself i was like this is a perfect example of like how you you can't sometimes you need the resource to pull off something that's even more powerful and big but if i didn't have the resource and i didn't have the community and i didn't have my audience and my fans and the people that helped us do that it just wouldn't have been possible and so it's kind of like this all comes in and of itself it comes together i remember when we met in new york and you took me to meet the uh rather than swami yeah i could not say that yeah that's why i paused

yeah you met you met my monk teacher yeah swami is the like the pope title like yeah the equivalent of that do you remember the question i asked him i don't actually tell me it was exactly what you've just said so i said to him um there's a part of me that has always had this sort of internal conflict where whether if what i'm doing what i consider to be selfishly, like building businesses, enriching myself is, um, is good or bad. And I, I've always, since I was 18, I remember being sat in my room and thinking, you know, if instead of building this business, if I just went to Africa and saved one life, would that be more of a worthy cause than building a business that would enrich myself?

And your, your teacher said to me, he said, um, and I never forget it. I talk about it all the time on stage, probably every month on stage. He said to me, you um i never forget it i talk about it all the time on stage probably every month on stage he said to me you can't pour out for others that which you don't have in your own bottle i always remembered that because it's it's entirely true the the impact that i would be able to have now in many areas whether it's the donations we've done for children's cancer societies or all of the things that we've done this year the money we've donated from we gave away all of the money from our live tour um none of those things even like this podcast wouldn't have been possible if i didn't fill my bottle and my bottle isn't just financial it's skills resources knowledge it's network it's reputation um and that full bottle allows you to do so much for so many others

that i do want to zoom in on something you said yeah you said that you had to confront your ugliest side yeah now this is an uncomfortable thing to do because it really, for all of us, it's quite an uncomfortable place to go to actually consider faults in ourselves. What is your ugly side in your view? Oh. Hmm.

I think whenever anyone does this activity, you have to be, it's, it's again, that balance of being highly self-reflective and open to feedback, but not getting into the harsh, like killing yourself basically. And it's a really, it's a really like interesting balance I find because you can easily do either like you can easily defend yourself and be like no no i'm good i'm a good person i'm great or you can do the opposite where you're just like i'm the worst that yeah and it kind of and and that's why i'm you know as you ask that question i'm like let me really look at it um my ugliest side is that

any and i believe this is true of most people, is that you're truly capable of anything, anything. And I think my practice and my daily habit is, and has always been to try and feed the good dog inside me. And so I don't think I associate that deeply with my ugly side because I've just not fed it for a long time. And so I don't feel very close to it in the sense of that doesn't mean it can't take effect on me. So my teachers would always say that if you feel

like you're unaffected by maya maya's the sanskrit word for illusion and illusion is considered ignorance and that which leads to the dark side or the ugly side if you feel that you're unaffected by maya you're in maya right if you feel unaffected by illusion or the dark side you're in the dark side right yeah that makes sense and it's the idea as well of like if someone says they're humble or practicing humility it's like they're in ego right now it's yeah it's not possible to think to yourself oh i'm i'm i'm humble at the same time as feeling egoless and so the idea that i feel like i just don't associate with my dark side often, but I think my dark side exists within this capacity of like, you know, the comparison, the envy, the jealousy, the ego. That's the kind of stuff that I would say that mainly I would grapple with.

And I grapple with on a daily basis and I choose to grapple with it on a daily basis. We, in the monastery, often talked about relishing the battle, that there was always going to be a battle. The battle was never won or lost. It was a constant relishing the battle. You just had to re-pick up the sword and have the fight every day. And so I've learned to relish the battle and the battle is accepting that there is both inside of me and it's a battle I have to have every day. And the avoidance or ignorance that I don't have one of the sides isn't healthy, right? In my case, it's just not healthy. I can't accept that I have only pure intentions. Do you believe you'll get to a point where you've won the battle? I don't think so. I don't think that's the goal. I think the moment you think you've won the battle

is when you lose. I mean, there's that brilliant clip on social that's always going viral. And it's literally like, I forget what the line is, but I think the caption is something like, it's never over until it's over. And it's all the moments in sports where someone's felt that the ball's gone across

the line or hasn't, or the person's running thinking they're about to cross the finish line, they look over and they lose every single time. And I think that that's a great image and metaphor for the idea that as soon as you think you've won, that's when you're most likely to lose, because that's when you put your guard down. And I think putting your guard down to your own envy and to your own comparison, to your own ego is unhealthy. And I think sometimes when we see the crazy things that happen in the world, it's not because someone was made that way or built that way. It's that they let their guard down to those things. And so when I'm saying that I sat for seven days with my demons and my dark side and my unhealthiness and checked myself, I'm glad I did that. And I shouldn't avoid that. I shouldn't sit

here and say, no, no, no, I know I'm an amazing human being and I'm a good intention. I know all this thing. I am good intentioned. I am someone who cares about people. I am deeply compassionate. I have only ever tried my best to serve and love. Those are all true. I'm very confident in that. But at the same time, I have a propensity to be egotistic, to be envious, to be jealous, to be comparative, to be competitive in an unhealthy sense. And if I'm more vigilant of that, that won't ruin it. And that's the perfect analogy that was given to us in the monastery, was we all had to plant a seed and tend to it every day because you'd see weeds grow around it every day. And this was the exact concept that was taught to us, that when you plant a seed, weeds are going to grow around it. And the weeds often look like

the plant. They often look perfect. And you can keep watering the weeds or water the seed and pluck the weeds. And that's the daily practice that each and every one of us does. So I think every day I sit with myself in my meditation and I try and pluck out the weeds. And sometimes it's not plucking. Sometimes it's ripping, gripping, destroying, uprooting. Like the weeds have gone deep. Some of these weeds are no longer little seedlings and little plants. Some of them have been around for years. And so there's that work that has to happen are you thinking about a particular weed um but you've really had to like work on and unplug i mean i've got loads in my life but i know that you see the it continue to rear continues to show up in the the moments where you're maybe complacent yeah about you know

you think you've got it all figured out and then fuck yeah i think the biggest one that i probably monitor i mean i monitor all of them regularly but i think it's the weed that we all have that the way we live life is the right way to live it like the belief that my perspective, my opinion, my priorities, my values should be everyone's. And that somehow because of that, we should all align. And I think you see that your partner the most, like for example, my wife really values her, my value, my wife really values her mental and physical health. And so her number one priority day in the day is making sure she's meditated and making sure she's meditated and making sure she's gone to the gym. Like those are like massive priorities for her. And sometimes there'll

be two workouts and more meditation. And I'm coming back off of a slog day of like working, podcast, meetings, schedules, all this other stuff. And I've meditated, but I haven't worked out today and I'm running around. And I think at the end of the day that I've achieved more. Like that is a weed because I'm saying that what I prioritize is more important than what she prioritizes when it isn't. It's just different. She, her self-worth is based on very different things than my self-worth is based on. Do you ever find, you know, when you're saying all of this, you're describing exactly me and my partner. I love that, man. She wakes up at seven or eight in the morning yeah

she's built like a temple and she goes to the temple and if i walk up past two hours later she's just stretching in the temple yeah you know what i mean i'm like zooming past with like you know late for some shit and she i just she's just stretching in a temple she flows that's the way she just flows nice and slowly through life um at her own pace a pace that i know nothing about yeah a pace i cannot relate to yeah same same so was going to ask you about this have you ever found yourself making the mistake of exerting your your ambition onto that flow that you know that pace because i have yeah yeah i sometimes have to i think i think and I write about this in the book, but by the time I was, by the time I was with my wife and we moved in and got married and like started really

investing in our relationship, I think I'd seen a lot of people do it to other people. So my wife would always get people around her. She's a phenomenal chef and cook and, you know, really, really talented when it comes to food and health and nutrition. So the one thing she'd hear from everyone was, you should start a restaurant. Like that's all she'd ever hear is, you should start a restaurant, you should start a restaurant.

