E094 - Your Relationship is Failing: Quick Fixes Before it's Too Late | Diego Perez

29:54But how, how do you figure out like which one you should do? either they should communicate it to you or you can try ask them what they need but as you said they might not even know what they need I think the main thing too is especially when you're going into a serious relationship you want to make sure that you don't have the silent expectation of craving for your partner to read your mind you really gotta get good at being honest with yourself and then trying your best to set up your partner for success so that they're equipped with the information that they need to support your happiness. And also knowing that the culture of your relationship, it's also gonna change over time.

30:34Like the things that work to support each other's happiness last year, aren't necessarily gonna work this year because you're two changing human beings. And I think leaning on communication, I've been thinking a lot about how when we were children and our parents would celebrate Christmas or something, sometimes it felt like, how did my parents know the exact gift to get me? It's because like your parents are like watching you grow up. They know what TV shows you watch. They know what sports you like. So it's not that hard to get you the right gift. And we sort of bring almost like a similar energy because when we're with a partner, it's our partner's on our parent, but we are creating a home together.

31:09And part of us does crave like, you know, just read my mind. Like don't make me tell you everything. But the reality is that they're not gonna be able to read your mind. So just double down on, you know, letting them know. Like this is my emotional history. These are my patterns. This is how, you know, I would like for us to show up for each other. What would your advice be if you are in the early stages of a relationship and you really do care for or maybe even love your partner, but they aren't very self-aware, or maybe they don't have a huge degree of emotional maturity? Like, can that be taught and trained, or are you realistically better off just finding somebody who is more on your level?

31:55Yeah, I think it definitely can be, you know, people have to, they can train themselves, but they have to train themselves. Like you can't coach your partner through that. I think that creates a really, you know, not great power dynamic where one partner thinks they're more self-aware than the other, and they're trying to like push growth upon the person. Like you have to have your own willingness to grow. And I think wherever it is that you start, whether you have zero emotional intelligence or not, I think having that willingness to put in the energy to develop in the qualities that you lack, that's going to make for more harmony in a relationship.

32:34And it's interesting. Some people are really, they feel connected to different forms of therapy. I personally really like meditating. I think it doesn't matter. I think you have to find something that meets you where you're at and help that, keep focusing on that thing and let it cultivate you. But people will start in very different areas. is I remember when my wife and I, when we started our relationship, I mean, there was very little emotional maturity between the two of us. Like I didn't know myself. And because I didn't know myself, it was a struggle to know her well. How old were you at that point?

33:08We were young, 18, 19. You know, we were kids. And I think it was quite a battle to be able to have any harmony because there was no harmony in us as individuals. Yeah, I mean, I've had a fair share of relationships relationships i i'm definitely not perfect how do you now i'm 34 nice so um every time a relationship has sort of been and gone i reflect upon it and i think about what were the good things about it what the bad things about it what are the things which i did wrong maybe could have done better um that's why i kind of i love this journey that i'm on and you know how when a lot of people break up or they finish a relationship they they are very saddened and then you know depressed for a while um i would say i've definitely got better at dealing with that and i will look back and just think about all the good times and what i've learned from that experience and um yeah it's uh it's definitely helped me but i even question myself sometimes now i'm like what are you looking for, Mike.

34:20I feel as though one of my flaws is I keep thinking there's always going to be something better. Oh, man. And I was going to tell you, I've seen similar things happen with friends of mine who, honestly, who are handsome. They're sort of spoiled for choice. And they have a lot of options. And when you have a lot of options, it's really hard to settle down, especially when the craving of the mind pulls you into a particular direction where it's looking for someone who's maybe like 2 % better. And that's really difficult because that falls under the illusion that a relationship can just right off the bat automatically be perfect.

35:02And that's just totally untrue. Because the physical beauty that we have, incredibly finite, so finite. It'll, you know, you can use all the Botox in the world and it's still finite. And the beauty will decay. And I think that's one thing to understand that, like, we have to be okay with building a beautiful relationship with someone. And that it's not just going to happen automatically. I think our apps, all the apps, not just like dating apps, but all our apps in general, like in the phone, they are creating this like sickness in our culture where everything is easier faster and more bliss oriented it's just trying to make your whole life easier and when we bring that type of mentality into like our relationship and we want like a five-star partner the same way we want to go to a five-star restaurant it's just it's just not like that you know we we build each other up when we build our relationship and that takes time for it to you know for for you to be able to get the most beautiful relationship, you have to be okay with there being ups and downs.

36:04And I think about my wife and I, you know, we got together so young and we're older now, like I'm 37, she's 35. And we look at each other and we're starting to see the wrinkles come in, you know, we're getting older. And I'm seeing a couple of gray hairs creep through on the side. Exactly. Right. And I'm like, and to me, I'm like, I can't, I couldn't be happier to be with her. And honestly, I look forward to us being old little people together. Because it's like, you know, the thing that I feel connected to her is much more magnetic and deeper than just what I'm visually seeing. So you'd have to make a conscious decision like, right, let's make an effort to make this relationship.

