THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Become Wealthy In Love w/ Humble the Poet

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

“The walls we put up to protect ourselves often turn into prisons instead…”This week, I’m genuinely excited to share with you the thoughts of a man I’ve wanted to talk to for a long time. He is KANWER SINGH, but those of you who are familiar with his work know him as HUMBLE THE POET.Humble is a modern-day RENAISSANCE MAN who has gained a large following as a spoken word performer, author, hip-hop artist, speaker, and designer. His work is embodied in an ongoing message of LOVE, and that’s what we’re going to focus on in this week’s episode, including excerpts from Humble’s new book, “HOW TO BE LOVE(D).”Our goal is to help you gain greater capacity to GIVE AND RECEIVE LOVE as we explore…👉🏽 how to increase your ability to LOVE👉🏽 How to use NEGATIVE EMOTIONS to HEAL👉🏽 The difference between BIG love and SMALL love👉🏽 How to overcome your addiction to APPROVAL👉🏽 How LOVE is the ULTIMATE emotion and ACTIONLOVE is UNIVERSAL. LOVE means EVERYTHING.But it’s not always easy to LOVE YOURSELF OR OTHERS the right way.Listen to HUMBLE’S WISDOM, and you’ll find a greater capacity to LOVE and enrich your SOUL.

This is the Ed Milach Show. Welcome back everybody. Well, let's talk about love today. Let's talk about a little love. I'm so excited for today. So many people knew that this man was coming on and they're like, ask him this, ask him that, ask him this. I'll try to get the questions in for you guys, all right?

But I got a lot of my own too. So Hummel the poet is with me here today, otherwise Noah's can worse saying, but he said, if I said his name correctly, which I think I did, that I've worked too hard to prepare for the interview. So we're gonna call him Hummel. Hummel the poets here today.

Our mutual friend, Lewis Hals, was just with us, and he said, not only is he a poet, but his life is poetry. So I can't wait to ask him a bunch of questions about the topic of love. He's got a book out called How to Be Love, Duh, both individually and the plural. Simple truths for going easier on yourself,

embracing imperfection and loving your way to a better life. Man, do I need to know more about this? So humble to poet. Welcome, brother. Thank you so much for having me. Your work is so good. I appreciate it. And what I love about the way you wrote this book

is it's a bunch of very short, easy to understand chapters. So you can move through the book. If you want to read part of it right now, put it down for a day, you can pick it back up. Yeah. Did you do that intentionally? I did. I did.

So I was an elementary school teacher before all of this. And the big word is accommodation, how to make things easier for everybody. So the way I write my books is you don't have to read them in order. You can just open up to any page and you'll find something you connect with. And for me as an artist is like the challenges, can I make it so you can open it up anywhere, find something you dig. But if you go end to end, is there also a thread that connects it? So it's a lot of really a lot of really fun challenges for me to kind of make it all happen. But yeah, I understand I look to get the idea across you, we need a couple of pages and we can explore those pages. And what I'm trying to do is to get people to start a journey. I'm not here to have all the answers. I'm just a kid

at the front of the class sharing everything that he's learning while he's taking this. Well actually, it's funny. You say that because the first chapter of the book is Love is a path not a destination. Yeah. Yeah. What the heck does that mean? I think so often we think that there's like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow And we don't realize that the pot of gold is the rainbow You know, it's not about, because we watch movies, and there's always a happily ever after. And we don't know what the day after, there happily ever after is. But our lives move in cycles.

We have, you know, maybe not in LA, but we have four seasons. It's a little circular. And I think it's just really important to understand that, that it's not about what the work gets you. It's who you become doing all this work. We become on this journey. And again, different cultures believe in different things,

but this idea that there's something at the end waiting for us really has us always, not appreciating where we are. So it's really about climbing a mountain, not worrying about getting to the top and enjoying the view every step of the way. Yeah, that sounds good, but man, even me in my life, I've struggled with that.

Like, I've struggled with enjoying right now, because I'm looking so forward to the next thing that I've got. And you, when you meet you, like, there's a tranquility. That's a word that I would use to describe you. A tranquility about you. And I think like the topic of love itself, Lewis and I were just talking. And one of the things that we both acknowledged about ourselves is our

the work we're doing on allowing ourselves to feel loved. I'm pretty good at giving love, but receiving it. And your work's profound because it's not, it explores the loving relationships with other people and the one you have with yourself. How do you think the one you have with yourself affects the one you have with other people? I think the one the one that we have with ourselves is the only one and our relationships with everybody else and every other thing is just a mirror of that of that relationship. You know, like as you're talking about this challenge to receive love, I think a lot of us, especially men, were kind of subtly signal to put up these walls to protect ourselves. You're not realizing that these walls were prisons. You know, and we were blocking a lot of love and the pathways of love, to realize love,

it wasn't coming in because these walls were preventing us from being vulnerable. Vulnerability is the number one thing you need to create a connection. For me and you to become closer and closer friends is going to require us to get more and more vulnerable with each other. Lewis mentioning us going to Poland, we suffered together and we got closer. Had we gone to an all inclusive resort trip to Hawaii, we wouldn't have bonded the same way. You know, we bonded off of sharing our fears, sharing our insecurities, sharing tears together

on that trip. And we put up so many walls because we're afraid of being exposed. You have afraid of that. And again, it's not zero and a hundred. You don't have to go and start sharing your deepest, darkest secrets with somebody. What I learned was have two vulnerable stories in your pocket that you can share with a complete stranger that would not scare them away.

Give me an example of that. So one of mine is my relationship with my puppy. So I had a German shepherd for 11 years who lived out his life and we had to make the decision to put him to sleep because his hips gave away, so he couldn't walk. And after that, I never wanted to own a dog again, you know, to watch your child, you know, pass away in your arms. It broke my heart. So I would just be everybody else's backseat dog owner without having one myself until somebody, you know, during

the pandemic said, Hey, somebody had ordered this puppy through a breeder and they thought it was going to turn out red or brown and it came out black. They don't want it. Yeah, do you want this puppy? And I was like, dog racism, that's so weird. But also, I plan on moving to this. I lived in Toronto in Canada. And I was like, I'm moving to the States.

I can't have a puppy. You know, a few shots at tequila later. I was like, I need the puppy. You know, I need the puppy. Give me the puppy. And even then, after I signed up for the puppy, I saw that the puppy was just born that day. That's still way two months.

And I got this beautiful puppy and you know, she took the plane ride over here with me and she's been living her beautiful girl LA life and it's been amazing. And during the pandemic, you drop your dog off at the vet at the front door. They don't let you win. Right.

And we're the groomer same thing. Everything. Yeah. And then, you know, as everything subsided, I went to a vet in studio city and I went inside and I saw the metal table and I instantly had an emotional reaction because I hadn't seen that since I put my previous doctor's sleep. And I didn't realize how much it emotionally, you know,

get me jarring. So that is, you know, and so it helps me realize how much of an emotional journey I've had, owning animals and also realizing that if everything works out the way I suppose to, I will always outlive them, you know, because even with this new puppy she's a smaller breed, but that's still max 15 years. So that's an example of me being vulnerable, and I can tell that to a stranger without being worried that's going to scare them away. No, it actually already makes me feel more connected to you, and like you more too.