And whenever I'd see the like, sometimes fear, confusion, uncertainty on her face when people would say that, this is like, you know, I'm talking about like seven years ago, maybe eight years ago. And I would always sit with her with that and be like how do you feel when people say that like what is does that excite you does that you know if someone told me that and i had her skills i'd be like oh that's amazing people believe in me right which is something i never really had and she was like no i just i don't know if i want a restaurant like i don't know if that's what i want to do with my skills like i she always wanted to be in pediatrics and she wanted to

help people with their nutrition and diet. And she wanted to work with individuals and work with, and now she's working with people online and she does making, love making recipes, but does she want to build a restaurant? And so we'd always go through that cycle. And I started to realize, and we'd have this conversation often that just because someone says something, that's a good idea. It doesn't need to be your idea and you don't need to chase it. And so I'd say that I don't think I've ever pushed my pace on her because I think part of being a coach, and this is why I value coaching so deeply, is because a coach is never meant to dictate the

pace of the person they work with. And so there's a chapter in the book called, your partner is your guru. And that's a really tough statement to handle. But actually a guru, likened to a coach, never dictates the pace of the students. So my teacher who you met wouldn't that day in new york would never ever say to me jay you've been meditating for 17 years now why are you not a pure perfect meditator they would never say that to me because they don't think that that's the pace at which it works they know that i'm on my journey on my timeline now at the same time i think opening up conversations like i will have the conversation with my wife and be like uh are you thinking about setting goals or intentions for

2023 and do you want to talk about it because i'm going to be doing that myself you talk about that yeah and i've seen that she's done that like where my wife has opened up to some of my ideas and my ways of working because i open up it as a conversation, not as a, oh, by the way, these are my goals for 2023. What are yours? Which where it's like a pressure. And that's like an insecure amateur version of trying to be a coach where it's like, well, look what I've achieved. What did you achieve this year? Or by the way, let's look at our 2022 goals and what we achieve. Like it becomes an ego thing again. So I think for me, I've really tried my best to embody being a coach in my partnership because I see it just being healthier when we've allowed each other's good qualities to rub off. And by the way, she's done the same back to me. So if I've coached her in like finding her drive

and her passion and her purpose and coached her in the sense of not like meticulously, but as a friend, she's done the same for me. Like when I met my wife, I was someone who's really focused on mental mastery, but I hadn't really figured out what I did for my body. I'd done a lot for my mind and my heart and my emotions, but not for my body. And when I met my wife, like she inculcated the belly for me working out more regularly and eating more healthily. And when I met my wife, I was addicted to sugar. I still love fried food. I still love sodas. And my wife was just like, this ain't happening. But again, she didn't call it out. It wasn't like, oh, you're so unhealthy.

You just sit around and drink. It wasn't like that. It was educating me and it was enlightening me and it was helping me change my habits. Andiring you. Yeah, inspiring me. And it's setting the example, right? I think setting the example is far more a beautiful, there's a quote I use of St. Francis in the book, which says, you should always preach wherever you are in everything you do. And if you need to use words, right? The idea that your example, your practice is what inspires people. If you're working really hard and you're a wonderful human being, that far more makes someone want to work hard than you working hard and being a miserable human being. I've always wondered this. I'm going to ask you a really tough question here.

If your partner got to a state where you no longer found them attractive at all, you know, I'm going to let the viewer decide what that might look like, right? If your partner got to that state, what would you do? I think... Because they weren't taking care of themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think my honest answer would be I would like to approach that. And I believe I would,

because I think I've shown it in different areas of my relationship, not in the physical sense, have been the compassion of, are you happy with where you are right now with that person? Are you happy in the direction that you're moving in? Is this the life you want? Has this been created out of pain or stress or pressure? Or has this been created out of pain or stress or pressure or has this been created out of choice and out of action right and i think getting to understand that person's journey to that point

sets you up to understand where this is going if that person then turns around and goes this is exactly who i want to be and this is the person i want to be and this is how I choose to live my life I'm your partner yeah what do you say to me yeah so I'm going down the angle of trying to get to understand right like that's that's what I'm trying to do in this scenario they are completely cool with everything correct because it's your you're the one that's lost attraction yeah all I'm trying to do in that scenario genuinely is to understand where the person's at why they're in that position and how long they think that's going to last and so my next question would be like that sounds awesome that sounds like a lot of fun how long do you feel like that's where you want to be now your answer maybe I feel like that's how I want to live forever right like

that's the direction it's going in I have very little control over that so what do you do I would then if if I'd explored that conversation. Try to understand first. Yes. And seen that pattern for long enough, because by the way, that pattern could last a week and it could be over next week. And that person's now guilty and shameful of, and they're dealing with something far deeper. So I don't think this can ever be, oh wow, that person for a month has gone in this direction. It's never that quick, right? If you're seeing over months and years that someone's just going on a downward spiral, they're not opening up to you. They're not opening up to a therapist. They're not opening up to their

mom, their parents, their sister. They're not opening up to a coach. They're not opening up to their friends. Like if you're seeing no sign of this person doesn't feel they're doing anything wrong by their account, now you're out of options of controlling that. So I think there's many more layers before I don't think this person's right for me anymore. But I think those layers and levels are time. How long has this lasted? I think it's who are they honest and open with? Because sometimes they may not be honest and open with you because they're embarrassed, but they're being open and honest with someone else, their family, their friends, whoever else it may be.

Are you aware of that? Do you even know the conversations they're having? And then if you're not attracted to someone, I mean, you're well within your rights to move on and get on with your life. How are you going to force yourself? If that's an important value for you, someone would say, but physical attraction isn't my number one value.

That's totally fine too. So you would stay with that person, right? Like if that's not your number one value. Is there a point where you express how you feel? Absolutely, absolutely. I think after understand, I think the biggest mistake that happens, so I talk about this in the book

where I talk about things that you find intolerable about your partner, right? This comes under that category, that you find intolerable that they don't take care of themselves and now you're not attracted to them. I talk about going on this journey. If you love someone enough, if you care about someone enough, you will want to go on the journey from intolerable to understanding to acceptance to potentially even admiring them for who they are and where they've gone. That's the journey if you want this relationship to last. So if I find something intolerable,

the next step isn't telling them how I feel. The next step is understanding why they're there, how they got there, what their reasoning is. And that takes time. That person isn't going to on day one they're going to give you answers like you just gave me on day 73 chances are someone's going to say i'm feeling really bad about how i am right i'm maybe not when you tell them huh the bit i'm interested in is how you communicate how you're feeling i so i would say and i want to use a real

life scenario with my wife because i think it's easier to talk about a real conversation we've had. If I felt emotionally disconnected from my wife, because we've both been traveling separately, we've both had a lot of work on, we haven't really found time to connect or be with each other deeply. I often say to her, and I've said this throughout our whole relationship, I'll say to her, is this relationship going in the direction you want it to go in? And that's a really open and broad question. She could say yes, she could say no. And then my second question is, if it is going in the direction you want it to go in, what's going well? And then I'd say, if it isn't going in the direction you're going in, what do you need and what are you willing to do? And then I'd follow that up with, do you mind if I share mine? Do you mind if I share with you if I feel this relationship's

going in the right direction or how I feel? And so once I've heard her out and seen where she's at, I'm now going to tell her exactly how I feel. My way of saying it would be, I've got to a place where I'm feeling emotionally disconnected. I'm feeling like I don't feel like you're present with me, I don't feel like you're connected, I don't feel like you want to. Is that true? And I'm checking if my emotional instinct is real. Now, in this case, it's me saying, I honestly feel that over the last three years, I haven't been able to understand, I haven't really been able to gain context of why you've made the choices you've made. And I really want to understand and deeply and there for you to understand if these choices are aligned with your values. If they are,

those are not the values that attract me. Those are not the values that make me feel good about being in a relationship. Because what I'm saying is, if you found someone physically attractive and now you find them physically unattractive, I promise you it's also based on their values and choices. It's not simply based on how they look. That's too simplistic for a modern day powerful relationship. So to me, I'm communicating my disconnect with that person's choices and values.

I'm not simplifying it to just how they look in the mirror. Because that to me isn't the truth. Because the truth is that, because they can change how they look in the mirror, but they don't want to is my issue with it. They don't want to be better in all the ways I think they can be better, right? That they don't, I don't feel like they want to improve. I was coaching someone whose partner was addicted to porn, right? And they were addicted to porn. Their partner found pictures and videos and all that kind of stuff on their laptop and phone and all the rest of it.

And we were working with them. If that person didn't see a problem with their addiction, that's where you were at. But the person's problem wasn't that they were just addicted to porn, it was the lack of transparency, it was the lack of honesty, it was the lack of emotional connection. Their issue wasn't that they were watching porn. Their issue was, don't you trust me enough to tell me that there's a disconnect here, that we don't have enough of a relationship where you can share this with me. That was the issue that they were having. So to me, I'm always trying to communicate.