36:48Does this person feel right? Are they willing to grow? Do they have the humility to learn? And do they understand the concept that I can love you, but I don't necessarily know how to care for you. And I need to be able to be open to learning how to care for you over time. And then you build a beautiful relationship together. Is this all coming from meditation? Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's weird. The meditating has just helped clarify my mind a lot. I don't read self-help. Like I've never read Eckhart Tolle. I don't, never read a Deepak Chopra book. You know, like these, those aren't the things that, like all my, if you look at, I have a lot of books in my house and they're all history books.

37:33Just like World War II, you know, Russian Revolution, like all these types of stuff. But what I learn about life comes directly from honestly letting go of the attachments in my mind by embracing impermanence in the body. There's something about this law of impermanence. when you're able to really feel it in the body, it opens the mind to deeper levels of wisdom and clarity. And I have a conversation, you know, I was talking to a neuroscientist the other day, and we were talking about different aspects of the mind. And it's so interesting how the same understandings that I'm coming to by going away to these longer retreats with my eyes closed, they come to these same understandings with these sort of, you know, bigger macro studies in macro analysis and all this data and whatnot.

38:20And it's great. We're arriving to these conclusions, but using meditating to arrive to these conclusions, it's not just an intellectual understanding. It's totally changing my perception, clarifying it. And I'm not perfect or anything like that. I have a lot of development that I need to do, but I can't deny that it's helping every facet of my life. Yeah, it's fascinating because, I mean, just going on your Instagram, And I'm like, there's all these powerful quotes you're posting. And it's almost like you would, for someone to be writing things like that, they would have to have gone through a whole lot of experience.

39:01You know, whether it be loads of different relationships or just studying different books, different people, but it's like, it's just coming to you. Yeah, the silence, the silence really helps. I mean, honestly, like, just like you, you know, I was also a supply and demand guy when we were both in university studying economics. I went into university, so I grew up really poor. And my thought was, I need to become an investment banker because that's how I can pull my family out of poverty as fast as possible. Luckily, that didn't work, that didn't happen. But when I started meditating, two years after I got out of university, it unlocked this side of creativity that I had never seen before.

39:39Like I never enjoyed writing before that. and I knew that because of the process of meditating like I wasn't fully wise I knew I knew I didn't have everything figured out but I knew that the changes that were happening in my mind were real and I was excited to like explore them through writing so that's how everything kind of started on the Instagram where I would just share some of my reflections and you know people would resonate with them I think that's one of the hardest things to undo all these negative behavioral patterns that we have and these bad habits that we've accumulated because even i find myself doing things on a day-to-day basis and i'm like what am i doing why why am i doing this um and i think a lot of that would just come from putting the phone away and just sitting and reflecting and i think one thing which i've noticed which i've started doing more i don't know if it's a maybe it's something which has just happened with age i'm enjoying my own company more nice and i didn't really get to do that until maybe the age of 26 when this was the first time that went and lived by myself so moved to a new city i went from newcastle to london live by myself i guess beforehand i'd always been surrounded by people some friends co-workers and i'd never really been fully able to listen to myself and believe in myself and try things for myself and surprise surprised the moment I did that everything started to flourish my confidence my career social media like everything so I think beforehand I just didn't think that I could do these things by myself that I needed to rely on other people that's so that's so amazing too because I can tell I mean when you walked in and we you know this is our first time meeting I've been following you for a little while but it's our first time meeting and um you can feel like I think there's a big connection between how you hold yourself in solitude and the energy that reverberates around you when you're around other people.

41:37And that's, you know, it's soothing to the nervous system. Like I'm sitting next to you and I feel, I feel great. You know, I don't, you know, I think that's because you feel great inside of you too. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. The all new Whoop is here. The only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance. Now, 7 % smaller with 14 days of battery life. I've been wearing Whoop since 2021 and I've been wearing it every single day. It's a device which I have used to improve my training, improve my sleep and stay away from the things which are definitely not good for me.

42:13It's been a game changer. Now, Whoop includes a heart screener with on-demand ECG readings so you can check in on your heart anytime and share results with your healthcare provider. It also includes a health span, a new feature that demystifies the aging process and shows how your daily habits impact your pace of aging, as well as hormonal insights for personalized guidance throughout your cycle or pregnancy. It's the only wearable that gives you a truly comprehensive view of your body designed to help you improve your performance, longevity, and overall health. So you can join now at joinwhoop.com forward slash first things thirst to get your first month for free let's get back to the episode what what piece of advice would you give to some people who maybe need to just spend a little bit more time alone because i have friends i've been there not so much myself but i know other people who really struggle to just be alone yeah it's hard this is scary for them because they have to deal with i guess they're afraid of their own thoughts in a way yeah i mean if you're afraid to be alone then there's an emotion that's calling for your attention that you don't want to, you know, turn towards it and just accept it.

43:24I think, so in the process of being alone to just like practice, you know, and it's, we're not talking about like spending days and days by yourself, but just having moments where you can go out for a walk, have moments where you're not necessarily just scrolling on your phone. You're not thinking about the next piece of content that you're going to put up. You're just like being, practicing being instead of doing, whether it's through meditating or making art or just doing something that's a little quieter. Those are moments where you can tap into the actual present moment and build your ability to even have presence.