And it also gives you an opportunity to be vulnerable with things. to scare them away. No, it actually already makes me feel more connected to you, and like you more to. And it also gives you an opportunity to be vulnerable with things. Exactly right. And I think that's the thing we all learn, whether we pay attention to or not, is when we're authentically vulnerable with other people, they generally don't judge us, and they see that as an opportunity for them to feel safe enough to be vulnerable with us, you know, and I think that's the important part. Bro, I love you because I have to tell you something. I love you too, man. I'm not graded a lot of things.

I'm really not. That is something I'm pretty darn good at. It's being vulnerable, especially as I've gotten older. And I have found that that's been the pathway in my life to having other people open up to me, and to connect me with them. Whereas I used to have the prison you described, whereas I just need to let you know how great I am,

how perfect I am, and not show any of those weaknesses or vulnerabilities or anything actually even real. The other thing I made me think of when you're telling the story about when you lost your dog, the German Shepherd, that you were like, I'm not gonna have another one again. That's how a lot of people have felt about having another loving relationship. And I coach so many people, I'm so blessed to coach so many people that have achieved,

you know, certain levels of financial success or impact. But I have to tell you, one of the three lines is if they've been in what they thought was a loving relationship and it ended in a way that disappointed them or hurt them. There's a lot of people even right now listening to this that are like, and I'm not doing that again. I'm not risking the pain. I'm not risking the pain. I'm not risking the hurt again, the disappointment again

in my life. I'll just sort of put those walls up myself, male or female. And I'm gonna live in this sort of protected place. I might date, I might get a little physical action in my life, but I am not letting someone back in to my deepest, you know deepest emotions and feelings. Do you see that? And what would you say to somebody who's thinking that?

I mean, I see that. I live that. You know, I'm, listen, I, I, when you live that right now, we all live that. Listen, I'm not here to pretend that I've solved all my problems around love. And, you know, now by the book, and you'll be perfect like me.

No, that's not this. I'm on my journey just like you guys. This is a journey of awareness and it's being aware of your own patterns. And I definitely have protective mechanisms up, whether I'm aware of them or not. And I think the big thing that I've realized is, I think this is a 50 cent quote about,

the kid, it's the kid that avoids the fight at school that ends up with the black eye. And I think it's the same thing. A lot of the things that we think we're protecting ourselves from, we're inviting them. You don't want to say anything to not start a conflict with your partner,

but then the resentment grows and the conflict happens eventually. It blows up anyways. You don't want to express your needs because you don't want to get rejected. But then not expressing your needs means your needs are already not being met. So what I realized with me is every time I did put up those walls

because I didn't want to be disappointed, you know, it would lead to further disappointment. I was just sabotaging myself. It's almost like you get a flat tire and you slash the other three. You know, it doesn't take you where you need to be. And I think the other part that's really important with all of that is negative emotions like pain. These aren't the enemy. These are messages. Pain can be telling you, hey, this isn't a person you need to be around. It can also be telling you, take your hand off that hot stove.

Pain is a message, it's a gift. Anxiety is a message, it's a gift. The challenges we have when we try to suppress the pain, suppress the anxiety. Negative emotions, you know, if humans, there's an emotion wheel, you can Google emotion wheel for humans. The only positive emotions there are happiness and surprise and surprise can go either way as positive or negative. Every other emotion would be considered negative, but that's what keeps us alive.

You don't learn when you're happy. You don't survive when you're happy. You don't survive when you're happy. It's the emotions that we consider negative that make us learn, make us grow, make us unlock our potential. You go to the gym, an easy day at the gym would not be considered a successful day at the gym. You're right. We require pain and as a chapter in the books, the says love is sitting with your pain. It does. you know. I, as a guy, when my partner or my past partner would express her pain to me a complaint, it would trigger my, I'll be a fixer. Let me fix it. Let me fix it.

Very masculine male thing to do, isn't it? And I thought for a long time, because you know, there's a lot of pop culture TV shows who kind of create these kind of labels. The man is the fixer, the woman is the venter. But what I realized was, no, I'm not fixing because I care to fix it. I'm trying to fix it because she's triggering my pain. And I want to stop feeling my pain.

Because the way that I try to fix it is if I can't give her an actual pragmatic solution, then I may try to downplay the pain and be like, well, you know, other people have it worse, or I might be like, that's not even really a problem. But the real goal is to make my pain go away because she's triggering it. She's reminding me of my pain. And what I learned way too late in life is empathy is sitting in the pain with that person.

If you express pain to me, I don't need to solve it. I need to feel my pain. Now let's just sit together and be in that pain and we can hug it out, cry it out and build a deeper connection that way. Oh, yeah. And it's not something that, again, as you, and you even use the term, we're talking about vulnerability,

we use that term weakness, showing people my weaknesses, but vulnerability is a strength. It's just we've been signaled maybe from those who raised us, maybe from a society that term weakness, showing people my weaknesses, but vulnerability is a strength. It's just we've been signaled maybe from those who raised us, maybe from a society that raised us, that vulnerability is somehow a weakness because it's what will allow people to harm you. As if it's like, we have vulnerable parts of our body, protect them if you're getting a fight.

But your vulnerability in terms of your story, your vulnerability in terms of your fears, there are people gonna try to exploit those because those are people in pain themselves. Oh boy. But in general, it's what creates that connection with other people and it's realizing that, hey, I don't want to feel any pain even though that is the only direction that growth exists. If you want to go from a bad place to a better place, you have to go through a worse place.

And it's no different than pushing yourself in the gym. It's got to kind of suck. And that's the only way that I'm going to grow from this. And it's the same thing. We're sitting in a room by yourself with your thoughts, letting the anxiety build up, not having a phone, not having any distractions, and just feeling yourself being super uncomfortable, because you're so used to dopamine and rewards and all of a sudden

being like, oh my god, I don't want to sit with my own thoughts. So what we, and I feel lonely and I feel scared sitting through that and realizing that we're not our thoughts, we're not our feelings. We are what's experiencing these thoughts. We are what's experiencing these feelings. You are not happy, you are not sad, You are feeling happy. You are feeling sad. And in your entire life, everything in emotion you've ever felt eventually faded away. Good or bad. And it's just that reminder of like this is all going, this is all temporary

on different levels. And running towards it instead of doing everything we can to avoid it is the recipe to actually realize more love because the love is always there. What we have to do is create pathways for the love to flow. You know me and you right now getting to know each other as we're building our bridge for love to flow between us. Now we're slowly paving it. Now if we have a conflict and we just through a piece of rubble in between and that's blocking the flow

and then we have to have a conversation to clear that. So my belief with love is it's always there. And what we're doing is establishing pathways with ourselves and other people and it's the same, same rules. I had to be, if I wanted to be closer to you I had to be vulnerable with you. I wanted to be closer to myself. I had to be vulnerable with myself. How can I you I had to be vulnerable with you I want to be closer to myself at to be vulnerable with myself

How can I be vulnerable with myself? Well, I can journal and I can write all my thoughts out Prayer I think prayer is an amazing irrespective of your religious beliefs prayer is an authentic moment to express what you Actually want and desire and to express what you actually are grateful for Because those are the times that you're not doing it for anybody else, but yourself. And those are whoever you are praying to, that will allow you to be more deeply vulnerable with yourself, dancing, dancing with yourself, feel your body. Just dance all by yourself, feel how your body moves. You're becoming more intimate with yourself, intimacy is a level of vulnerability.

