MATTHEW HUSSEY: LIVE A LIFE YOU LOVE

0:28So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now?

0:33this is the admired show all right welcome back to the show everybody so the man sitting next to me here today is one of the really best people in all of the personal development thought leader space i love him um he's brilliant he works very hard at his craft um but he has a kindness off camera that will be reflected on camera today when you listen to him i just want you to know the person you're going to listen to today is the same person on camera that he is off camera and i'm a big believer in him i believe he's one of the future people of this industry that are going to dominate it he already is he's got a new book out right now called love life that i read cover to cover in a day and a half and i loved it and i cannot wait to share this man's wisdom with you here today so matthew hussey welcome back to the show brother yeah i don't know how i don't know how to respond to that intro i i appreciate it so much ed i love spending time with you and some of my favorite moments are where we get to hang me too brother i i love you and i just wish we had more of those moments so here we go it's interesting i'm proud of your evolution i'm watching you evolve and by the way you didn't need to but just like most people that are growers you've evolved and so i always used to think this is the guy that's known on the planet earth is probably the preeminent dating expert there is but now you've evolved to where you're really not just a relationship because this book is really about relationships more than it is anything else but what struck me about you i said this off camera in the beginning of the book you kind of admit in the beginning of the book that even though you were like this dating expert you were probably not a very good guy to date and so why don't we start right there i just think that's an awesome place to start so they they see some of your vulnerability too i think this book is about relational intelligence that's the phrase i keep using because it can be applied to all relationships and we're all in relationships i actually think we're all in we're all in three different relationships for life we're in relationships with other people romantic or otherwise you know if you have a terrible relationship with a parent or a brother or a you know a best friend or someone at work that can ruin your life so you know we're all in relation with other people we're also in a relationship with life and that relationship and how good your relationship is with that is going to determine how happy you are and you're in a relationship with yourself so those are three relationships you can't get out of yeah no matter what yeah and how we manage those relationships is going to be the quality of our life i i suppose i started the book from a place of wanting to take myself off of any kind of pedestal that anyone could have put me on along the way mission accomplished you did no you did well it you know for for 15 years i've been working with people and and you know for so much of that in their love lives although i've you know i have a retreat every year that is much broader than people's love lives but i became known for that and i really it was it was a difficult actually reading comments along the way about what an amazing person i would be to date and you know he must be the perfect person to date because he knows all this stuff and it was a very it used to make me more insecure because i think these people don't know they don't know that you know i have i'm making mistakes i am hurting people i am hurting myself i have not figured all of this out i'm you know there were pieces of it i felt very confident talking about but i also was figuring my own stuff out you know one of the big themes of this book is are we chasing the right things in love and in life and if you chase the wrong things i remember my now wife i started writing this book from a really really tough place i was heartbroken and i by the time i was doing the final edit of this book i was doing on my honeymoon so it was really crazy by the way it was a nice long honeymoon you had too but go ahead oh my god really really good but it but you know i i i realized that i was chasing a lot of the wrong things for a long time and that was continuously leading me to pain and there were blind spots i had about things that i hadn't worked on in myself things i hadn't healed in myself that you know were showing up as pain but not awareness i didn't know what was going on i just knew something's not something's off with me in the way that i'm going after things or the way that i'm falling in love or the way that i'm dating that's leading me to pain and and so what became really really interesting to me not just for other people but for myself was what what are the deeper patterns that are happening with me right that keep leading me into either pain for myself pain for other people or frankly some form of kind of chaos in my life that i then have to put back together yeah what did you uncover about you so you because this the most fascinating topic of the three relationships to me is the relationship with yourself to me the three that you listed because i uh i'm constantly evaluating that with myself even at 52 years old what did you what did figure out about yourself that was going on in the relationship with you i there's a there's a chapter in the book called never satisfied and i really love this chapter because i think it speaks to so many of us there was always a there's a line in hamilton where you know he's speaking to one of the shyla sisters and you know he says you're like me you're never satisfied and she says is that right and he says i've never been satisfied and i remember what kind of identifying with that and thinking what something's always i'm never really at peace i'm always chasing i'm chasing after something that is exciting and causes me chaos or stress or hurt you know or breaks my heart or i'm or i'm with someone who doesn't excite me or with someone who doesn't make me feel the things that i want to feel that clearly adores me and if i could just make myself feel more i would be so happy but i can't seem to make myself feel more in this situation and i would observe patterns like that in my life and i think that's a very common one that so many people fall into and they go what is going on i can't ever seem to find the sweet spot yes and and so that was a key pattern i think I dated like an addict.