44:00Because when you can be with yourself alone, that means that the next time that you're around someone that you care about, you're going to have a much more fortified sense of presence to be able to give to another person. and to me it was interesting, right? Like I went into meditating because I needed to save myself. Like I needed to put work into just like undoing all this heaviness and sadness and anxiety in my mind and I had to build the quality of being okay with being alone, understanding myself, listening to myself, accepting myself. But then these qualities stemmed from that solitude, stemmed from the practice, helped me start a new chapter in my own mind but it also opened up a new chapter in my relationship.

44:42And we have to think these things are very interconnected. There's a clear bridge between your personal growth and how you show up in all of your relationships. How do you propose that to a partner that you need to have time for doing your own thing and being alone? Because I know, I guess it depends on the type of relationship you're in, because there's some couples who literally do everything together. there yeah um i mean i've been with somebody like that and it didn't work surprisingly uh i kind of enjoy or get along with somebody who also enjoys their private time and has their own thing going on um so i guess those types of people don't need the advice but for those who find that they are regularly doing everything together how do you have that conversation where you're just like hey look, I need a little bit of time to myself.

45:36I think it's really valuable to remember that when you're in a relationship, that doesn't mean that you need to be twins. It doesn't mean, you know, you don't have to be like in lockstep with each other and always, you know, having the same values, the same opinions, the same political views. Like there's part of the enjoyment of relationships is allowing for a sense of curiosity so that you can continue discovering your partner because your partner's not going to stay static. They're going to evolve over time. And that's part of having freedom in relationships. Whenever people hear the word freedom and relationships together, they get scared because they think, oh, does that mean my partner is just going to cheat on me or whatnot?

46:17And I'm not talking about that at all. I'm more so talking about the fact that your partner is a being of change and their preferences are going to evolve over time, the things they want to read, their hobbies, what work feels important to them, and they're going to continue evolving and trying to pretend that that's not real. Whether you like to be very similar to your partner or not, you're never going to be 100 % similar. There's still going to be differences. And those differences are actually part of what makes the relationship enjoyable. See, I appreciate this advice coming from you because you are in a long-term relationship which seems quite clearly working and it's funny with this whole social media space how there is so much dating advice going out there but it's coming from very questionable sources so it's either coming from these like female psychologists who have a very questionable dating history or selection of partners and also from guys these alpha male guys who uh who don't have kids yeah or just have had also had like a really strange uh past history of dating and it's like yeah i kind of hear what you're saying and some of those points are valid But I actually like to hear the advice coming from guys who are in really wholesome, long-term relationships that also have kids as well.

47:52Because they're the ones that are actually walking the walk and talking the talk. Yeah, just have a rounded out experience. It was funny. So I like to keep my life relatively private. I'll come out and do podcasts and things like that when I have a book to promote, like a new launch. But other than that, like I'm not really promoting my face on the Instagram, but I started first writing about personal growth and because personal growth and relationships are really, they're like intrinsically connected. I started writing about relationships too. And I remember seeing comments where someone was like, you're not even in a relationship.

48:31Why are you writing about relationships? And I was like, wow, I realized that I had kept my life so private. People had no idea. I've been married for years. and like my wife and i've been together for 17 18 years we've been this summer we're going to be married for 10 years now we got married when when i was 27 when we got married um and it's been a long journey it's been a long journey and i think part of that because my social media following did start getting really big when i was about 28 um did there any reason why the growth kind of exploded then? I think a lot of it was right place, right time.

49:10Right place, right time. And also just the topics were resonating with other people. I was curious about self-love. Self-love was growing at that time. But I think part of the success that's sort of helped my relationship keep, honestly, for the relationship to keep its own sanity is that we're not posting couple photos all the time. We're not like, you know, like she enjoys being a private person and she allows me to talk about our relationship and to share the lessons that we've learned together. But I think having that part of my life be private has honestly kept us really, I don't know, like in a safer place.

49:46Yeah. I mean, I've noticed that before. When I've been in relationships in the past, people would either, they might assume that I'm single or just question, even my partner, ex-partner would question, like, why are you not posting pictures of me? And I'm like, look, I've been there. I've done it before. And it came with a lot of problems. Either if there's somebody who really wants to screw with you or mess up your life, going directly to your partner, they can cause problems. They want to cause problems. And then I feel as though with myself, I'm already quite public about pretty much everything.

50:27I'm very open in podcasts. I've got my main YouTube channel. I have my vlogs where I'm showing everybody about my life. I'm like, can I have a little thing for myself, just for myself? Especially as a long-term content creator, you have to kind of understand what 15 to 30 % of your life you're going to show. Because for your own mental health, part of it needs to be private. They don't need to know about all of your hobbies and everything that you're reading all the time and who all of your friends are. One of my favorite online spaces is I have a private Instagram account. and only 300 people follow it, just people that I know.