You can hug yourself. It's called self-havening. You know, these are examples If you go on my Instagram right now one of my pinned videos is me and my underwear looking in the mirror And the reason I made that is because self-love is as I said it's Embracing imperfections, you know, I'm not 10% body fat and I went there in my underwear and I said look, I'm looking at my body with gratitude I've always looked at my body like most of us have been oh, I could I could improve that Oh, I can trim down over there. Oh, I wish my shoulders were bigger Oh, I wish you know and women is probably even more in terms of expectations around their body Why do you think by the way? I want to acknowledge something with you. That was one of the most riveting experiences for me on the show ever All everything you just threw out there like I appreciate them like I mean it like you tell by my face probably

Want to I want to jump in on that and I'm gonna come back like I'm serious. That was really a beautiful expression right there Why can't you do both? Why is that always a choice in our space of a, I neither just really love myself, or I have to fix everything? Why can't I actually love myself and still go, but I wanna be 10% body fat? What's, that's not a bad thing, right? And I'm not disagreeing with you.

I think what we need to do is we need to realize that in life we're always moving. We're always moving. So you're either growing or you're shaking. So what I say is in the book, I said, love is progress, not perfect. I love that part of the book. Yeah.

So there needs to be progress. You know, and as I said, like you're climbing the hill, right, not promising yourself immaculate happiness when you hit the top, you're enjoying every step of the way. And I think a really good analogy for that would be video games. When you play a video game, let's say you dropped $80 in a brand new video game, you're not trying to rush to the end.

You're trying to soak in every moment, every challenge, everything. It's really good. And that's how I view life. You know, it's, you know, as I said, going, I have a cousin who got a really good shape. And I was like, what program are you on? He's like, I just started working out because I felt sad and I go to the gym when I'm sad.

And you know, and I'm like, well, you must have been very sad because you look great. And I think, you know, working out to feel good will also give you the consequences of, of the body or what have you. You'll start to realize, hey, oh man, if I have a baking double cheeseburger before my workout versus a salad or something, I can feel the difference. So you're naturally making adjustments to your diet to feel good. Feeling good is always more important than looking good. You so, you're so right.

You don't think I just realized about myself as you were talking. This is for the men. They're like, oh boy, we're talking about love, you know, I know, I know some of my male friends even, right? Man, you better be listening right now. You better still be here, because you just said something a few minutes ago that I need to go back to. I need to do a much better job of allowing others to sit for me to sit and pain with them. And myself, my inclination is to constantly fix it. Put it away and you're a billion percent right if I'm being honest. It's because it reminds me of experiencing my own pain. You're a million percent right and I do that all

the time. I'm constantly trying to fix things. Oh, I got the answer for that. Oh, this is what you got to do. Oh, we can put that away. And just sitting in that pain by the way, the few times in my life and it is few that I've given myself the gift of that experience, spend transformative, spend wonderful. It's actually a gift you could give yourself. And as you were talking, I was talking to myself, going, man, I've really robbed that gift of not others necessarily, but also myself of sitting in it and come into a deeper level of understanding about myself. And I really want to thank you for that.

Like that's a, the concept of love, the way you describe it is a very broad spectrum. But I also like that you narrowed it down at the beginning to say that that's really the only type is the one that we have with ourselves, that relationship. And I'm not gonna go through the whole book because I want people to get the book. And by the way, it is so good

and I'm not exaggerating this. When I was preparing for this interview. This could easily be just from this book, no exaggeration, a 10 hour interview, because I, there are so many things in the book that I think would make an impact for different people at different times in their life. But when you talked about the different types of love, you actually, the second chapter, it's like crap, we're already there. Big L love versus small L love.

You got to tell him about this. Yeah, and shout out to Aubrey Marcus. This was inspired through my conversations with him. You know, another beautiful, transparent soul. This is obviously great. He just lays it all out. And I think the way he put it is, it's kind of pleasure versus peace. I think Big Al love is peace. It's what we actually strive for. Big Al,

small love is like these pleasures. It's the validation, the attention. It's the power, control, clout. All of these things that kind of feel like love, you know, like the fast food versions of love and they're very addictive and we do stuff for that because but the actual urge that we have is for this piece. And I think we now, especially in the speed of the society that we live in now, we're chasing so much pleasure just to bring us back to zero. We're not even chasing pleasure to feel good. We're chasing pleasure to feel less bad. And if we focus on the peace and the peace doesn't, and again,

you know, the subtitle of the book is going easy on yourself. There's nothing wrong for us for believing in these ideas of like grand gestures, trips to Paris, the big spark. All of these things are being taught to us through media because that makes entertaining stories. Healthy relationships would not make for great TV. Healthy husband and wife would be an extremely peaceful, uneventful relationship with not a lot of drama. You know, there's not a cat and mouse game happening. There's not a lot of ups and downs.

That wouldn't make for great TV. So we naturally, when we watch television, we want that. We want the Ross and Rachel. If we want the Bobby Whitney, we want all of these things, but there are not examples of healthy love. That's examples of just high highs and low lows.

And it's something for us to recognize, we're like, okay, I've been taught this. I've been taught to look for this spark. But like now there's science supporting this idea that your spark is actually, that's been taught this. I've been taught to look for this spark. But like now they're saying supporting this idea that your spark is actually, that's a trauma trigger. You know, we're attracted to people that remind us of the people that raised us who were our first models of love.

And those people, if they were your parents or anybody else, they were flawed human beings. And that's okay that they were. But when you're 9, 10, you have a developing brain and you look at everything in terms of black and white, and you have a center of the universe mentality as kids will, you'll internalize everything they say and do about you as gospel. So if dad came home, had a bad day at work, and you tried to say something to him, he snapped

at you, you think it's your fault. Because you don't have that external context. You know, it's gonna take decades for you to start understanding context. And even now we forget that, that people are carrying their own baggage. And then you're gonna be like, okay, well, I expressed a need, he snapped on me. I shouldn't express needs anymore.

And also, someone's gonna, you know, it's just in a stagia there. You know, it's like I eat some of my favorite childhood cereals now and they're, they're not healthy from it, it tastes like childhood, right? It's the same thing with love. So it's like, you know, you might be attracted to someone that reminds you of your father or your mother because that was your first exposure to love, even if it was a dysfunctional relationship.

Yes. So instead of saying like, oh, just, you know, there's a great book called Attach where the quote is, we don't question, we're not here to refute the idea of a soulmate, we're just here to say, you probably passed on your soulmate because you thought they were boring. It's too easy. It's too easy.

It's no trigger. It's no trigger. They text back at a responsible time. You know, they don't make it hard. They validate me. This feels gross because I always believe I had to earn love. Yeah. We have decided to earn love and you don't have to earn love

Love isn't something that you can earn everybody you love in your life Doesn't have to do anything to earn your love. Oh my gosh. You're so profoundly right You know and you're so right about this fast food pleasure thing Yeah, and it is not to feel good, it's to feel less bad. Oh my gosh, is that true. Do you know how many friends of mine I thought of when you just said that? Like, oh my gosh, I'm like,

I'm thinking in the middle of the year, I'm watching Sasha back there, my producer like, your stuff's so good dude. Like, one of the jobs of the producer during a show is to be thinking about, that would be a good clip. But she's back there constantly writing right now, making those like everything because I got to tell you like I thought of so many people and that's not that I don't think of myself in that sense a lot of the things You say really apply to me, but my gosh man that is absolutely one trillion percent right and please understand

I'm still leaving fast. Yeah, please understand like I have I have created my list of you know Non-negotiables when it comes to women I date But then when she shows up and she's just extremely beautiful. I forget my list Yeah, and then it burns me two weeks later Yeah, and I just I'm like okay, well you knew that was gonna happen Yeah, so you we're not gonna hold any space for you to feel sorry for yourself Right it's same as when you know you're gonna eat that double cheeseburger. You know what it means but man it feels good.