Empathy is communicating at the root of the issue, not with the symptom of what you're experiencing. And if someone empathetically said to you, Stephen, I feel, and this is my projection on you and you're allowed to edit this, I just feel that you're worth so much more. And I feel that you can make so many better choices for yourself.

And I think you have the ability to get there. But I don't know if you want that. And if you don't want that, that's totally fine. But that's the kind of partner I want to be with. Would you never mention in that process that you're not attracted to them anymore? I wouldn't never not mention the direct thing i just think that i'm more interested in excavating you're going around it's not going around it's going under

it's going deeper deeper than it's going deeper it's not going around going around is saying like oh you know i'm just this not working out anymore like oh you know i'm just seeing other people now like going around it is like you, going around it is just saying, I mean, even one sense of going around it is just like, yeah, finding other people to attract, whatever. Like- You're going to the roots as opposed to the leaves.

Correct. Because I think that not only helps the other person, but it helps me understand how to actually be there for the person I love. Because I think that if you go to the root, that person has the opportunity to say, thank you, that's how i feel but i just didn't know how to say it so i want to give the person the opportunity to feel so heard

when they can't even they hear their own voice but they can hear it through my reflection on them where they can say you know what you're right that is exactly how i feel i know i can be so much better but and if i can't find that in them then we're not meant to be but I want to be that voice for someone because they can't find that voice within themselves it's so interesting because I imagine almost everybody listening to this has those gripes with their partner 100% whether you've been together for five minutes or five years where you you go I just wish she would be more like me or I just wish she would do it like me I wish she would love what I love and I've been there with my partner as well where um I I suspect she wants me to be a bit more

interested in the things she's interested in and maybe vice versa um but then also we have a different style of communication and all of these things and going back a couple of years we had a problem with sex which we had to confront where one day she turned around to me and and said that she wasn't wasn't interested in sex we've talked about this publicly before yeah um and the journey i went on to understand all of that the question i'm trying to ask is like dave or rebecca who's listening to this right now who wants to wants to change something about fucking rebecca wants to change something about dave he's all he's always he doesn't care about me he doesn't give me the quality time all of those things what's the path that rebecca should take to deliver that to dave at what point should she go fuck dave you know i mean because because it's a success as a team

sport in this regard right first thing i'm gonna say is stop trying to change anyone because people don't change for people, they change for themselves. Like stop trying to change anyone. People do not change for you, they don't change for me, they change for themselves. And if they don't want to change, they're not changing. And if you want to change your partner, chances are they're not the right person for you. And by the way, anyone you date, you'll always want to change because somehow deep inside of you, you believe that the values you were brought up with and what you think is right is what everyone in the world should do. And so the core issue, again, going to the root, is us and our projection. Like, is my wife any less of an amazing human being because she lives

differently to me? No. And I think that relationships are so much more about learning to respect other people's values than they are to make them value what we value. I think the biggest issue we're having in relationships right now is we're saying, well, I like this. Why don't you like it? Relationships are saying, I love that you love that and I love this. You go do your thing. I'll go do mine. Why do I want to force my partner to come watch a football game with me if they hate football? I'd rather go watch it with someone that loves football. And why is she going to force me to go do something that I don't want to do? I don't think that that's compromise or connection.

I think that's ruining relationships, quite frankly. So I think going to the core of the answer, and I'll coach through Dave and Rebecca, but I think going to the root of it, it's just the issue of stop trying to change people. If you're trying to change them, then you don't love them. You love their potential. You love a version of them that you think they can become. That's not them. And stop trying to make them that version, because if you're in love with who someone could be, then you're not in love with them and accept that. And I don't think we want to accept that. We want to think that we're better, greater human beings because we see something better for someone. And they're a project.

And they're a project. And I talk about that in the book, the idea that, you know, the project, or there are three roles we play in relationships. One is the fixer. We want to find someone to fix. And the other is we play the role of the project. So we want to be fixed by someone else. So we're looking for that person. And really the right thing we want to be is the supporter, the partner, the true equal, the true person who adds value to the other person. Sometimes takes on the role of the fixer, sometimes is the project, but overall is coming at it from a point of we're working on this together, as you said, a team sport. And so when it comes to Rebecca and Dave, ultimately the deepest, most beautiful question your partner can ask you is,

where do you want to be? And do you want my help getting there? And if the answer to that question is something you don't like, then it comes to the end of it because you're not going to change them by manipulating them, by controlling them, by forcing them, by coming up with a magic trick. It's just not going to happen. Like I think so many people say to me, Jay, just, you know, my partner just won't read your book.

I really want them to read your book. And I'm like, please don't do that to them. You're about to push that person over the edge. And guess what? Not only are they not going to read my book. I really want them to read your book. And I'm like, please don't do that to them. You're about to push that person over the edge. And guess what? Not only are they not going to read my book, they're not going to be interested in personal development or growth because now you've given it a bad taste. Half the atheists in the world exist because religion failed them. It wasn't that they became an atheist out of choice because they were like, oh, I'm just going to be an atheist. It's because they saw someone as part of a religion that failed them. And so whether it's personal growth, whether it so when it whether it's personal growth whether it's health whether it's mindfulness whether it's yoga

whatever your latest trend is that you're into forcing your partner to get into it is going to push them away far more than it's going to excite them and entice them and there's a message underlying there which i which i felt in my own life where someone's pushing you to do something or to check something out and they're doing it very aggressively yeah i'm i'm trying to read between the lines yes i'm saying you know steve please read this book i go oh this is where i'll read that as here is she's presenting me with a flaw that i have totally because the book is about i don't know how to be great in bed yeah and she's like babe please read this book i'm thinking well what you're actually saying to me is i'm not good in bed yeah totally totally so

there's always that's the problem when you're dealing with love again isn't it totally and you're not love means to understand why someone makes the choices they make and most of us don't even know why they make those choices and we want them to make our choices that's as simple as it is you said something so amazing which i thought was um that question that rebecca should be asking dave which i've never really thought about before which is the first question you should ask them is like where do they want their life to go and where do they see this relationship going and then instead of trying to interfere with that and design it yourself and muddle with it just see if it matches up to your vision of the relationship i I imagine most people listening to this now

haven't done that exercise with their partner, where they haven't asked their partner, by the way, like, what is your vision for this relationship and us? Yeah. And even your own life. Yeah. It'd be interesting, you know?

Yeah, I think also just trying to, I think the reason why we haven't had that conversation is most of us don't even know our vision. So the reason why we haven't done that with a partner is because we don't know the answer to our own question. And so before you ask that question, you should have your own idea. I know what I want. My vision of a relationship is we wake up excited to see each other every day. We go to bed feeling accomplished and fulfilled throughout the day. We make time to connect on understanding where each other's lives are going,

where they intertwine and where they separate. And we support each other in the goals. I break it down into three things in the book. I talk about liking each other's personality and the way I define that's the first one of the three. What I mean by that is there was an amazing study that was done that said that in order for someone to be considered a casual friend, you have to spend 40 hours with them. In order for someone to be considered a friend, you have to spend 100 hours with them. And for someone to be considered a good friend, a great friend, you have to spend 200 hours with them. What are we? So we're nothing right now, Stephen. We're not doing very well on that list.

Now, having said that, we've also had very deep time together. We're always opening our entire souls and hearts to each other. So it's a different type of relationship. But the point is, liking someone's personality is, do I want to spend 200 hours with them? That's how I like to break it down is, do I see myself spending 200 hours with this person trying to understand them? The second is, do I respect myself spending 200 hours with this person trying to understand them the second is do I respect their values you will only know their values if you ask them if you're aware if you can

see how they spend their time and money most people don't like the way their partner spends their time and money which means you don't like their values but you're still with them because you like something else about them but the values are the core of who that person is as a human being. And then the third is, do you want to help them achieve their goals? That's love. Love means that you want to help them get to where they want to get to.