7:16I think I was a kind of like chasing highs and the excitement of dating and the excitement of, you know, of romance or intimacy or, and, and, you know, even after you realize it's not working, you still have, you can realize something's not good for you or good for other people, but you don't necessarily have the tools to change the behavior. You're right. right so it took me time to understand oh there's a kind of you know i have to find a way to rewire my brain to want different things you're on you're on to something i'm obsessed with right now which is that our space whatever we want to call it we have different you know seats in the space of personal development or self-help or thought leader influence whatever you want to call it right you're obviously one of the biggest ones and but one of them is we're always growing and changing and evolving.

8:10But I wonder like, where's the space where like what you have is enough and okay. Do you know what I mean? Like I find myself like, it's almost like I'm violating a rule if I just really enjoy what I have and I don't want more. I don't want the next thing. So there's like this chase for the next level, the chase for how many books you can sell, how many followers you get, the chase for how much money you can have, the chase for the next house. In your case, the chase for the next date, the excitement of the new. And can I be equally happy and excited with the familiar because we're constantly taught in the space to kind of move away from where we are theoretically does it make sense what i'm asking of course and and by the way if you apply a classically kind of optimization mindset to dating you never choose anyone true because you constantly you're looking for what's wrong and how could i optimize to get you know well this person has 90 of what i want but they're still missing this one thing and maybe i could get someone who's 92 percent of what i want and so on and you can go through life like that and i i and then by the way when you're that person and you label it like well it's a kind of type a thing i'm i never want to settle i'm not going to settle for something that's not amazing but the relationships require you at some point not to settle for something but to settle on something and there's a big difference between those two things because when you when you settle for something it's like telling yourself i got shortchanged somehow and no one wants to be shortchanged no one wants to get the worst end of the bargain but if you settle on something it's a resolution that i'm going to make this as incredible as it can possibly be and that's the thing that's going to make it special but i see i so for me it was a huge mindset shift and and i think that never making that mindset shift makes a lot of people incredibly unhappy because nobody's perfect I'm not perfect.

10:03You know, if Audrey, my wife, was looking for perfect, she would have been really disappointed from day one. So it's, but what you're speaking about there is something I am endlessly, I think about all the time because, and I even wrote a chapter of the book called Happy Enough. And the reason I wrote that is because, and by the way, me, six years ago, seven years ago, maybe even five years ago i would have hated that as a chapter name right i would have been like that is such a yes there's such a cop-out right such a like settling by another name yes happy enough has become like my favorite phrase in the world i love that because it's from happy enough is not a bad place to be happy enough is saying i'm happy enough with where i am that i really feel like I can go and take big risks I can go and take big swings in any part of my life because my life already is enough so if this doesn't pan out great this doesn't happen what I already have is enough for me and and it's you know we're so focused especially in the self-development world there's a lot of focus on like can't stay here it's too bad I'm gonna win because I have to and because and and actually there's a real power in saying if nothing changed i'd still be okay i love that and therefore i can go and take a big swing because i already have enough and the opposite to that by the way are the people that i see that are the least happy in the world and that's not the happy enough crowd that's the never enough crowd you're right and the never enough crowd that's a that's a dangerous place to be and i see it you and i see it all the time because we you know it's natural when you're in circles of ambitious people and people who are trying to make things happen in their life it's hard to step out of the gear of making things happen all the time and say well at what point do i find contentment where i am it's a very difficult what we're doing right now what we're doing right now is one of the most important conversations that needs to take place on a bigger and broader scale the next five to eight years in our world in our culture.