51:07And I just, I post on that thing like it's 2014. You know, I'll just post the stupidest stuff, just like, you know, whatever random thing I'm eating when I'm like in London or in Dubai and are posting just pictures of my wife and I. And like, you know, sometimes we look good in them. Sometimes we don't look good in them. We're just like waking up. I don't know. It doesn't have to be perfect. Yeah, I post whatever I want. And it's just for the friends and the family. And it's nice to have this little part where it's like old school social media, where it was way less high demand, high quality. But even that, that's just for the friends.

51:43What is your view on the dating space and advice which has kind of been given on social media these days? I think you need to learn how to take your own advice. I think that's the biggest thing. I wrote a piece the other day and I really saw how it connected with people where you really have these three leaders inside of you. You have your intuition, you have your values, and you have your nervous system. So a lot of people can give you advice. Some of it is applicable, some of it's not. No matter what, the advice is only valuable if you personally make use of it and activate it in your own life.

52:22So ultimately, you need to be okay with leading yourself. And yeah, you're going to come across amazing teachers and whatnot, but every piece of advice is not necessarily applicable in every single situation. Everything is highly situational. So, you know, the causes and conditions of one moment may require a particular action, but it isn't going to require that action every single time. You know, you have to be okay with being dynamic and being flexible. So I think people really have to trust themselves because ultimately, like, no one knows your life better than you do. So you know if you should break up with this person or not.

53:00You know if you should date this person or not. It's just, do you have the courage to make the move? well I guess it's easier for you to make those decisions and listen to your gut instinct when you're older and you've experienced more of life I think it's it's a lot more challenging for youngsters you know I would even argue young men because if you're a young guy in late teens early 20s I think you'll have a much harder time replacing someone compared to maybe a woman who's of that age because they're almost like in their prime and can quite easily replace a guy. So it's a difficult one. And when people are asking me for advice when it comes to like breakups or what to do, I always say in the 20s, just focus on yourself as much as you can do because the best years is still yet to come.

53:53Yeah, that's a really good point too. And I found that on the inverse of that, just to point out another side of this, what we're talking about, I found that stabilizing my relationship in my 20s, where the first half of my 20s, our relationship was very chaotic. And then I started meditating when I was about 24 years old, and slowly my mind started stabilizing. We both started growing. We decided that we wanted to get married, got married at 27. And I think probably when I think about the two biggest things that have helped me be successful have been getting married and meditating. Like having those two things where it's like my clear path of cultivating myself and my sort of a clear sense of home have helped me just like go out into the world and just make things happen.

54:42That's interesting. So I guess the pros of getting married early is that you're not spending so much of your time going out and dating. When I think about my boys, yeah, when I think about my boys who are like, how much of their mind is consumed on like, they want a wife, they want kids, they want this person, that person, and it takes up a lot of their energy. And I don't have that work because those things are kind of set. They're laid out for me now. I look back and I reflect at the past, oh God, the past five years, past 10 years, there's been a lot of time devoted to women and dating and i'm like wow imagine what you could have achieved if you just like we could have been meditating together yeah so it's uh yeah it's interesting i think when if you have i mean if you haven't got your career on point or you you haven't developed skill sets i think that should really be the priority first and then you can maybe allocate some time to the whole dating thing.

55:50And hopefully you find the right person sooner. But I think either way you win, those are two really big parts of life. Especially if like, if you, you know, your career, no matter what, like you have the longest relationship is going to be between you and yourself. And being able to establish the way that gives you the most content to like put out value into the world, right? Because when you think about your own happiness, part of why you're content is because you feel good about the value that you're putting out into the world. And having that sorted out is huge. So no matter what, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, like figuring out what you want to give to the world, how you want to be of service, massive.

56:29It's really, really critical. So with the book that's just come out, who is that for, would you say? I think it's for people who are, I mean, it's really for anybody because you're always in relation to whomever you're in proximity to. So whoever I'm next to, like whether it's your roommate, your parents, your, you know, your siblings or, or your intimate partner, like you're in relationship with them to a certain degree. Now the book focuses on people who are in partnerships and it talks about personal growth and, you know, how to argue, how to get over heartbreak, how to build harmony in your relationship.

57:08and but those same sort of standards and lessons you can pull them out to any facet of your life because you know human beings like we think we're very different but there are a lot of similarities like no matter what if if i'm having an argument with my wife or with you and we're having an argument when we don't understand each other we can't see each other we literally can't see each other's points of view. So now if we were to focus our argument on just understanding each other as opposed to winning, you know, as opposed to me dominating the narrative or you dominating the narrative, if we just focus on understanding each other, eventually we would take turns, say our points of view, and the tension would evaporate until we can finally really see each other clearly.

57:53And that is true whether it's a friend, whether it's a workmate, or whether it's your partner. You don't want to fight to win, you want to fight to understand. Yeah, which can be difficult when the emotions are high. And I've realized something with myself, I am not very good at expressing my feelings. Like I just turn into some weird blubbering idiot that doesn't make any sense. And then they look at me like, is this guy, what's wrong with him? And I've realized if I really want to understand myself and get something across to a partner, I am much better writing everything down. So if there's something which I'm wanting to get across to them or something which I just can't put into words, maybe because I've never been taught how to express myself properly.