But most of us don't even know where our partners want to go or where we want to go. So we're struggling with like three fundamental things that define love. And we'll never know because we're trying to patch it up with all the other stickers that come up uh in making us feel good you know you said point number one there which was waking up to them every day now when you when you said that i thought fuck every day like well not every day but i'm saying whenever you're in the same it's just a but my

that's what my brain did what every day like yeah and then that brought my mind to this point about the role of distance yes in your relationship yes i've tested this law big time both ways okay tell me what you've learned so my wife and i've been together for 10 years so it's not long and it's not short it's like you know it's a good amount of time uh and we've spent up to six months apart a year sometimes. And we've spent as little as two months apart a year. So we've varied in those 10 years anywhere from two months to six months a year of not seeing each other based on work schedules, priorities, et cetera.

And I was always someone who believed that distance was really good for relationships. I think it's healthy to miss each other. I think it's healthier if you have a plan of how you're going to be apart. And I think it's even healthier if you have a plan of how to reconnect after the time apart. And I think that's where relationships and distance go wrong. Most relationships and distance are either by default or with no consciousness. So we just ended up not seeing each other for X amount of time, whether that's one week, one month or whatever it may be. That unconscious time of not being with each other is not healthy for a relationship. You don't know

why you're disconnected. You don't know for how long. You don't know how you're reconnecting and you don't know how you're staying in touch. That's not good quality time away. So that's how to make time work for you. Six months is too long. Six months doesn't work. I've tried and tested it. It's really bad. It took six months after six months to reconnect. And I'm not, I literally felt like it was like a rule that for every day I was apart, I had to spend a day of quality time with that person to re-find and rediscover and to sustain and to evolve and grow a relationship.

And I literally felt that six months apart took me six months with my wife to get back to where we were before those six months, especially because some of those six months happened unconsciously. And so unconscious time apart isn't healthy and unconscious reconnection isn six months of unconscious disconnectedness that helped us connect again. And I'd never want to do that again. It was too painful to look at someone and someone you love and someone you feel you've really achieved something with to kind of feel like you had to rebuild it all again. It was too much. And I don't want to do that again. And so I'm changing the way I feel about distance. I'm always going to do that again. And so I'm changing the way I feel about distance. I'm always going to make it conscious. It's always communicated. And some of the habits

I've set up that have been really helpful is I also set up not even just disconnection physically, but time poverty and emotional. So I'm going on tour this year. And when I go on tour this year, I'm going to be on the road in the US for three weeks in total, which is quite normal for me and my wife to be apart for three weeks. But it's communicated, it's in the calendar. And then I come back to LA for a month and I've kept that whole schedule free because I want to plan a few trips with my wife. We may even go on a vacation, whatever it may be. And then after that, I go on my world tour, which is another four weeks or five weeks of cities all across Europe, India, Asia, and Australia. And my wife will pop into a couple of cities, but she's not going to come on the whole

tour with me. And so again, I'm like, okay, which cities are you going to be in? Which weekends am I going to take off? Which nights am I going to be with you? And then what are we going to do when I reconnect after the world tour? It's now coming from a completely conscious, organized space, just as I would organize work, just as I would deal with a business partner. You just can't take a relationship for granted. It just will break. It will wilt away. Paul Brunson taught me something. He was on the podcast and he said that him and his wife had to make a rule. He's from America. He's had to fly all over the world to do these TV shows, etc.

He said, we have a rule where if an opportunity invites us to be apart for more than two weeks, we either go together or I don't go. And he's obviously got kids and things like that. And I really thought that was really amazing. Difficult. That's difficult. It's very difficult. Yeah, I don't disagree with it i just think that so he posted on his instagram the other day saying i've just been given an opportunity of a lifetime but for practical reasons me and my partner can't go together yeah i've turned it down and i think

everyone needs to come up with their own version of that rule yeah because that's such a it's a great rule and if him and his partner have committed to that and that's my hope with the book with the rules it's like come up with your own relationship rules. Like one of ours is every 30 days, we spend three days together without our phones. And we drive somewhere three hours away from our home in LA and spend that time together. And that's been a healthy habit for us every month, because I don't think I want to wait for our annual vacation to vacation with her partner. And straight after that, she was like, but I didn't feel like we spent any time together. And when she told him that, he said, well, we just spent three days together. What do you mean? And when I asked her, well,

if you spent three days together, what do you mean? She said, well, he was on his iPad or he was on his phone or he was on his laptop. We weren't actually together. And I said, well, you're not asking for time. You're asking for presence and you're asking for energy. So often our vocabulary is wrong. You know, we're saying, oh, I want you to come home from work on time. That's not what you're saying. What you're saying is I want to spend time where we share energy and interact together, but we're using the wrong language. And so A, we're not communicating what we want. But more interestingly, I found that, and everyone can do this, and I really want people to take this in and really let it sit. Most of us only do one thing with our partners, and it's watching TV. And that is the lowest form of intimacy that you could possibly ask for with any human being. If you and I watch TV together for 200 hours a year, we would potentially be no closer than we were before. Yet with our

partners, all we do is stay glued to a box for hours every day, waste minutes searching for what to watch, and then maybe having a quick little chat about it and switching it off so i have this pyramid of intimacy and entertainment's on the lowest rung of the ladder but that's what the majority of couples are doing so if we're only watching tv together i promise you that relationship is not growing it's actually falling apart slowly and you have no idea and i know that's a painful truth to accept but but it is an inconvenient truth. So what's the opposite of watching TV? So higher than that, and that's why it's a ladder, there's other steps. Instead of entertainment, I'm really interested in people doing experiences together, something new, something fresh, an experiment together. What I mean by that is, how can you both do something that you both are not experts at? Often what we do in

relationships is we say, oh, well, I love football. Come watch football with me. Or I love this. Come watch this with me. I love this band. Come and experience this band with me. What we're doing is we're creating an expert and student mentality. I'm going to teach you what the offside rule is. I'm going to teach you about this music and this whatever else it may be, right? We're kind of creating that idea that I know something you don't. And what that does in a relationship is it doesn't create a shared experience.

A shared experience is when we both go somewhere where we both don't have a lot of experience and now we get to discover new things about our partner. Now we get to see them in a new scenario. Now we get to make ourselves both feel vulnerable. TV is not vulnerable. So when we're talking about creating vulnerability, it's not just in conversation. It's in us both doing an escape room that we've never done before. Now we're vulnerable without even trying, right?

We're both going to go and be part of an experiment experience that we've never done before because it helps us be vulnerable. Maybe we're going to try a new sport that we never played together. Me and my wife tried surfing last year. Never done it before. This year we tried wakeboarding. Never done it before. We both look like fools. Both can't do it to save our lives. Actually, she's much better than me, so I'll give her the credit. But the point is that the more you put yourself in uncomfortable new experiences and experiments, and by the way, I've given a range of examples. It could literally be, you know, going to an art class together or going to pottery together or whatever it may be. It can be the most basic thing. Do something when neither of you know anything about it. Your vulnerability

skyrockets without having to have a heart-to-heart conversation. Higher than that level is education. Go and learn together. Maybe there is a book that you can both read together. Maybe there is a podcast you can listen together. Maybe there is a retreat that you both want to go on. Maybe there is a podcast you can listen together. Maybe there is a retreat that you both want to go on. Maybe there is a course that you both really want to do. Or alternatively, you both commit to doing separate things, but you report back and talk about it. One of you is learning an art. One of you is learning self-development. Now you're sharing your exclusive learning journeys

with each other. You're both growing together. And then the highest thing is serving together. Go to a soup kitchen, go to a homeless shelter, go somewhere that inspires you both, that affects you both, and go and help, go and serve, go and improve the world together. When you think about any of those three out of the four, yes, they take a bit more planning. Yes, they take a bit more time than watching TV. Actually, maybe not. I'd argue that takes the same amount of time. The quality of your relationship will

skyrocket immensely by doing any of those three out of the four, then just switching on the telly. And I think too many of us are, you know, losing our partners, losing ourselves and losing our relationships because we're expecting a TV show made by people who don't really care about your relationship to entertain us. It brings me to chapter five of your book where you say purpose comes first. And there's a quote I wrote down, which is for any of us to bring the best version of ourselves to our relationship, we have to pursue our own purpose. In Hinduism, it's called our Dharma. What is our Dharma? And what are the four, you know, you talk about these four fundamental pursuits that drive us forward in life yeah so the the vedas talk about these

four pursuits in life who's vedas the vedas v-e-d-a-s are the uh kind of umbrella scriptures the umbrella spiritual texts that have all of this life advice and wisdom that I share from that context. So the Vedas are the particular texts, and they have these four pursuits of life. And they are Dharma, Arthur, Karma, and Moksha. And I'll describe each word because those are all Sanskrit words. So Dharma is purpose. We'll dive into that one more deeply. Arthur, and all of my work is pretty much dedicated to this, and I'll break it down in my own language to make it simpler for everyone. I believe that there are four important decisions that we all get to make in life. The first one is how I feel about myself.