Exactly. So I'm not immune to this. I'm in the same boat as you guys. What I'm just doing is I'm learning and I'm on this journey with everybody else. And I just think that's important to do. Dude, and one thing that you say in the book about judgment and I'm just going to let it apply to ourselves but like man if I could go back and save me a bunch of pain in my life go back to the 25 year old me I want to say brother is like give yourself a break man quit judging yourself all the time I'm so I know so many of you're this way too. I judge other people, which is a terrible thing to do. We all do it.

Man, the worst judgment I reserve for me. And it becomes a pattern in life. And for me, I really believe that self-judgment has been an impediment, if not a complete block, to believing I'm worth being loved. Or maybe I feel like I'm worth being loved, or maybe I feel like I'm worth being loved, but I'm not worth experiencing the feeling of it almost. Like intuitively intellectually,

I'm like, I'm a good person. I treat other people really well. So I think from that perspective, I'm like, maybe I should be, but I don't let myself feel it. Even when people are really loving on me, I don't feel it. If your book is upside down, it can rain.

You're not catching anything. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the one idea I want to challenge, and I think, you know, right now, it's really popular to say people, to people you're worthy, you're enough. Yeah. When I'm going to go ahead and say, there's people, there's no measurement of worthiness or enoughness for a person.

The love that I'm talking about is going, is will love things that are even considered unlovable, you know, there is no qualification for love. And the other thing I think is really important is this idea of thoughts in our head. Very rarely are we actually creating thoughts. And most often is we have thoughts given to us, you know. Somebody makes a comment, you know, say, oh, you know, let's say I make a sarcastic comment about your shirt.

Oh, that's a cool shirt. And you're like, what does he mean by that? And then all of a sudden, eventually, it might internalize, we're starting sounding like you. And now you tell yourself that I don't like the shirt anymore. And we've had, you know, parents that I've said things to us, and then that slowly transitions into our voice. And the quote in the book is, we

judge because we're insecure and we're insecure because we judge. And what it is, it's this idea that we are both prisoners and guards to this game, you know, because I was judged, I have to judge you. And that creates this cycle of insecurity. And now you're going to place those judgments on other people as well, not realizing that we don't know what people see when they see us. You know, we see ourselves every day. We're hyperjudgmental. We're hypercritical of it. And we're not. I just saw someone on Instagram and walk up to somebody and say,

what do you rate yourself out of 10? And they'll be like, a six. Then you take a picture, walks up somebody else, what do you rate this person out of 10? Ooh, that's a 10. And then it'll ask them, and every 10, we always rate ourselves lower. And then we also vilify people who have done the work to pass through that and are very confident. Because they're, we call them cocky. Oh, they think they're better than everybody. And confidence isn't thinking you're better than people. Confidence is just not feeling below other people. Not feeling this need to prove yourself to other people.

And it's a really interesting idea because you start to think, okay, well, these, I'm starting to realize that these ideas aren't serving me, but now I see that these ideas are being pushed on me everywhere. And it's like, well, why would I be made to feel ugly? Well, so they can sell me stuff to make me feel pretty. Because if I felt comfortable in my own skin, I don't want pair of shoes,

two pair of jeans, two pairs of shirts and I look like a Simpson's character and wear the same stuff every day and be cool with it. But they got me convinced that I need a thousand dollars shirt. I need to drive something super nice. I need to do all of these things. I need to look the part more than feel the part and does an entire economy based off of that. Okay, I got to go to there with you. Yeah. Of all your work, the part that resonated the most with me is where you're heading.

And I want to say it the way you say it and then I want you to spit some truth on this. Okay. I most of my life confused or conflated approval from people with love. And I know why it's exactly what you described. A lot of it is these patterns of the people that raised us. So I got the feeling like my dad was loving me. If he approved of something I was doing,

dad, I got a 90 on my spelling test. Dad, I had a home run in baseball. You did? And I got attention from him or approval from him. And I conflated. And I think the the great you say it in the book are addiction to approval denies us love. Everyone listen really closely because even in your intimate relationships, your friendships, all the way to the extension of strangers on your social media.

Are you conflating these two things? Are you confusing them? And I got to tell you, the vast majority of my life, maybe up until the last 10 years, and maybe even still a little bit now, I confuse those things. And I think approval and attention can be love. And this causes people in all areas of their life to behave in ways that are outside their integrity, to do things that they'd be ashamed of doing, to things they regret doing in their life,

and for me, of all the work in the book, and there's so much in it that we're still gonna get into this part really hit home, and I have a feeling at will with everybody, so go ahead. Yeah, I think, again, in the spirit of going easy on ourselves, I think we're all addicted to approval, and I think it's a survival mechanism. I think we all grew up in as humans for tens of thousands of years, we were in much smaller communities. Yeah. You know, we weren't in these large cities, we were in

small communities, maybe a hundred people. And gaining approval in that community meant survival. You had to play by the rules and you had to understand yourself in relation to everybody else in terms of the hierarchy in terms of everything. And it was super important to understand that. We were running impacts. And if you weren't contributing, you're gonna get thrown out. And if you got thrown out, you're probably died.

So being rejected, being left out, actually meant death. Now being rejected, being left out feels like death, FOMO, asking a girl for a phone number, get in turn. Now it feels like it because this is still in our, this is still software that we have. That's not going to get up. It takes hundreds of thousands of years for our software internally to change. So these are ancient fears that serve the purpose and no longer serve a purpose. So the first thing I want to say is, don't try to overcome your addiction for

approval because it's hardwired into us and it kept us alive for a long time. It's no longer relevant. I believe the best thing we can do is be aware of it and work with it. Once you become, you know, once we became aware of gravity, we learn how to fly. So I look at it from that standpoint. And also look at our society. Growing up, who was the coolest kid in middle school, you know, that was an opinion.

Now they can count followers, they can count likes, they can, they can, Steve, they got a blue check mark, they can read the, you know, now everything is a metric. You know, so your approval has metrics aside of it. So now you're subtly being told, like, oh, well, that photo of me at Disneyland got this much approval, So your approval has metrics aside of it. So now you're subtly being told, all while that photo of me at Disneyland got this much approval, but that photo of me and my bathing suit got this much approval,

over that photo of me with that controversial opinion about that cultural issue got this much approval. So I'm gonna start doing more of that. And it might be a subconscious thing. So I think that's really important. But we have to realize though, it is fast food. It's delicious, but it's not nutritious. And what it does is it makes us prioritize being

likable over actually creating ideas of love. It'll make me want you to like me versus me being my authentic self. Yes. So we're not creating a pathway of love. I can be whoever you want me to be right now. Who do you need me to be? And at the same time, it might also be like,

okay, then I'm not going to establish boundaries. I'm gonna say yes when I mean no, which in itself is gonna eventually lead to resentment. There's no love when resentment's in the room. Resentment will suck at all the oxygen out of the room from love, and it's a really important thing to understand. Let's not be martyrs.