58:44like that was probably something that was lacking in my childhood um because i was pretty much raised without my mother mom passed away when i was 11 to breast cancer so there was kind of like that side which i feel as though was missing maybe a whole host of other things but i've realized now if i can just take some time out process my thoughts write it down how i feel what i want and then just get them to read it you're making me think that like may it worry were you maybe suited for a different time or like are you a man of letters like you would have been so good at writing letters you know i know i have actually it's not something i do regularly yeah but i have done it uh a few times in relationships yeah and i'd what i'll write down what i think and then i'll go over a few times and obviously tweak a few things it's almost like an essay sometimes but it's like yes this is exactly how i feel that's so nice there we go and then they have a better understanding of me thoughts emotions which i'm dealing with and it usually works quite well but they might be terrible at writing but they're very good at communicating it verbally yeah but i like it doesn't work as well for me this is this is a really important thing that you're mentioning right because if we really care about our partner and wanting to make sure that they are also in their power because I'm not like, from what I've seen from direct experience, when you're in a partnership, you both take turns leading, being the leader at different, you're both just good at different things.

1:00:20So, you know, you step up and step back depending on the situation that's happening. But one thing that's important is like, when you're going into an argument with your partner, you have to really focus on this thing, what I was talking about in terms of understanding because usually there's one partner that's just better at talking than the other person. So obviously they're going to win. Like if your partner's a lawyer, they're going to beat you every time because they just know how to argue. So when you take away the objective of winning, it's like, okay, no one's trying to win. Now we're just trying to understand.

1:00:55That's when you can show up. Like I had time to process my feeling. And even if I'm not that good of a debater, we're not debating anymore. I'm just trying to explore and share how I'm understanding because people are very different. Yeah, and they would misunderstand me because there would be this frustration that builds up, but I'm not getting angry or frustrated with them. I'm getting frustrated with myself because I can't express myself the way that I want to. And then it annoys me. And then I start to beat myself up. But it comes across as though I'm getting angry, but I'm not. It's just I'm getting frustrated with myself.

1:01:31Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I've felt moments similar to that. and what's helped me is just like being okay with moving slowly it's like i don't know the answer right now i'm just full of all these emotions and like i just need time to kind of sort it out and see what's like the real path forward so you would say some degree of conflict or arguing is probably not the right word but every you can't just expect endless peace No, no. And I would even say arguments are okay. I think you can be in a healthy relationship and still have real ups and downs, still have arguments, moments of hard conversations.

1:02:15And that's a natural part of being in a relationship. I think us expecting like a romantic comedy type of, you know, relationship where two people like each other, they overcome one serious issue and then they're together happily ever after. That's just not realistic. You know, we're being fed an illusion. So when you think about healthy relationships, I like to think of the example of my wife's parents. They've been together for, I think, about 40 years. And they argue. They argue. And it's fine. They argue calmly. They don't hate each other. They're not in danger. But they don't always agree.

1:02:55And that's okay. But I've been teaching myself, too. My wife also meditates a lot. So I really trust her wisdom. And when there are moments that we don't agree, I can't immediately think that I'm right. You know, I may hold a particular perspective, but I think slowing down to really see like, okay, if we disagree, especially if it's like a work thing, then it's like, I need to take time to see her view also, even whether I agree with it or not, to just really reflect on what her view is because I may be missing something. Yeah. I think one issue which I have had and I'm trying to get better at is knowing that I'm the type of person that generally likes to avoid conflict and difficult conversations.

1:03:38I would imagine most people probably don't like difficult conversations. Some people do. But, you know, with work and everything else that's going on, I just want, like, the relationship side to be as peaceful as it possibly can be. And to avoid conflict at all costs. and I've come to the understanding and realization that that is like not realistic and there are going to be some times where there has to be a difficult conversation or you know there needs to be a you know conflict that needs to be uh sorted out whatever it might be and I think the issue which I've had is I've never really been taught how to approach that type of conversation or to deal with it.

1:04:22I'd always been like, oh, I don't have to deal with this. If this gets too frequent, I'm just going to go replace and find someone who's going to give me less stress and headache. And that's just not realistic. No, it's not realistic. And you got to be careful with, I have this hypothesis that a lot of relationships that could have been great relationships, people just gave up too early because conflict started appearing. And we don't want, like you said, I'd rather laugh than fight. And I'd rather have a calm, peaceful environment than fight. But sometimes the argument points to a wall that the two of you didn't see, that if you pay attention to it, that wall can be undone and your connection can come closer together.

1:05:07That's what I found is the moments where we have these disagreements, there's some little block there. And if we pay attention to it, and just take our turns going back and forth, we can then, you know, undo it and become closer together. You've mentioned before, about the importance of healing, and how I imagine a lot of us have some degree of healing, which we need to process. How do we go about that? Because I think, with either the upbringing that they've had or maybe the experiences they've had through previous relationships, we're all damaged a little bit, some more than others. So how do we go about healing ourselves?