The second one is what do I do to make money? We all need money. What do we do for it? The third is, who do I decide to love and receive love from? And the fourth is, how do I choose to serve the world? How do I choose to impact the world? And so these are the four main pursuits that the Vedas espouse. Dharma is your purpose and who you are. Artha is economic development.

Karma is relationships and connection and moksha is liberation or service or like ultimate giving and so those are the four pursuits and it's really interesting to me that dharma is placed as the first pursuit not love and it's really interesting because you look at people they did a study on uh people graduated from graduating from college, and they asked them that if you were to get married in the next five years or stay single, what would be your happiness prediction? The majority of people predicted that if they got married, their happiness would be at an eight. But if they remain single, their happiness would be at a three. That perception is mind-blowing to me.

They believe that if they're in a relationship, their happiness would go to an eight. If they were single, it would be a three. The reality is if they stayed single and they did, their happiness stayed at a seven. And so their perception of loneliness, their perception of being alone was far greater. And so a lot of us skip purpose because we find connection is an easier solve to our internal unhealing. So we feel that if I'm with someone, I'm going to feel better about myself than if I have to do that work myself. And is this in order? Yes, that's in order. Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha. Okay. So karma is essentially pleasure and connection. This is your relationship

with others. People prioritize that as being number one. Exactly. And that's what I'm saying is the mistake that you're hoping that someone is going to come and heal your wounds without doing it yourself, which is why we're living in a world where, you know, the right person could come into your life and reduce drama and the wrong person comes into your life and increases trauma. And that's the experience that we're having that we're coming from these unhealed places where we don't know our purpose, we don't know our values, we don't know our goals. We mesh with someone else who doesn't know their purpose, doesn't know their values and doesn't know their goals. And it leads to confusion, it leads to broken hearts, it leads to abuse, it leads to manipulation and control.

And so I do this very simply and i ask couples that i work with and i've worked with i've been coaching a lot of couples over the last few years especially while writing this book and i ask couples that i'm working with to rate their top three priorities in order including themselves and i remember doing this with a lot of couples and one particular couple. And the man said, you, the kids, me. And the woman said, me, the kids, you. And when we had this discussion, he was heartbroken. He said, how could you put yourself above the kids? goes i'm not mad that i'm number three i'll take that all day but how did you put yourself above the kids how could you even do that sounds like he's mad at being number three he's just using the kids it's not about me yeah and it was

really interesting because she she gave the answer that i think me and you would you know validate and agree with, that she was like, but if I don't fill my own bottle, if I don't fill my own cup, if I'm not my best self, what am I giving to you guys? I'm giving you leftovers. And she's saying that it's not that the kids are second on my list because I don't care about them. And if they needed me, they're going to be second. It's more that I know that I have to invest in myself. And so I think we live in a world where we think sacrificing our purpose makes us a better partner.

We think the self-sacrifice and the self-sabotage of our own goals and our own pursuits makes us a better person, when actually it doesn't. It makes us more resentful, more guilty, more upset. And I'm saying that because I've seen people who gave up their dreams for decades only in their 50s and 60s to look back and go when the kids left to go i wish i never gave up on my dreams so i'm not saying this is theory i'm saying this is sitting down with people working with people and seeing people throw away their own purpose in the pursuit of, I think that sacrificing it makes me a better human being.

It really reminded me then of my best performing quote ever. Okay. I want to hear it. This is the best performing quote I've ever had. So much so that actually when I Googled it, it's attributed to someone else, which is really... Oh man. It's crazy, isn't it?

It's fucking crazy. I just googled it right and um this person has tweeted the exact same thing which i actually wrote about my ex girlfriend and it's got 150 000 likes on twitter and 75 000 retweets it did better than when i posted it it's crazy isn't it that's amazing but um the quote is i'm actually just going to read theirs because um i'll read mine yeah it's the exact same thing, word for word. Is if we're dating, I want to be your second priority. I want your first priority to be you, your ambitions, your life and your future,

because my priority right now is me and mine. And finding happiness and security alone is crucial to us finding it together. And I wrote that actually in response to my ex-girlfriend who made me really realize that we're going to have no relationship. We're going to have no security we're going to have no security we're not going to have any happiness if we haven't first found that to some extent together

and i've always almost criticized that perspective of my of mine i've thought steve is that because you're selfish and you're insecure you know and you're ambitious and you just want to be or is there truth in that and i and there's this enduring question i have which is what role is your partner meant to play? And we've kind of talked about a little bit, but in fixing you, do you have to be completely happy before you meet them? Or do you, do you have, can you rely on them to make you happy? Yeah. And by the way, it's only not unselfish. So yes, what you just said in self-reflection, it is a completely selfish idea if you don't afford your partner the same flexibility and openness to live that way.

So it is selfish if you say, I'm going to go achieve this. I want to go build this life. And by the way, you've got to come with me. You've got to be, if I was saying this hypothetically to my wife, you've got to be on every flight I take next year. My work's really important important i'm saving the world i'm doing a world tour you come with me if you have that belief that is completely selfish and ego-based but if my belief is yes this is my calling this is what i'm meant to do on this planet and i'm really moved by that but my wife's got an amazing calling herself and i get so much more attracted to her

watching her live her calling my wife becomes more attractive to me the more she lives her purpose not your wife i'm talking about mine yeah yeah like my wife doesn't become attractive to me because she's helping me in my purpose by just following and tagging along do you know how she'll become even more attractive if she opens that restaurant yeah i know that would that would that would like you know put it right up there but yeah the idea that you know i and so i think there is a selfishness right and i wanted to caveat that um so i'm not saying you need to be perfectly happy i'm saying you need to know who you are yeah you need to know your values currently and you need to know your goals currently all those things will change and evolve as you grow and evolve but if you've done the practice of understanding that at this point

you're going to be better at communicating articulating and evolving and sharing it again when it changes what if i'm really hurt i was cheated on i was in a seven-year relationship i'm thinking about one of my friends i was in a seven-year relationship. I'm thinking about one of my friends. I was in a seven-year relationship. I was cheated on. Now I'm insecure. You know, I have low self-esteem. Is it relationship time? No, not at all. Not one bit.

Because that's the point that we're talking about where you skip step one. You've skipped dharma and you've leaned into karma because you don't want to sort dharma. Dharma is making sense of who you are and who you want to be and what your role in this world is and i feel that when you walk into a relationship with that insecurity it now ruins potentially the safest secure person that you could have been with and so i'll go on i was just going to say you know this is this is who am i to judge i had all of my own bs to deal with and overcome and understand about

myself um much of which i've talked about many times before but if i if i was to take a cross section of the people in my life that are struggling relationships almost every single one of them has skipped the first stage which is the hard stage and you know the other thing about that first stage is a lot of people just don't feel like they have the time. Yes. Especially, we're all getting a little bit older. You know, things have changed in society, which mean people are getting in less relationships and they're getting in them later in life. So some people feel that they have a clock. And that means that when they think, look, Jay, I'm X years old today and you're telling me to do this Dharma and this Arthur.

I need to get to karma. I need to find this guy and what we don't realize is that the work that you skip in step one and two you're gonna have to do with another person yeah and that work doing it with them is going to slow the quality of that relationship down potentially ruin a great thing and push someone away amen and and actually make a mess of the situation and so it's kind of like a game where it's like, you could have the cheat code that skips you to 10, but the skills of levels one to nine help you win at 10. But if you skip the game because you had the cheat code or you tried to rush it, or you got a pirate version or whatever it is, you now can't win at level number 10. And I think we don't realize that what the game of life does is it pushes you back to learn the lessons you haven't learned yet. So you get into a relationship out

of insecurity. That person breaks up with you. You're back to being insecure again. Then you get into another relationship to solve your insecurity. That person breaks up with you, and then you get insecure again. You're constantly pushed into saying, deal with this insecurity alone. Fix it. Figure it out. learn about it, get curious about it. And by the way, when you do that, next time you walk into a relationship, A, you'll know or have more chance of knowing whether that person's going to be right or wrong.