12:21I, all the time, I'm obsessed with it. You and I have our friends that we're all going for. You've got a new book out and we want this book to do well. But it's totally different that when I get there, I'll be happier then instead of saying, I'm okay if it doesn't. Things are great right now. There's this great clip that I've watched about 3 ,000 times of Jim Carey on Instagram. I don't know if you've seen this clip, but he says, he's in an interview. I'm paraphrasing. I'll probably mess it up, but it's how it affected me. He says, I'm going to say something you probably never heard an actor say in your life and the guy goes what he goes I've had enough I've made enough movies I've got enough awards I've got enough attention I've got enough money I have enough and it's okay and he goes you know what I want to paint now I want to spend some time and he goes these other things and I just even when he said it I breathed like like he almost gave me permission to feel that way and at the same time maybe he will eventually go make another movie but not because he thinks he has to for the next chase it'll be it'll be coming from the right place of intention and and and i'm sure that that spoke to you as it does to me because it speaks to some kind of truth in us yeah that wants to get out and wants to be acknowledged and and it's and it's we do breathe this sigh of relief when someone comes along and says that yeah and and look it's let me tell you something i i when i was writing this book i i had very very different phases writing this book there was the panic phase of oh i'm behind i'm behind i'm in trouble i'm not going to make deadline and then when i realized i was behind i went back to i went to england for a month and i was living at my mom's house with audrey my wife and this was before we were married actually and i was there for a month and every morning i'd wake up and if you're doing a lot of business with america the uk time zone is quite nice because you get like five to eight hours before anyone is even awake and bothers you so in those hours i just sat and i i wrote without anyone distracting me i i put my phone away i literally put my phone in a drawer i didn't touch it from the moment i woke up till about 1 p.m in the afternoon and i would just sit in this room and write and grab a coffee and go back and write some more and and i started to find myself over the course of this month become happier and happier and happier and i felt so calm and i really it was like almost it became an emotional thing for me i was like oh my god i feel like i've been released from some kind of tension and treadmill and writing itself for me at least and everyone has some activity like this when i lose myself in it it becomes a kind of meditation and then at the end of an hour or two or three i get this kind of euphoria and this calm of feeling connected again and feeling like i've somehow lost myself in the richness of life and what's what really matters and in that moment i can tell you ed i don't care what i'm achieving.

15:29I don't care what is happening in my business. I don't care. All I cared about was, I feel like I just did something really meaningful for the last two hours. I love it. So, hey guys, as you know, I've partnered up with my good friend Brennan Brouchard, who's created the greatest personal development system that has ever been designed called Growth Day. There's everything from journaling to accountability programs, live messages every Monday from myself and other influencers. There's an opportunity for you to get courses that would costs thousands of dollars completely for free. It's incredible.

16:01Go to growthday.com forward slash ed and check it out.

16:08Now let me tell you about where I am right now. The book got written. Everyone's really happy with it. I'm really excited about it. I'm extremely proud of it. The publishers are happy. And then of course, as you know, as well as anyone, everyone says, right time to get out there now you're on the deal yeah and it has sort of screwed up my calm and it has put me back you know i'm now having to negotiate this tension between and i'm an introvert too so for me my phone blowing up with messages all the time and connecting with people and talking to people about doing their podcasts and this that and the other it's not my natural state you know some people are like that they're just like you know they i that's not my natural state where i'm happy and but i'm in it and and it feels like a much more anxious and frenetic state and pace and it's all about numbers and how many books you sell and you know wanting to hit the new york times list and all of the stuff that we all get told during that phase that is important to do and and i found myself in a moment just like suddenly this i kept telling myself when this book gets written it's going to be such a joyful thing because i'm so proud of it it's going to be so joyful to go out and talk about this thing because i'm truly truly it's one of the pieces of work i'm most proud of in my life and i know it's going to help people and i lost touch for a moment in the last few weeks because i good i started to feel like i'm you know god i'm in this anxious kind of like now i'm wanting it to do well and all of a sudden i'm in that phase of it and someone said to me matt someone who's been with me through the whole process said to me you've worked so hard on this and you've put so much of your energy and your soul and your heart into it this is a victory lap there you go you should be enjoying this part this is a victory lap you're going to get to go and talk about this thing that you really care about and i'm saying this i guess you're the you're the first podcast i'm recording of like a bunch of different things i'm going to be doing and tv and press and all of that and i i guess maybe i'm voicing it out loud because i want to set the intention i do i want you to have it i just want to enjoy this and i don't want to lose so much of the message of this book is about being connected and it's really easy you know we we shield ourselves and this is the reality life doesn't allow you the perfect setup for you to feel calm and happy.

18:41It doesn't say to you, we're going to give you the perfect time zone and you're going to have to, you're going to get to not check your messages until 1 p.m. And you're going to, you know, life comes along and says, how robust are you? Can, can these things, but meet with real life and all of the things that happen in a life and all of the disappointments and the headaches and the challenges. And can you still maintain at least some of that stuff that you really enjoy and and I'm you know that's something I'm practicing in real time right please remember that because it's interesting you ever meet someone who's had like a near-death experience or they've survived cancer or something they live their life like it's a victory lap I want a victory lap and so one of the things I've reminded myself I was telling my kids this not that long ago I didn't use that term but I'll use your term life's a victory lap we're just running up the score you know what I mean like and if you can approach your life that way you know when I because I do the show so you know half the guests at least have a book usually by the way when you're listening to it now probably it'll be pre-order so you can go pre-order matthew's book right now by the way let me help him sell some books right now the link for that is lovelifebook.com there you go get that in there lovelifebook.com and um but i have to tell you like i i sometimes feel sympathy for a lot of my guests because they're in that treadmill when they're sitting in that seat you know they're in that i gotta make the times i gotta sell this i gotta do that i'm like you know and i know it because I did it, right?