Let's not put our needs in the back seat to keep everybody else happy and think we're doing something honorable. We're not, we're not of any value to people if our needs aren't being met. It's not selfish to put yourself first. It's selfish to expect other people to put you first and it's selfish for other people to expect you to put them first. You have to take care of yourself to be available to take care and be a value and of service

to anybody else. So I think this is really important to understand that being likable, doing all of this, it seems like the right way to kind of keep the piece, but it's not sustainable. The longer you do it, you eventually crack. And that is where it is. And then it starts to fracture your relationships. Sure does. And boundaries isn't telling somebody what they can and can't do.

Boundaries are simply saying, listen, this is who I am. These are my expectations. Not my expectations. These are my standards of what I require to invest in other people, invest my time, my energy, my attention, my focus, my love. This is what's required. You can be whoever you want to be. I'm not expecting you to be anything.

But if it doesn't live up to these standards, then I can't make an investment. You just corrected that expectations word because you do it in the book too. And I want to stay on that for a minute. Yeah, I know your work brother. I appreciate it. I really love it. Well, it means your work means a lot to me because I actually believe this is the ultimate life conversation. I really believe there's no topic more important. I mean, now if you could say, well, no, faith is faith is really about the ultimate love. It's the ultimate eternal love. And so I believe we're talking about the most important thing you could be talking about right now. One of the things you do talk about is

this this issue of having expectations attached to a loving relationship and how it's probably not the right correlation. Yeah, so, you know, the, the under the punch to the gut, you know, it's lying in the book is don't fall in love with potential. Yep. And, and if you really want to fall in love

with potential, fall in love with your own potential, you know, we love this acceptance, accepting somebody for who they are as they are in front of the police. Again, we all want to be making progress and we want the people around us to be making progress and have that, but you have to accept what's in front of you. People don't need to qualify for your love. And again, the people you already love

You know all their imperfections and none of that disqualifies them Perfection isn't required to have a pathway of love history isn't required People who have children meet their child for the first time in a full of love meet their nieces and nephews They meet them for the first time they're full of love nieces and nephews throw up on you There's nothing to to disqualify them from love. True. You know, it's a, it's, it's, there's no reciprocity. You're right. It's a one-sided relationship for a very long time. Doesn't disqualify anybody from love.

It's not transactional. Love is a gift. It's not alone. Love is what you give. And the more you give, the more you serve, the more you realize. As I said, this, to me, I don't, I don't make distinctions with the love. As I said, all we're doing is we're opening pathways with people. People are showing us where love can be. And having expectations of people is by default, you're throwing stuff to block the pathway, you're throwing garbage on

the road and making it harder for that love to flow through, you're throwing rocks in the river and you're slowing down the flow. And shoo, that's good. And that's why, and it's replacing the expectations with intentions. And again, I don't wanna get too new age with it, but it's saying, you know, even when you get involved in a romantic relationship, set intentions. Say, look, this is the direction I wanna head.

You wanna head in this direction with me. I wanna head in a direction that we become physically monogamous. And I'm the only person that you're being intimate with that we are gonna be, we're heading in a direction to get completely transparent with our language with each other. We get to a direction where we realize we're on the same team.

So I may give constructive criticism, but I promise never to give it in public, but please understand that as your partner, I can see blind spots that you don't. And anything I'm telling you is for our benefit. The intentions is for us not to complete each other, but to be too complete individuals, and we can function and serve as pillars,

because two complete pillars can hold more up, and that's gonna be our family, that's gonna be our legacy, that's gonna be our tribe, that's gonna be our community, all of that. Let's set these intentions, and they don't have to be accomplished on day one. And let me also explain my standards today. And these are my standards, so we don't have to do this song and dance a best foot forward

for the first five dates and trying all of these different things. And as I express these, none of these are your stories or my story. And if I have to walk away from this again, I'm not walking away from you. I'm walking away from a version of me that has to exist for this to work. Oh my gosh, brother. What the heck is going on here? It's so... Oh man.

I feel like you're talking to so many people right now. And on that topic, I used to say the love for my children is unconditional. And as I got older, I'm like, actually, all love is unconditional. If it's got conditions on it, it's not love. It's some other performance criteria that you need my approval in order for me to love you. And I used to say, well, you know,

there's nothing like any of you listening right now. How do you know what's pure love? If you have a child, there's nothing they could, any of you listening right now, how do you know what's pure love? If you have a child, there's nothing they could do to disqualify that from you. And in our other relationships, if we make love for that person conditional, we've really blocked the potential for there to be love, and I learned that from looking at your work. Standards is much different than a condition.

A standard is something that we're gonna live by and abide by so that more love flows. Conditions are, if you do this, I'll love you. If you do that, I won't. We've already set that up that you're not going to. And the other biggie, this is a tough one. You write about it in the book. We all have to be guardians of this, I think, which is that envy pulls us away from love and Man loving one self. I'll give you the metaphor for me If I would apply it's easy to go yeah if I envy my partner then we're not gonna love each other or pulls me away from it I actually feel like that on my personal relationship with me If I sort of envy another version of me

Like man if I was like that then I'd love me or I, man, if I was like that, then I'd love me. Or I'm envious. If I had that thing or that relationship or that body or that money, so I'm always envying what I don't have, then I'd love me. It's sort of nonsense, right? I so, you know, the levels to envy, and I think the one positive of envy is that it helps reveal your authentic things that you value. So think about people that you actually envy. They're helping you reveal what matters to you.

You know, I envy that part. Oh, I envy their bot. Okay, I care about a physical appearance, right? I care about the way they set up their career, right? You know, certain things. Because there's certain things about people you don't envy when she's, once you start to see their life on a granular level. But then it can get dark very quickly.

And I think what you said is really important, which is we have to realize that, a, going back to this idea of approval and likeability, a, everybody, including the people, including ourselves, don't have a full view of who we are. You know, we are trying to be aware of who we are, even a person beside us spending every day with us, still has an obstructed view of who we are. And then you start going further and further out and someone like you with a large audience, they're experiencing you base off whatever view

they're provided, and their opinions of you, both positive and negative, are still going to be base off limited information. It's the same thing when we start talking about, And their opinions of you, both positive and negative, are still gonna be based off limited information. It's the same thing when we start talking about, oh, if I had 10% body fat, then everything would be so much better. And it's like, I don't own a crystal ball.

I don't know what else would change in my life because of that journey. And what would be the dream. Right, yeah. And I think the truth is, and I think this is something that all of us, professional dream chasers have realized, is that it does take an enormous amount of unhealthy work

ethic to accomplish something larger than life. You wanna be self-employed and make a decent living, it's a lot of work. You wanna be self-employed and make a comfortable living, a very hot, you're working way harder than most people. If you want to be a professional athlete, you're going to tear your body up. If you want to be a professional chess player,

you're going to tear your brain up. It's way more work than we think, and we are rewarded for making it look easy. Yeah, you're right. So when we see other people that we envy, they are being rewarded for making it look easy. Steph Curry is being rewarded for making those, those logo shots.

He makes it look easy and he celebrates does all this stuff and that adds, you know, to his branding. But there are millions of shots being taken with no camera, with no nothing. And that's where that work is. And that is a question we have to ask ourselves is, well, what are we trading for that? Are we trading time with our kids?