But if it's right, you're going to be able to make it work. And you're not going to push away something that's powerful. And to summarize these steps, so Dharma is, as written here in the book, purpose clarifies your values and priorities to yourself and your partner. That's really working on yourself step two arthur is working towards stability in terms of your finances health self-development and personal growth and once you're there you're ready for some karma which is pleasure and connection um which is

basically relationships with others it's so interesting one of the questions i did want to ask you today before we um before you even got here was exactly this i actually had a conversation an hour before you arrived with a friend of mine who is um in her mid-30s and is really struggling with relationships and um i was having a conversation with her about it and it's all the things we've just talked about which is like she feels like she's running out of time yeah she feels like there's the world has changed and it's now all digital and like she's not meeting enough people she thinks maybe if i go get my hair done and this done and i get that done or if i get a membership to soho house maybe then i'll fucking meet a guy

and like what you must encounter these people in your dms over and over again that are saying that i'm nearly 40 years old i'm single it's not working for me what's your advice to those people well i think the first thing i'd say is it is hard it is a really tough time to be single right now compared to what it was like a few years ago like it is much harder with the landscape and how it's changed. Like 25, 50 years ago, you'd meet someone who lived in a one to five mile radius from your home. You wouldn't even be thinking about having a long distance relationship in the same way. Whereas today, you're meeting anyone and everyone all across the world. You have an app that connects you to anyone in that location and area wherever you just got off a plane. So there is complexity. There's more choice now. There's the paradox of choice of, well, there's plenty of fish in the sea. And if this doesn't work out,

there's so many more people and other people that are thinking about you and you're worried about that. So it is much harder. And so I don't want to get away from that. Like I don't want to negate the fact that dating today and finding love is hard. It's why I wrote the book. I think that what I'm encouraging for people to understand is that,

A, having all those insecurities around relationships doesn't put you in the best decision-making profile to make the right decision. So all of that stress and all of that insecurity and all of that anxiety is more likely to push you into a relationship that is unhealthy and toxic than it is to help you move in the right direction. So first of all, I just want you to accept that making a decision from your current mindset is not going to help you make a good one. It's just not going to work. You're more likely to settle for someone. You're more likely to give in for something less than you deserve because right now you're just happy with anything. You're just happy with someone who texts you back and that's not the relationship you want to be in. So first, I would accept that this mindset is not going to help you.

The mindset that is going to help you is, okay, if I figure out three simple things, just what I like and what I don't like about myself and in life, not about a person. I'm not asking you to even think about a person. What do I like and not like as me? What are my values personally right now? Like what's valuable to me? Not about this person. What's valuable to me? And what are my values personally right now? Like what's valuable to me? Not about this person. What's valuable to me? And what are my goals? If you figure out those three things, you're more

likely to meet people. How? If you know what you like and dislike, you're going to spend time in places that you like and dislike, where you're more likely to meet people that have similar likes and dislikes, or that at least you can connect with. Second, if you know your values, you're more likely to know who to ask for an introduction to someone, because you know who knows who. You know that that friend of yours is more likely to know someone who has a similar value because they're of that value. And then goals make it easier to figure out whether it's going to go somewhere. So you actually speed up and simplify a really tough selection process because our whole society has set us up to say, write a list of what you want in a person. Write a list of what you want in yourself. Like just write a list of like, who are you? What are my values and what are my goals?

And you figured that out. It becomes so much more easy to weed it out. And so I would encourage you to say, this isn't a, you don't have to become a monk for three years you don't have to go and like live in a mountaintop you don't have to go on a yoga retreat like i'm not telling you to do this for like decades you could do this in three months if you wanted to like this isn't like a decade-long process there's something really interesting here about like delaying gratification just generally i was actually reading yesterday about the people that delay gratification in their lives and those that don't and why from a physiological standpoint some people don't delay gratification i was reading about the marshmallow test yeah which i'm sure

you've heard about um and some of the factors that are at play there is when people are stressed you know um in the case of a marshmallow it creates a dopamine hit which is a feel-good you know chemical for the reward center in your brain so one can understand why you would reach for the marshmallow if you were feeling stressed and you needed that dopamine hit. One of them is also self-esteem, which is if your self-esteem is low and you're looking for the same kind of dopamine hit you get from having a fucking bad one night stand with the wrong person, it's much harder to delay your gratification and make good long-term decisions in line with your values if your self-esteem is low so all of these things point to this like fundamental which i think people miss in our society because we live in a society where i'd rather have it now i'd rather go to a

surgeon and get it fixed i'd rather you know do it on photoshop than actually do the work it's like doing the work a you don't see but who the fuck wants to do the work totally it's like doing that the foundational stuff is the answer to all of the stuff you see on the outside like and and you know what you're saying with that example is that you also you also attract what you use to impress so if you use something specific to impress someone that's the quality and vibration of energy you're attracting so if i use money money like i did yeah to attract someone which works perfectly well you're attracting someone who values that about you yes if you use your only your physical appearance obviously we're all attracted to each other and that's fine like but if you only use your physical appearance and you believe that's

your only asset and you're playing the game of just showing off that, guess what you're going to attract? That's a really important question because that solves something for one of the people I'm thinking about in my head. This person, I wouldn't say she's a friend, but somebody that I know. And she's using her outstanding beauty to attract people. Yeah. And it's failed her over and over again because she's attracting the wrong type of person with the wrong type of values in her own words and in my to bring this back to myself there was this phase between 18 and 23 i'm gonna say where all i used to attract girls was bottles of dom perry on a club i would buy five bottles of dom perry on a night you know

bring the sparklers and it was like a mousetrap yeah but i was i was attracting the wrong type of values yes because i was the wrong type of values correct and you don't think that and and the worst part about that for your friend is that it's not just an issue that the guy she attracts value only that about her the biggest issue is she's setting herself to only value that about her. Amen. Which means when someone leaves her for that reason, it just plays into the belief of I'm not good enough. There's this beautiful fable story that I love to share. And it's about a kid who finds like a gem in his house, like a stone. And he goes up to his dad and he says,

how much is this stone worth, dad? What's the value of this stone? And the dad says, I want you to go out to the baker. And when you go out to the baker, say that you're selling the stone. And when they ask you how much it is, hold up two fingers. And so the kid said, okay, I'll do that. The kid ran out, went to the baker. The baker said, oh, that looks nice. How much are you selling it for? Kid held up two fingers. The baker said, oh, $2. I'll take it. So the kid ran back and the kid said, dad, the baker offered $2. The dad said, okay, now I want you to go to an antique shop and I want you to show them the jewel, the stone. And when you show them the

stone, I want you to hold up two fingers again. So the boy runs off and the antique person says, oh, that's a nice stone. How much is it? And the boy holds up two fingers and he says, oh, $200, $200. Okay. Yeah, I'll take it. And the boy runs back. And then dad says, okay, now I want you to go to this jeweler in this rare store of gems and stones and jewels and go up and do the same thing. The boy runs back, goes to this, shows the stone, holds up two fingers. And the jeweler says, oh, $2,000. I'll take it. And you know, that story to me is really the story that we're all going through where we're letting someone else define our worth by what we showed, this is who I am, this is my value, you'll never let someone undervalue you. And that's the challenge today is that because we don't value ourselves and we're letting someone else value us, we are being undervalued by every person we date and meet. And that's how everyone

feels. Everyone feels like that stone that is undervalued because you're not being perceived by the right people for the right things so true and um it you know i wasn't going to ask this question but it tees up because i always think about you know sophia who's listening to this and it's just heard you say that and she's going i completely agree jay the next question is how do i genuinely not bullshit how do I genuinely value myself more? Not just saying it in the mirror and writing it down. How do I genuinely value myself more so that I can get better from the world? So this is, and I love what you just said.