1:05:55Yeah, there's a poem I wrote back in, I think like 2016, and it's just four words. It's observe, accept, release, transform. And I think whether you're working on healing yourself through meditating or through some sort of therapy, these elements are really critical where you have to observe yourself. You have to accept what you find. In the process of accepting, there is release. And in the release, transformation becomes possible. And I think a lot of times, like some people connect with the word trauma, others don't. Whether you think you've experienced trauma or not, you have absolutely had hard moments.

1:06:35You've had moments of strong reaction, moments of great anger, moments of great sadness, and all of that gets imprinted in the mind. All of that shapes the mind, shapes your patterns, shapes the way you show up in the present moment. So you can't think that the past is just the past. No, the past is like literally pushing itself into the present, and we can be oblivious to that. And that can really affect our ability to give and receive in relationships. So taking the time to pay attention to how your past has shaped your mind, your emotional history, observing yourself, seeing what your dominant patterns are, I think it's really important work.

1:07:14You can call it healing, you can call it personal growth, whatever you want. But ultimately, it's you embracing your evolution, accepting your evolution into your own hands. I guess the first step is having that self-awareness, that there are some things which you need to deal with. then unfortunately, it seems as though not everybody has it to the same degree. Yeah, and it's built. It's built over time. You can have a certain degree of self-awareness, but you'll be surprised at how much is really in there. There's so much stuff in there. And in the act of, you know, you keep finding more stuff, and you just accept.

1:07:53Stop fighting the past, because you're just fighting yourself. Yeah. I think one of the advantages that I've had with obviously me going to the gym and looking the way that I look is I would say I'm very self-aware with how certain foods make me feel after I eat them. And how even just different types of activity, different lifestyle choices can have an effect on how I look and how I feel. and it's funny how I sometimes just watch people who are trying to get in shape and they're just eating garbage or just they keep falling into these bad habits where they're doing these things which are conflicting with that goal they have and I'm like how are you not like self-aware enough to understand this is like damaging the whole process of you getting to where you want to go to yeah I think that that same self-awareness that you have akin to your body we can like we can all develop that and become super sensitive to just like feeling like, oh, this ice cream is making me feel very different from that protein.

1:08:59And, but with the same thing with our emotions and it's like, you know, you feel your emotions and you're like, oh yeah, this doesn't feel great, but it's going to change. It's so funny when I, I remember two times when I really felt this, it was over the Christmas period. And then when I went to Rome, this was in, I think it was the, in October time literally in a matter of two or three days where the diet was predominantly pizza pasta and gelato just a carbosaurus rex i literally felt like a different i wasn't thinking differently yeah and like i even for me i visually was like looking different but some people are literally living like that and not understanding like okay this is this is really having an impact on Have you ever fasted?

1:09:48I have done, yes. I think I've never done more than 24 hours. Yeah. Even like 18, you know, 17 hours in, like the clarity that comes over the mind and it's like the precision that the mind works in. Those are some of my favorite times to do creative work. It's like, you know, when I only have like one meal a day or something like that. And then it's like, wow, the mind's just working so sharply. Are you having coffee whilst you're in that state? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But if I do have coffee, just black. It's interesting because your body will go through phases where you'll get these waves of hunger, but then it kind of just disappears.

1:10:29Yeah, and it disappears faster and faster too. The longest I've done is like a three-day fast. And honestly, it's challenging, but it's really nourishing. How did you find sleep when you were doing that? Sleep was weird. It was weird. I would sleep and the sleep was very efficient. Like the orator told me like, wow, you know, you slept very deeply. Your beats per minute were very low. And so the recovery was great, but the sleep itself didn't really feel that deep for me. And when I would wake up, I'm like out of bed, ready to hunt. Yeah. I've not done it. The only reason is because it's not really ideal for preserving muscle muscle yeah um but those that have done it they've said that uh even though the sleep has not been the longest sleep but the quality quality of it is very good yeah yeah but the problem is which i've experienced going to if you do go to like when i'm cutting and i'm restricting my calories for you know a prolonged period of time um i wake up earlier than usual and I'm like, let's go.

1:11:33Like I'm ready to, you said, hunt. But I look at my sleep and I'm like, that wasn't a whole lot of sleep. But the quality of it was very good. Yeah, it's interesting how that happens. There's so many, you know, our body and our minds can be, they're just deeply affected by the inputs. What's your experience been with venture capital? It's been really fun. It's a really fun way to be creative. It's like I think of it as a different way to, one, it's a different way to help. Like our Wisdom Ventures, it's a company that focuses on compassionate innovation. So we're thinking about this next wave of technology, especially when it comes to AI and how we can have a seat at the table and just try to steer things in a much more humanistic direction.

1:12:23That's why it supports human creativity. It supports human compassion. It supports us living well and really flourishing. It's a group. It's a group of us, yeah. Myself, Jack Kornfield, who's one of the people that brought mindfulness to the West. Bradley Horowitz, he was a longtime vice president at Google. So he led the team that developed Gmail. A lot of the products that we use every day, he's had his hand in all of them and developing them. And there's a few more of us. Soren, who runs Wisdom 2.0, this really powerful conference out in Silicon Valley, and a few other partners. And we've come together with such a wide range of experience.