Are we trading time learning, growing? Are we trading time learning, growing? Are we trading time that we could have spent walking through the park, enjoying nature, whatever it may be, getting vitamin D being outside, whatever it could be. And I think it's really important to understand that, which is we don't have a full view of any of this stuff. And we start making our regrets are always about

what happened yesterday. And we always want to go back and turn time and fix them. But we don't know what how things would have changed. So true. And it's the same thing with, we don't have, you know, me being like, oh, I'm gonna come on this show. And if I do XYZ,

then I don't know. You're right, you don't know. I don't know. And you don't know the gift if it didn't work well. It could be there either. Exactly. And I don't know, you know, the series of events that are going to lead

to this in any of that. You know why that's so important, brother? Because I've learned that as I got older, that's why I have reduced my expectations in relationships and even of events. I'm like, this is going to give this my best. Then I let go of it. I let go of outcome and I try to surrender in love, the hour, love the process. And however it goes, if this gets 25 million downloads or 25, something is going to come

from that that I'm going to love in the journey. Maybe it's a lesson and maybe it's a celebration of a great victory, right? But I'm going to love. You know what I like about your work? It's not all like Pauliana. So I want to read something to you that you wrote because it's like there's stuff that you'd stings a little bit too Which I liked you sell self pity is an occasional treat But should not be your default mode and I think one of the things that

may be an obstruction of feeling love Self pity is feeling bad for yourself and self pity Self-pity is feeling bad for yourself. And self-pity feels good because it's familiar. And we can repeat it over and over again. And even in my own case, I could pull the self-pity card in like one second. Man, I can feel bad about something in a second. Like you want me to feel bad?

Now, to feel good about myself, takes a little effort and work to feel bad. Oh, man, I got one for you right now. And I can replay that video. In fact, I can see that video in full HD. That person doing this to me, that situation, that person to, and man, it is easy to repeat the self bit pity pattern in video in our mind.

You're saying you can never have it. It's like an occasional indulgence is what you say. But talk about that. Yeah, definitely. Self pity is the fast food version of building a connection with yourself. Because instantly the moment you're expressing self-pity is you're saying, nobody knows what it feels like to be me.

Right? Nobody knows. Pour me. I'm the first person to get, get dumped. I'm the first person to ever get their heart broken. It's like, I'm gonna ignore the fact that there's a million heartbreak songs out there. They don't know what I've gone through. Because they don't have, you know, and it's fast food.

It's a one night stand with yourself. It's a quick fix, right? It really is this quick fix. And again, there's a deliciousness to it. There's no nutrition to it. And I think the other thing that's really important from a cultural perspective is that people who want power and money know this. And now, if you go on social media, every single community organization,

a group that is identified, now has a narrative on why they are victims. You're right. Every single group, you know, is like, oh, we are an oppressed group, we are an oppressed group. And the thing with this is that I'm not trying to minimize oppression, I'm not trying to minimize the fact

that this world isn't fair. There's no empowerment there. I am most empowered not telling you about the stories of racism I'm experiencing in store, how I get treated at the airport, but there's no empowerment in telling these stories. But talking about my privileges as a man who can walk outside at night

and not worry about his safety, there's empowerment there that I can speak on behalf of people who can't do that. Or my ability to walk upstairs and because I'm not in a wheelchair. And if I use my privilege to speak about that to help people who can't walk upstairs to petition for ramps,

this power when I speak about where I'm privileged. And everybody, no matter how challenging your life is, you're in a position of privilege on some level. And that's where the power is at. But that's a longer journey. It's not as fast as fast food. It's not as convenient. But again, it goes back to fast food. It's quicker, it's cheaper, it's easier. But the longer you have it, it's going to, it's going to, it's real expenses going to show. And it's the same thing with self-pity. And I think, you know, especially we saw that during the pandemic, because a lot of people were isolated and they started ruminating in their own thoughts.

And they started, you know, living in these stories of their own heads. And that really did a number on them in terms of how they were able to interact with other people. And as I said, people who want power, people who want to gain their political career, they're like, oh, they'll grab a group of people and say, look, they're taking away these things from you. But they're doing it to consolidate power or to build a new demographic that they can sell something to and it's done so often. So I don't even, I don't want to hold it against anybody to who has self-pity. I just want you to be aware of it. It's like when you do feel bad for yourself, also,

are you getting that from social media because there are people spreading these stories about the groups that you identify with and why life is in fair for you guys. Because it's true, as I said, there is oppression. There is, you know, the game board is not equal for everybody, but it never has. And our power to fix things in any situation will always come from taking personal responsibility because that's where the power is. Things may not be our fault,

but there's still a responsibility. If I'm driving my car on the street and somebody rear ends me, wasn't my fault, I still gotta go to the auto body shop. I still gotta talk to insurance. My power to make things better comes from me taking responsibility and doing something about it.

It's not about placing blame, it's not about simplifying this. And I think this is a really interesting thing that I've learned as somebody who didn't grow up, who grew up with Eastern philosophy, is starting to have this deeper understanding of what the tree of good and evil was and why it was such a big deal that when they bit

from that apple, they bit from the apple that made them look at the world as everything is good or bad, that judgment. And that took them away from the peace. Whoa, whoa. And realizing, oh, I understand this now. It's not just about saying, okay, you know, things aren't bad, but it's also when we talk about things being good,

because we have negative and positive triggers. If you have an ex-girlfriend, and I introduce you to my friend who has the same name, this is gonna be a, you're gonna like them a little less. It's correlation, yeah, it's a trigger. Yeah, if, you know, if you had a mentor and introduced you to my friend who has the same name. This is going to be a, you're going to like them a little less. There's correlation. Yeah. Yeah. It's a trigger. Yeah. If, you know, if you had a mentor and introduced you to a friend, you're going to like them a little bit more. It's a positive trigger. You're right.

The, both triggers are not serving us. You're right. And by the way, the story we tell ourselves in the belief. So it may be that you're absolutely right that you are at a disadvantage or someone has done harm to you. The question you have to ask yourself is how does this belief serve me? How does the story I'm telling myself about this even if it's true, assuming it's true, serves me. What would I need to believe so that it empowered me? And I think even then you're going to break up. Someone has done you wrong. They've cheated on you. They've broken up with you. That is true, right? Or if cheated on you, they've broken up with you.

That is true, right? Or someone hurt you in a business relationship or you are in a community that is disadvantaged somehow in society, which is absolutely totally true. What would you need to believe about this that it serves you? Someone breaks up with you. A lot of people can form the belief

that everybody cheats on me or nobody's gonna love me. Or I'm not worthy of this. So it's true they broke up with you and you've attached a meaning to it that doesn't serve you What would you need to believe about that situation so that it served you? And that's and that's where I really want to I really believe what I just said is important everybody is attaching telling you asking yourself What story did I tell myself to create a meaning and does that meaning give me power? Or does it reduce my ability to feel more love in my life? And what you're doing is you're saying, instead of judging this is good and bad, let's focus on curiosity. Because what you're doing is asking questions. That's right. Instead of something saying something happens, it's raining outside and then

being like, oh, this is a good day. It is the bad day. You're saying, what do I need? How do I need to see this or interpret this? To benefit me. Brother, your work is so profound. Let me tell you how far it goes. I'll take it to a place. You don't even know it goes. What you just said about this is either good or bad. When it comes to life and decisions and business, when I'm coaching top people, when I say top people,

I mean, people that are leaders. There's no top or, you know, underneath humans. What I mean by that is people that have a responsibility to lead other people when I say this. It's a better way to say it. Oftentimes they're paralyzed by the, I gotta make the right or wrong decision, the good or bad decision.