I don't believe that value comes from a journal or a conversation with yourself in a mirror. Please buy the diary. And I love journaling and I love affirmations but that's what cut that out jack no keep it in there what's really interesting is self-value real self-worth comes from doing hard things We keep talking about self-love. We keep talking about loving yourself, believing in yourself. That happens naturally when you go through something difficult. Everyone who's listening right now, I guarantee you has been through something difficult. Maybe they lost a friend. Maybe they've been through cancer. Maybe they lost their job and

had to rebuild. Maybe they completely got destroyed during the pandemic and had to figure everything out with their health. The point is we've all done hard things and self-worth and self-value comes from recognizing the hardship you've been through and the growth that you made during that time. Now, if you're someone who's listening and saying, Jay, well, I'm not sure I've been through anything that challenging. Well, that's your challenge. Go and figure out what it is that you want to do that's hard. Is it developing a new

skill? Is it getting a qualification? Is it starting that business or dream that you've always wanted to do? What's that difficult thing you're going to do on your own with your friends, with the support of whoever's around you, but not with the crutch or the handicap of a partner? What are you going to build as a skill, as a tool, as a value yourself that's going to make you say, I've done something? And that's the beginning of it. The beginning is I've done something and I did that and I can do that. And when you do that, yes, there's going to be, you're going to validate the wrong things. You're going to validate the wrong things you're going to you're going to you're going to give yourself praise for the wrong things you're going to go through ego you're going to do all of that but there's still a belief if i can do hard things i can do hard things by myself and i know what value i bring to a relationship you were just

talking about doing hard things so let's talk about sex sex is a huge part of relationships yeah and one of the one of the really interesting things i want to talk to you about is if again if i look at my friendship group my small friendship group of maybe six guys right my best friends i'd say three of them are currently having a really really hard time as it relates to sex with their partner for a variety of reasons. Reason number one that I've heard, my partner doesn't like having sex. We have sex once every three months. Reason number two, I've heard my partner doesn't like the way that I have sex. On those first two points, I'm horrified, surprised that so many people I speak to are struggling in that department

with sex. And there's not, the conversation around sex is either non-existent or porn influenced. Yeah. What's your take on sex and what's going on in the world? I'm so glad you brought it up because I, I think that because of social media, there's this image that everyone else is having sex and I'm not. Like, I feel like that's like a very big feeling that a lot of people have. And all the stats show that people are having less and less sex. There are more and more sexless relationships and marriages every single year. And it's so much more common yet in our groups and online, everyone feels like, oh, they're getting some and they're getting some and they're getting some, but I'm not. And the truth is most people are not getting any.

And that's just, I don't have the stats offhand right now, but whenever I've looked at the trends, that's what the trends show. To me, it comes back down to everything we've just been talking about. Sexual chemistry and attraction and connection is all based on, A, how someone feels about themselves. If someone themselves is not feeling taken care of by themselves, attractive, investing in themselves, growing, feeling like they're becoming more and better, it's very unlikely that they're going to want to share their body, mind, emotions, and heart with anyone else in the most physically intimate way, which is sex. It's just unlikely. And chances are, if you don't think you're having those conversations you want to have with your partner, where you are being open, where they are working

on their values, where we do see each other striving, chances are that you're not going to want to have sex with them either. And so what we're seeing is that the challenge we're having in sex is actually coming from everything else that's going on, that there isn't a sense of growth, joy, purpose. Like great sex is a by-product of great connection and intimacy.

It's not a replacement for or a source of. If I asked everyone who's listening right now, put your hand up if you've had amazing sex, but no connection in a relationship, right? Like that's been real. We've all used sex as a crutch. We've had relationships where every time we argued we had sex, it solved the problem. Every time something was going wrong, we had sex, it was figured out somehow and the studies show that the chemicals released during sex make you feel like you're getting closer even though you're not actually emotionally closer so when you look at all of the stats when you look at all the

research when you look at everything we've just described sex is a byproduct of a healthy individual and a healthy individual and a growing individual and a growing individual coming together, sorting out their differences, having the fights they need to have, having the conversations they do, that naturally creates vulnerability, which leads to being able to expose ourselves at the deepest, most physical way that we possibly can. How can you expose yourself that vulnerably if you can't even have a vulnerable conversation with your partner because you just switch on the tv every night and avoid that difficult conversation becomes like a transaction it becomes a transaction and then sex becomes in the best case a crutch and uh and a hopeful aspiration on a special night or whatever it may be or something we wait for and plan for

and it never works out as opposed in the worst case it just becomes something we wait for and plan for and it never works out as opposed to in the worst case it just becomes something we're both not talking about comfortable about or even doing and so or an obligation or an obligation exactly yeah yeah yeah like an obligation and someone's just sitting there like you know come on three minutes literally yeah all right let's get it over and done with like that mindset and i'm like all like there isn't because we've lost intimacy in relationships there is no intimacy and so you can't force it physically there's no intimacy in porn there's no intimacy in porn for sure they don't like do the small talk i don't know pay for that exactly there's no intimacy in porn there's no and and the problem is and this is you know the book starts with this

quote but it solves this problem very, very neatly and carefully. And it's this idea that the Buddha was once approached and asked, what's the difference between I like you and I love you? Which is a brilliant question. And the Buddha replied, when you like a flower, you simply pluck it. But when you love a flower, you water it every day. And to me, the one night stand, the porn, the dopamine hit, the release of chemical is the plucking, right? That's what we're all plucking all day long because that's all we can do. But the watering, the intimacy, developing intimacy, growing from entertainment to experiments, to experiences, to education, to engaging in service together, all of this

creates so much intimacy that physical intimacy is a natural byproduct. It's not something you have to manage or engineer or manufacture. It's not this separate thing. It's based on how close I feel to you. And the point is, don't feel close to our partners because we don't do anything that makes us closer every day. Sleeping in the same bed as someone does not make you close to our partners because we don't do anything that makes us closer every day. Sleeping in the same bed as someone does not make you close to someone. Living in the same house as someone does not make you close to someone. The only thing that makes you feel close to someone

is when you feel you can be open and when you feel seen, heard, and understood in your most vulnerable, darkest, and open times. If you can do that, everything else is going to work. But if you can't do that, you can't just make it happen in a moment because you're meant to be together. You're meant to be in love. What about masturbation? Do you think masturbation to porn helps or hurts relationships? I think in the long term, it hurts. I think it's unhealthy because it's an avoidance and an escape, right? That's the point.

It's like, what is it being used as? It's not being used as self-connection or self-understanding. It's being used as escape and avoidance of the actual topic. And all that's doing is rewiring your brain for false expectations, diminishing returns as well. All the studies that I did look at show that porn is making you work harder. You're going to have to find something more extreme. All the stats that I saw showed that you had to watch more extreme porn to get the same feeling. So the most searched porn and the most watched porn was abusive, sometimes violent, sometimes rough, hardcore. All the search terms were more extreme to get

the same feeling because of the diminishing returns of the chemicals that are being released. And so now you're rewiring your brain to not feel as much pleasure from normal sex or more traditional conventional sex. You're now saying that I'm only going to feel pleasure from sex when it's potentially abusive, violent, somewhat rough, hardcore, whatever else it may be. So I think that's massively unhealthy. There's something it does to your expectations as well. And expectations are the key of...

That's what we're saying. Yeah. Your expectations of sex become completely unrealistic your expectations of intimacy are just thrown out the window there must be so many people listening to this both men and women because both sexes do watch porn it's quite naive of one to assume it's just men that are jacking off in their of course in their bedrooms or whatever. But I bet there's people listening to this who have a partner that's constantly watching it and they know they watch it potentially. Maybe they've caught them a few times and they really want them to stop.

They think it's maybe killing their desire in the relationship. It's a difficult conversation to, you know? Yeah, it's really tough. And like I said, when I was, you know, I think it'd be interesting to look at this and I would be fascinated to see whether the people that are watching porn, and I need to talk to more people than I have about it. The people that I know that watch porn, and that's why I'm only speaking from my experience, don't feel good about it. They internally, deeply at the root, when we're in a coaching session, we get to the core of it. They feel guilty. They feel shameful. They feel embarrassed about it.