1:13:10And it's been great. We've invested in over 36 companies. Our fund one was initially$10 million. Now we're raising a fund two. That's going to be about$50 million. and we're just trying to support founders that are maintaining a level-headedness while their company grows. Because our thing is like, what happens when a person gets power? And then power will pull out the roughest parts of your ego and we want to give founders not only good business advice, but good mental health advice. And we want to connect you not only with a great, meditation teachers and therapists and whatnot, but just give you that inner skill set that you need to be able to show up for the world and for yourself.

1:13:58What do you find the biggest struggles are for entrepreneurs and founders? I imagine it's the stress. Yeah, it's just straight up burnout, just straight up burnout. And it's challenging to design a product that is solely focus on the greatest maximal outcome in terms of profit, which is like, you know, our whole economy is driven in that direction. But can you find the balance of reaching high profit and also reaching maximum impact in a compassionate manner? Like are, you know, and we were really sort of inspired too by the clothing industry where like a lot of people have been much more intentional about like where are my clothes coming from are they made from good products are they made you know are the people who make them like being taken care of well and the same thing like we were just talking about you know nutritional products people care more about like is this product actually giving me the value that i need is it really going to help my life or is it just a bunch of junk so we're trying to bring that same energy to the tech world and you know when you're designing your product, are you designing it in a compassionate manner that works with the mind, as opposed to just making the mind more enslaved?

1:15:13Yeah. So what's been some of the exciting businesses that you guys have invested in? There's a few big ones. We were able to invest in Anthropic, which was, it's great. You know, they make Claude. We were able to invest in OpenAI, better leave um it's a bunch of companies and it's uh it's been great it's it's been fantastic to be able to just um you know talk to these like major founders and you know help in whatever way we can and i imagine one of the things that would encourage you to invest is not only the business itself but the the founder yeah yeah i think what was really exciting was like um And I met Sam Altman and he meditates.

1:16:00He's a pretty serious meditator. He learns from my partner, Jack Kornfield. And Jack, he's a good guy. So that gives me a lot more trust in this gigantic thing that he's building. Do you guys ever have conflict with each other when you're deciding which company to invest in? Totally, all the time. But we're super peaceful about it. And we also know that, you know, we have rules with the way we invest where it only requires like three of the six partners to be able to, you know, actually make an investment. We don't all need to, we don't need to agree unilaterally. We know that we have different strengths.

1:16:38And we also know that we can, we see different things. Like I'm the youngest partner. So I know that I learn a lot from my fellow partners that are in their 50s. but there's also things that I can see about like the trends of where tech is going that they might not necessarily see just because I'm you know a little younger what are the trends well I mean I think you know no matter what you got to build up your newsletter like no matter what I think the social media landscape is changing fast and it's been very challenging for people to not really have access to their followers. So I'm really happy that we also invested in Substack.

1:17:22Substack is, I think it's an incredible company. They literally just reached 5 million paid subscribers, like people who are paying individuals for extra content. So there's this whole creator economy that Substack is supporting where, you know, people who have big TikToks and Instagrams, you know, I have a Substack too, where you can go on there and And you are basically almost like your own little news outlet. You share some things for free and some other things are paid. And I think it's wonderful because then creators have ownership over the reach. If you sign up for my newsletter, you're going to receive it.

1:18:03They're not going to get rid of that. I found that baffling over, I don't know when it started happening. I feel like it's over the past few months. The reach on Instagram is very weird. yeah it's like i would argue that the quality sometimes of my content is like getting better like the photos yeah i'm like these are sick photos but for whatever reason i mean i know for a while instagram has been pushing reels yeah but i feel like a lot of my stuff is not getting through to my followers now whether that's because they're following a thousand people and i'm competing with another thousand people or whether it's something to do with the algorithm them or maybe because i've been around on social media for so long i've accumulated a lot of followers but maybe a lot of those followers are not necessarily as active yeah as they used to be so you know they're just not online um but it's it's fascinating how it is always changing yeah like and and as you mentioned that's why a newsletter is so powerful because so powerful and now now now add ai into it right where ai is making everything hyper polished and And the words aren't even necessarily your words anymore.

1:19:16And there are so many images where you can't even really tell, like, is this even really real? And it feels like so much of the social media landscape, because AI is just such a big part of it now, it all feels so fake that we're craving depth. We're craving connection. Like, we really want to, like, I want to hear the lessons that have made your life better, but I want to hear them from you. I don't want to hear it from the, you know, your thoughts that you shoved into ChatGPT and then gave to me. And you get more of that realness through newsletters. And it's a little harder on social media because the algorithms are always changing.

1:19:53And then all the social media companies are battling each other. So they're like adopting, expanding. And I think we're sort of in that phase where we don't quite know what's going to come next. but what you do know is the certainty of the newsletter so if you're a content creator you know email's where it's at yeah is that where you feel as though with your social media platforms that's where you can get across yeah i'm putting a lot more energy into it because i i still i enjoy posting on instagram don't get me wrong are you still doing it or do you have a team i do it myself because i'm the one who got it to three million So I'm not going to hand it over to somebody else.