And if I make the bad decision, I'm gonna ruin this. And I said oftentimes in life, what if both of them worked? What if you did A or you did B and they both could work? What if A or B both could lead to a positive result? What if you're more resilient and resourceful than you believe you are? What if there isn't a good or a bad decision in everything in life, right?

So the reach and scope of what you teach is very big. It's bigger than what you all think when you're listening to him about, okay, yeah, that's true in my loving relationships. It's true in all really everything in life is relational is relationships. Now I'm gonna push you on this one. Someone says to you, I heard you on the Ed Mylet show, blown away. I really want to begin to experience more love. Can you give me something tactical? I could begin to do as a daily practice that would allow me to begin to I could begin to do as a daily practice that would allow me to begin to

feel the love that already exists within me that potentially that I'm not doing. What would be one thing you'd say? Yeah, so I think the the spirit the umbrella spirit I would say is to prioritize self-respect over self-esteem. Okay. Okay. Rest how you what you think about yourself always matters more than what other people think about you. So make choices for that. And so in that context, it's going to be what you would do if you wanted to impress somebody else and a day do that for yourself. Keep your word and your promises to yourself. If you said, but at the same time, be easy on yourself.

You want to wake up earlier, then pick a reasonable time and keep that in honor of that. Keeping your promises, voluntarily putting yourself in difficult situations, please realize, and I think the pandemic helped a lot of people understand this, that life is gonna throw you curve balls, so every day you should be practicing your swing. Oh, so, you know, and every day,

that means voluntarily putting yourself in situations that are uncomfortable, unfamiliar, being around people that you don't agree with, being in situations that you never would want to do. As you know, we talked about me going to Poland, that me going into Iceland, Poland, when I looked it up, it was a hard nose. Like, no way am I doing this.

Let's make sure they don't over-talk about it, because you started with this story, too. You wanted to trip with a bunch of dudes to Poland with Wim Hof. Wim Hof, yeah. And it's freaking freezing. So A, you describe how we're going through that experience with Lewis and some other guys, bondage you with them. But I gotta believe the relationship with yourself must have been miraculous as well. So, the thing I know what it is, I want you

to tell them because here's what this man did, he won't brag, but I'm gonna brag for him. Not only with the suffreezing trip and these guys went into ice baths and all this other stuff, but they're jumping off Waterfalls into I watched the video of this into they're running up a hill in the snow With their shirts off and stuff guys, right then they get to this place and they jump off a waterfall into freezing water It's insane, right and then I'm telling him brother You don't have a lot of meat on your bones. You must have been freezing your ass off. And then he goes, well, yeah, that was kind of the tough part,

but the other tough part is, I can't swim. This man went the pole and ran in the damn ice and snow like all these other dudes, jumps off a waterfall. I don't know that I could ever jump off after my damn life into freezing ass water and he can't freaking swim. So what if that, now that they know the context, because you wouldn't brag on yourself about this, what did that do for you with you?

Because your point of putting yourself in uncomfortable situations, you lived this to the extremes and live it. Yes. What it allowed me to realize fear is a compass, right? Head in the direction of your fears, because that's where you developed is, yeah, it helps you develop that self respect I

Have you know I've gone and sat in a pool on a resort, you know, I can't swim I'll sit on the shadows and I'll sit in the pool. I've never jumped in water I've been to Mexico and people at cliff diving. I can't swim. I've never done any of that And then all of a sudden we're in a we're in a frozen lake where they've cracked open a hole and we're jumping off a Waterfall and and it wasn't and again in no way shape of form and one of the guys actually did injure himself It wasn't a safe decision in any capacity. Yeah, let's do jump like a little spot It was a little spot and now and that little spot you're we're gonna feel your feet It's probably what I want to say about baby seven feet of water

so you're gonna jump off and we're jumping off 30 feet. And the fear knowing that I don't want to do this, realizing who I will be and how I will feel about myself once I did it is what mattered. And as I said, that's that journey right there. And you know, I've now been recently invited to a place in Oregon to sit in darkness for five, six days. Where you just sit in darkness, they provide you your food. You don't see any light, no sounds or anything. And an obry Marcus has done this and he's talked about it before. And again, that instant feeling was, this is a hell-known, this sounds so scary.

All the voices, and I was like, what if something happens to my family while I'm away? What if all of these things? And then realizing that, look, we can address all of that? Have it, you know, and what I realize is we have the fears as Decreachers that we are we're generally kind of mother nature kind of just wants us to eat sleep and procreate and when we try to do anything else There's always a voice trying to talk us out of it. You're trying to tie up your laces to go to the gym You know what? I knees are kind of hurting, maybe we shouldn't go.

Or you know what, the weather doesn't look good, or you know what, we have a meeting right after, we may not have enough time. You know, we try to talk ourselves out of expanding calories if it's not towards eating, sleeping, and procreating. So true, dude. And what I realize is, okay,

my bucket list should be my fear list. It should be things that I'm afraid of, because that's gonna unlock my potential. You should be things that I'm afraid of because that's going to unlock my potential. The more I do things that I don't want to do, it's going to unlock my potential. And sitting in ice, Wim Hof developed a breathing system to really re-regulate your fight or flight. We get very stressed right now over day-to-day things. When you sit in ice that will re-regulate it. So these things won't stress you out no more. Because you just sat in ice and you felt like you were going to die.

And it taught us that a lot of the challenges that we have in life just come from the fact that we're breathing shallow. And his secret is just breathe deeper. More intentionally. He's not selling anything. He's not trying to, there's no secret to this. He's just breathed with more intention. And going through that journey made me realize, okay, I have to lean into more challenges. I have to lean into more difficult things. And realizing that it's not my default to want to.

And we live in a society that's always selling us more and more conveniences. They'll deliver your food to your front door. Why, why cook a meal and do the dishes after? You know, they'll, they'll deliver your liquor. You can pause your TV now and you don't have to even wait for a certain time to watch it. Everything is becoming more and more convenient. But this convenience is killing our resilience. You know, and what I'm learning is the harder it is outside of me, the stronger I become on the inside.

I love that. And that makes me build self-respect. And when I have self-respect, I need less outside validation. I'm worried less about being liked by other people because I have a healthier relationship with myself. And then again, the goal here, and there's a quote in the book that says, the goal here isn't to help you find your soulmate. The goal here is to make you comfortable enough either way, whether you find someone or don't and being okay with that because anybody who can spend time by themselves and view

it as a reward, review it as solitude and not loneliness, I think they're winning at life. And that comes from just establishing this relationship with yourself. And as I said, that relationship with yourself, I said it earlier in the interview, prayer, journaling, dancing with yourself, being intimate with yourself, hugging yourself. Also being, you know, self-love is being your own best friend. Your best friend is your greatest true leader. And also the person is going to kick you in your butt if you need to kick in the butt. You have seen the book called like being your own nurturing parent almost. Yes. greatest cheerleader and also the person's gonna kick you in your butt if you need a kick in the butt.