It doesn't make them feel good. And they wouldn't openly admit it in a community of people. Now, I'm speaking about a very specific group of people that have come to me for help or support in their relationships. They don't feel good about it. That doesn't mean they don't feel good when they're watching it. I'm saying they don't feel good afterwards. When they think about it, when they reflect on it, they're like, that's not what I imagined would be my sex life. That's not where I thought I'd turn to for satisfaction and enjoyment. So to me, that's again, comes back to down the same approach. And that's why the approach is always the same. We're always approaching the problem from, or the challenge from empathy and compassion we're not approaching it from judgment

and accusation of like oh you're such a waste you're such a lazy you know like that mindset doesn't ever make someone want to open up like if you went up to your partner and said god you just watch porn all the time like you know you're just one of the worst guys like haven't seen all my mates they're doing this and they get this from their partners and what are you doing that person's never going to tell you when they watch porn or what their challenge with it is or how embarrassed they feel or whatever it may be was if you went up to them and said hey you know i know i know that you watch porn and i wanted to know when it started like when did you get into it like what like allow yourself to be an interviewer about it, not an interrogator. And I feel like

one of the biggest mistakes we make in our relationships is we interrogate our partners, not interview them. Let's be curious. Let's actually try and understand it. Let's look at it because it's human. It's natural. Like we said, 99% of people are doing it anyway. So why are we pretending like it's only in our relationship? Why are we pretending that, oh, no one else does this, but only my partner does this? That's not true. So if it's that widespread and it's only in our relationship. Why are we pretending that, oh, no one else does this, but only my partner does this? That's not true. So if it's that widespread and it's that common and there's this huge industry that's been built off of it,

why are we judging our partner and why are we making them feel less than? Do you watch porn? I don't. I mean, when you, you know, I mean, three years of being a celibate monk with no access to the internet or phone gives you some good training. Yeah, I feel like, so I grew up, and I'll explain why too.

I feel like I started having sex early. And so early in the sense for me. So I felt that when were the years where most of my friends were watching porn I was having sex Mm-hmm, and so I didn't get into it as a habit early on in life Which is where I found it formed for most of my friends and then by the time They would get having real sex. I became a monk and so it was it was a really weird order of stuff Does that make sense? Yeah for me. It was that idea of like yeah, it was that idea of like yeah it was just i think i had i had the real thing when my friends were watching porn and then by the time they were having the real thing

i was on such a different path three years of celibacy three years of celibacy would do it to you it was one of the hardest no thanks it was one of the hardest and best things though because one of the things we don't realize and i want to address this and celibacy is really interesting thing to address i would love to see more people and this may be not a popular concept and i'm good with that i would love to see more people date people without having sex for a committed number of months. So committing with a new person that you're dating to not make sex a connection point. So one of my good friends did this recently as well. And he found that it gave him the ability to make better decisions as to whether there was

real intimacy, whether there was real connection, and whether there was something real here that could be built upon with sex as opposed to god i'm just so attracted to her and i'm she's so attracted to me and we just have the best sex ever or we don't and then that's what it's all hanging on and so i actually would go down that route and say that celibacy doesn't have to be practiced how i practiced this three years as a monk celibacy can be practiced in small doses, not because you're trying to be celibate and you're trying to repress yourself. That's not what I'm encouraging. What I'm encouraging is why not use it as a way of making healthier decisions?

Because studies show we don't make good decisions after we have sex. And studies show that we don't make good decisions when we've had sex with someone for a long time, because that's completely rewiring how we feel about them. So that's one way of looking at it. And the other way I'd say, even going even more extreme, is being celibate as a monk allowed me to redirect all that energy. And the word for monk in the tradition I stayed in is brahmacharya or brahmachari. And what that means technically is proper use of that energy. So celibacy is not a repression or a suppression or a closing off. It's reutilizing that vital energy in a different direction. If you think about how much money, time and energy you've spent chasing someone that you liked, The amount of time in your head, the amount

of time on your phone, text messages, dating apps, the amount of money you spent. I would have been so rich if I never took anyone out on a date before 21. Like think about all the money I wasted on showing off to women before I was 21. Wait, that Dom Perignon's not true. Yeah, exactly. Take all of that energy. Think about what you could achieve creatively if you used all that energy you use to pursue another person, if you use that energy to create, because it's creative energy. that I otherwise could have taken years to do because of so many distractions and pursuits that kind of spread that energy across. We have a closing tradition on this podcast. I know, I like it, I like it. It's interesting.

I've never done this before. I don't usually tell people who the person's been, the question's been left by, but I know you're a Manchester United fan. Huge. That's all I'm going to say. Huge. The question left for you yeah is is there a time in your childhood when you could look back and think this is the reason why i'm sitting here today plus why it's beautiful

i'd have to say it's um i'd have to say it's getting to meet the monks because and i was 18 when i first met a monk which i talk about in think like a monk and um i just don't think i've ever visibly experienced or emotionally experienced humility and compassion like i say these words and we use them as a society but i think there's very few people in the world that you could actually say display boundless compassion and extreme humility and sincere empathy. And I'm really lucky because I saw that all in real life. Like I've seen it. Why does that make you emotional?

I can see it in your face because it's i i feel i feel that that's the biggest lack in the world today that the reason why we struggle with living these ideas is because we don't have enough role models that live these we don't have people that we could point to in our immediate accessible life that we would say are boundlessly compassionate or that we as we would say are extremely empathetic or that we would say are genuinely humble to the core like that's so rare and i think if i hadn't experienced it i wouldn't believe it was possible to achieve it and to access it and for us to see the benefits of it. But because I got to do that at 18 and continue to do so now when I spend time with those individuals, I really believe in the greatness and the genuineness of humanity.

Like, I believe it's there. Like, I believe that that spark exists within each and every single person who's listening and i believe that it fully is who we truly are deepest in our spirit that's who we are and i just want to be able to help people uncover that part of themselves and i'm here because i've seen it and i'm here because i've experienced it i'm here because i've lived with it and so even if i don't have it to that capacity i know it exists and i would like other people to have access to it and so that's why i'm here today that's a brilliant question well done ria or whoever it is or cristiano ronaldo if you did

that one that i would i would flip out former manchester you know yeah yeah christian is dead to me yeah um jay thank you thank you once again every time we spend time together it's such an honor and a privilege um this time it's funny because i never think we can it's always there's always a risk that we might not be able to top it per se do you know what i mean have that but it's not really about that is it it's about like it's exactly what this is which is the variety it's the depth it's the honesty it's the openness which i feel like i can only do with someone like you who is willing to reciprocate but also um has done a lot of work to kind of find those answers so thank you for always for doing this thank you for breaking your your little month-long um sort of time out your holiday to come and do this as well means a lot to me um thank you for writing a great

book on a topic your book is so good that i've decided not to write one on this topic i think we talked about this in la when we went for lunch like it's such a great book and it's so hard to write interesting unique things on a topic like love which has been written a lot about um but you've managed to do that with this book i've read things in this book that i've never heard before that allowed me to understand something that i'm that i've been struggling with or struggled to articulate from a brand new perspective and also i have to say i'm exceptionally excited to come and see your world tour which is on sale now i'm gonna come me and my partner are gonna to come and watch it in London. Yeah. Extremely excited. I'm just generally more excited to see what you do live.

Because I think there's huge, huge potential in your message delivered in that medium on stage. I know you've done lots of live things before, but I'm particularly excited by this. And I implore everybody to come and join me on the tour. Because I know if you do it, then it's going to be significant, important and valuable. So I'm super excited to come watch you on the tour um everyone can go buy tickets now and the book is necessary so if anyone's looking if anyone's had any struggles with some of the topics we've discussed today all of them are explained in more detail in this wonderful book which really is another pioneering book of our time and i say that on the back of it i'm actually so happy i'm on the back of it. I'm like, that's amazing. So everybody go check out the book.

Jay, thank you. Stephen, thank you so much, man. And I do want to say this and I do mean it. And I messaged you, can't remember, maybe it was a week ago or whatever. And I said to you, like, let's just have the conversation that we can have. Like, I don't need you to, you know, I don't want to have a conversation that ever with you or with anyone but especially with someone that I know and I feel comfortable with and I had no idea where today was going to go and I honestly like these are probably things we would have talked about if there weren't microphones and so I think that and and I do feel I definitely feel like I was because of our relationship and as

and as our relationship is weird too, but, you know, in the sense of how open I do feel with you sometimes, but I would say that in my eyes, I feel we did something different to last time in an evolved version where there was even more vulnerability from me because of our relationship. And I think that that that's you know i hope i hope everyone who's listening like receives that in that i i was that open because i was with you and there was someone that i feel trusted by it's also for someone that i feel uh understands me even though we haven't spent the time together understands me in a different way and sees me and hears me differently and so i can allow myself to be that vulnerable. Huge compliment.

Thank you, Jay. Thank you, man. Appreciate you, bro. Thank you so much. See you again soon. Absolutely, man. Bye.