1:20:31That's a fair point. But I still enjoy posting on Instagram, but it caters towards minimalism. It caters towards micro thoughts, small little gems that could bring a little vibrancy to people's lives. And I enjoy offering these materials for self-reflection. But in the newsletter, I can write articles like what you were just talking about. Like I'll sit down and I'll have fun for an hour or two hours just like working on a little essay that's like 800, 900 words. And then I send it out and like people read it and they get some value from it. Can't quite do that, you know, on Instagram. You would never let somebody else write on your behalf?

1:21:16No, not on my behalf. I would let people, I mean, the only person who ever has is my wife. She has written, there was two poems that were in my Clarity and Connection book that she wrote. She wrote a poem in The Way Forward. That was my previous book. And then she took time to go over. So I finished the manuscript of my recent book, How to Love Better, but she went through the whole book and would give me her thoughts. and she's almost like my first editor. But I write like literally like 99.9 % of everything. Yeah. Yeah. I think I struggle with this issue of getting into the flow of writing because I know once I'm in it, I'm actually quite good.

1:22:04Yeah. I feel so. But usually the prospect of having to sit down and come up with something from nothing i think it's that that image of looking at a blank page i'm like where do i even begin yeah what do i even talk about yeah like there's a hell of a lot up there but it's trying to get into words and thinking about what it is that people want to read and i know it's the first couple of minutes it might even be 10 minutes you know like nothing is coming out and i'm trying to just not get myself distracted by all the distractions around but then once i'm locked in like a lot will start to come out.

1:22:42Yeah. So it's really just having this ability to zone out and I guess meditation is one of the things that's going to help. Zone out and zone in. Yeah, it's fun. And you know that the writing is good if you're having fun in the process. You know, I think sometimes when I'm putting together essays, it feels like I'm like putting together a puzzle that like is invisible almost. And I'm like kind of putting it together. And then at one point it just like kind of clicks. And it's like, okay, this is right. I don't need to write anymore. And then I shoot it out there into the world and see how it does.

1:23:18But it takes a lot of time to be able to manage the two different aspects of the mind where I notice that if I'm just emailing, emailing, taking calls, doing meetings, sucks up all my creativity. And then I have trouble sort of just, you know, writing some new stuff. So apart from meditating, what do you enjoy doing? i really enjoy going on long walks long walks with my wife that's been like our favorite new thing in the past year are you talking with each other or just in silence um we talk a little bit um but usually we're like looking around at the nature too um it depends on like what you know if there's anything like prevalent in that day and but we we've been enjoying like being in nature there's this cool thing and i don't know if you have i mean you definitely don't have that in dubai but i don't know if you have that in the uk we have these things called rail trails in western in Massachusetts where there would be old train lines that don't work anymore and they pull out the tracks and then they're just, you can walk for miles, you know, literally for like nine, 10 miles just straight.

1:24:20And then you're walking and it's these tiny little paths and it's just woods next to you or like marshland. And they're just so beautiful and they change over the, you know, over the seasons, but they're super, just like, you know, great way to tap into nature. Yeah, that's one of the issues, obviously, living in Dubai or living in a city. You don't really get that exposure to nature. So every so often I make it a point of mine to just go somewhere and just escape and really try to switch off and not think too much about work or the day-to-day stuff. And usually when I have trips like that and I come back, there is, I don't know, I see things differently.

1:25:02I feel almost this like fresh wave of motivation just ready kind of attack yeah I like you know my whole life I've spent it in cities and I think about four four five years ago my wife and I were just we realized that we got tired of the concrete we were just like we you know the only nature we have is the sky and so far away so we're so we decided to move over to the woods and it's been a nice change because no matter what work always pulls me into the cities like I'm I spent a lot of time in New York and LA. But being able to go back home to the woods, it's just the nicest thing. What do you have planned for the rest of this year?

1:25:39For this year, I'm going to finish releasing this book. I'm going to put a lot of energy into it because it took time for me to not only learn these lessons about what's actually helping my relationship be better, but also just grow as a writer. This is my fifth book. So How to Love better, I think not only has the best of what I've learned about personal growth and relationships, but also I've really taken the time to cultivate my voice as a writer. So I'm excited for people to be able to hopefully be served by that well. And other than that, I think I'm going to meditate for 20 days. I'm going to use the summer to really just relax.

1:26:20I've been going hard for a little a while. And my sort of private goal is to run a half marathon and to take that strength training to another level. Yeah. I think it's very doable. And I'd imagine with your mindset, any discomfort and pain, you'll probably be able to process. If not, you'll probably need to speak to David Goggins and get some advice from him. Awesome, man. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Everyone go check out his book, which has been on Amazon, everywhere else. And people can follow you on social media. Yeah. So the book is How to Love Better. You can get it on Amazon and bookstores.

1:27:02You can follow me on the Instagram, youngpueblo with an underscore in the middle. And you can follow me on Substack, also youngpueblo. And the young is without an O. Yeah. Cool. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mike.