You've seen the book called like being your own nurturing parent almost. Yes, and I have a chapter about being an nurturing parent because I think that's an important one because we're getting to this point now where we're identifying the gaps in our upbringing. But then we instantly want that self-pity. We want to turn to what parents be like, you messed me up. My father didn't experience electricity until he was 13. He lives in a village in India. How am I gonna have emotion? Why am I gonna judge him on his EQ? His goal, he moved across an ocean to a country

where he didn't speak the language and worked to put food on the table for me. I can't turn around on him and be like, you didn't support me emotionally when I needed it. As an adult, I can support myself emotionally. I have a friend just in Toronto last week. He took his inner child to the dollar store and had a shopping spree.

He goes, we walked in and I told my inner child to get whatever you want. He goes, $20 worth of chocolate bars. Good, dude. And then it began an inner dialogue with himself. And his inner child started asking him questions about how he's conducting himself, about why he walks so fast in the city, why he, you know, and it started revealing traumas that he had. Because it's almost like your child's asking, why are you the way you are? Why? Why do you carry yourself certain ways? Why

are you doing these things? And you're like, well, I mean, that's just how I, I'm supposed to well, I grew up in this neighborhood. We had to be tough. We had to do what, you're like, well, why are you doing it now? And you start having these conversations. And I think we can be, we can do that with ourselves. We really can't. And the more we do it with ourselves, the more we can do it with others. And when we establish that self-respect and that self-love, with ourselves the more we can do it with others. And when we establish that self-respect and that self-love, now, you know, it's kind of like you've definitely seen it in the business world. The most helpful people in the business world are often the most successful because they don't need anything from you. And but they have this need to serve. It's

the same thing with love. Those who are wealthy with self love won't view their love as alone. It's not transactional anymore. I have so much of it, I need to serve, I need to give, and I'm not worried about whether I get it reciprocated. I'm not keeping score. I don't need it to be. That's what a being a parent is. You give it, and you don't need it to be reciprocated. And for many years, it can't be because they're a blob of a human. They're right. They're still figuring out how to just look at you, let alone interact with you. And I think, so for me, the pragmatic stuff, as I said,

it's being more intimate with yourself. I love journaling. I love prayer. I love dancing by yourself, getting used to your body. I think self-havening, I think, is good. I think taking yourself out, identifying what brings you joy and providing that for yourself. I think taking care of yourself, as I said, go to the gym, work out.

Everybody knows you get stronger by tearing the muscles, put yourself in these challenging situations. And then that'll put you in a position to help a friend move a couch. You know, all of these things put you in a position to serve more people and Recognize that this is all internal that requires internal solutions. Yeah, we can't get it from anybody else If we could get it from anybody else We would have gotten it a long time ago and you can see that because we hear all these stories of all these celebrities

All these people with all the money in the world and they're still struggling. And they can afford distractions, but the distractions only last for so long and now they think more and more and more. And we live in a society where I personally believe the most prevalent religion is buy stuff, be happy. That is it, baby. And buy stuff, be happy. Buy this makeup, buy this car, get this watch, get all these things and you will be happy.

But you won't because as George Carlin said, you can't tape sandwiches to your body to get rid of your hunger. It can't be external. It's got to be internal. And your opening pathways to love that already existed. You don't have to find this love. You don't have to earn this love. There's no such thing as worthiness when it comes to a person. There's no such thing as an enoughness. Enoughness applies to your bank account. Enoughness applies to your gas tank. Enoughness applies to your wallet maybe. It applies. Do I have enough to buy this movie ticket? Enough of a person? How do you measure it? Enough of a flower? How do you measure it? You can't. Let's just get that conversation out of there. Love loves everything.

And it's beyond this world of duality, as you said. And it's never just the right choice or the wrong choice. There's a hundred choices in between. Yes, it's not ARB, it's A to Z or A to what have you. And beyond this world of duality, when we beyond the world of this apple of good and evil is love. Love is what's, so what we have to do is clear away

our insecurities, clear away our resentments, clear away these thoughts that have been put into our heads from people who might have meant the best, but didn't know, you know, I was with somebody who hate, who would always ask permission to straighten her hair. She was, oh, my hair is curly, can I straighten? It's gonna take an hour, we're gonna be late, is that okay? I'm like, you look permission to straighten her hair. She was, oh, my hair is curly. Can I straighten it? It's gonna take an hour.

We're gonna be late. That okay? I'm like, you look great with your curly hair. She was like, really? My mom always told me I didn't. And I was like, oh, well, that's a thought in your head. That it feels like a lot easier for you to get rid of that thought than for us to wait an hour for you to straighten out this hair.

Because as a heterosexual male, I'm looking at a lot other things before I'm looking at your hair anyway. I wish they knew that. Yeah, and I tell them, yeah, this is, I'm not looking at your nails or your nails. Or your shoes. Or your shoes. Or your purse.

None of these things. I'm looking at other things three times before I use these things. And I think that's the important thing when it comes to this is, this is an internal stuff. And, you know, I just want that to be importantly, this is what the book is about. And this is why, if you go on my Instagram, you'll see a video of me and my underwear.

That's what I'm promising. I'm trying to promise you're really pushing this video. I'm pushing the video. That's kidding. Well, no, but the reason why is, because for three years, I was writing this book. And I got, you're not married, how are you writing a book about love?

Then I got, you don't have kids you how can you even begin to understand love? So it was almost kind of like you know like if you if you were a business coach I get you're gonna have to show a level of business success. Yeah, so I was like well What do I have to show? What am I actually selling here and what I'm selling is? Going easy on yourself. Yeah embracing your imperfections and experiencing love for a better life. And that's why this video of me and my underwear is so important. This is what I have.

This is my proof of constant. Well, let me tell you something, brother. Your work stands on its own. I appreciate that. I'm telling you right now. I'm going to go watch the video of your underwear now because I'm incredibly curious. But I got to tell you, your work stands on its own. I have had very few conversations that went by this quickly that I wish I could have more of, which I'm going to have with you one on one

and we're going to become great friends. You're works incredible. You're incredible. Thank you. Whatever your dad that he fought so hard to provide for your family that he didn't give you an emotional quotient. Somehow you've acquired it. And your emotional, your EQ level is beyond belief. You are a poet. The way you articulate yourself is poetic, the way you communicate. The depth to how you express your thoughts and the depth of the thoughts themselves is so profound. And I'm like super grateful you exist in the world.

I really appreciate that. It's a fact. It's a fact. found and I'm like super grateful you exist in the world. I really appreciate that. It's a fact. It's a fact. And how to be loved or how to be loved depending on how you read the title of the book. You guys need to go grab this book and I think this is one of these shows. My gosh, if you don't share this episode with somebody, I'm not sure what the heck is going on because this was an extremely great conversation.

Will you come back? whenever you want again? Anytime. I think we got to about 11% of what I wanted to talk about with you today. So I hope we'll have you back, bro. Anytime. Yeah, brother, I love you. I think you're incredible. I think I love you too, brother.

I just love that I get to sit with extraordinary people. And there are just times, man, when I do the show, I'm saying little prayers like thank you, Lord. Thank you. And this is one of those shows. So thank you, brother. Thank you for having me. This has been such an enriching experience. Oh, brother, extremely enriching. All right, everybody. You're welcome. Because you know what just happened. That was darn good. Share this everyone. Go grab his book. Go grab the power of one more. And you know what? Experience a little bit more

love in your life. Because as he's told you, it's there right now. All you gotta do is remove some of these blocks because it's always been there and you can access it anytime you want. God bless you all. Max out your life. This is The End My Let's Show. you