20:06And I've avowed, I'm in the middle of writing my next book and I'm like, I am not doing that next time. How will you prevent yourself from doing that next time? I'm curious. I actually think the next time, well, I teach this with my athletes, the people that I coach. I have goals, but then I separate from outcome. Wayne Dyer taught me that. So once you've executed the work, right? Now just, do you have a goal to make a list? There's nothing wrong with that. But then emotionally separate from the outcome of it. It's the same thing even like on a first date, I think. I think it's appropriate to be excited about the first date.

20:35and have a goal, I would love this to work out, but then separate from the outcome. Just let it be, right? And so for me, it'll just be reminding myself to separate from the outcome. And also, it sounds morbid, but this isn't going to matter on my deathbed one way or the other. And so it gives you perspective. Keep forcing perspective on yourself and your life. But I think the other thing that you've established, you talk about this in the book too, that I want to talk about, this requires confidence. In order to make these choices requires coming from a place of confidence, in my opinion. and you talk about three levels of confidence this is awesome stuff right here so could you give them the gift of that yeah i always think that confidence is this sort of oversimplified umbrella word for all sorts of different things that don't necessarily have a lot to do with each other to me i i needed a kind of unifying model for confidence i'm a hyper rational person if someone's speaking and the the thing that they say about self-worth contradicts the thing they said three sentences ago i'm like i you've lost me i looked at i i developed a model for confidence that that said okay there's the surface level which is level one and and that's how we portray ourselves and how we're perceived based on the way we walk talk and act hours and hours of content on that alone but we all know what we're talking about when we say someone looks confident on the surface yes then there's the identity level of confidence and this we might think of as the legs under the table that underpins the confidence so that the moment is tested it doesn't just fall apart and and that's you know there are plenty of people that have bravado that the moment it's tested it disintegrates you know you have a heart someone has a hard conversation with you and all of a sudden yeah you it goes up goes apart falls apart the identity level is i like i like to think of the identity level as everything that we use as a source of confidence in our lives and they can be many it can be the skills we have it can be the life we've set up for ourselves it could be the relationships that we have it could be the family support system we have the contacts that we have for some people it might be the fact that they feel like they're well traveled yeah uh or that they have they know three languages or they can play an instrument or or they're a very good conversationalist we all have these things that create what i call identity confidence and i think of that as a kind of matrix with a bunch of squares in it like a tic-tac-toe box and inside are all these different things that give you confidence and no one's matrix looks uniform where all the squares are the same.

23:24In reality, what happens is we come to identify, and some would say over-identify, with certain aspects of our life that give us confidence. Why is it that in a recession, someone who wasn't going to starve decides that they need to end it all? Why? It's because it's not because they lost all their money. It's because they lost their identity. Wow, yes. And the same can be true of a relationship. You know, someone comes out of a marriage. Well, maybe they fought so hard for that marriage for so many years that they lost themselves. They lost all the things that made them them, all the things they enjoyed doing, all of the hobbies, the friendships, the close relationships.

24:08And they just poured themselves into this marriage. And then when divorce happens, that was the giant square of their matrix. And anything else in their life had been reduced to these tiny little squares around it. And so when they lose this square, it's not that you lost a marriage. It's that you lost your identity. It's not the death of a part of your life. It feels like the death of your soul. And so in that moment, people feel like I can't survive. When we lose our identity in that way, it's terrifying for us. You can get the same thing with a bodybuilder who gets injured and all of a sudden they can't train.

24:44And they'd made that 90 % of their matrix was their ability to define and sculpt their body. And now life can't be about that because they're injured. So all of a sudden life has to become about something else. So that's the identity level. That's level two. And what I always say to people on that level is you have to look at the way your matrix is engineered right now and say, where am I exposed? because the and if you want to know where you're exposed ask yourself what area of my life if i lost it has the potential to destroy my confidence and that will allow you to go where do i need to diversify where i get my confidence from and and you know of course the areas where we identify with the most they tend to be the things that we use for validation or the things that we think are the most important in life.

25:40And I always say our validations become our mutations. You know, if you get really good in business and you keep making more money and making more money and making more money and everyone rewards you for that, it's really easy to let everything else fall by the wayside. But now you've got, you know, a parent who spends no time with their kids because it's like, this is the big part of my matrix that I need to keep feeding. And it's scary to diversify. when you diversify you go back to being a toddler in a new area until it becomes a source of confidence you know you could have someone who's incredibly you know their sarcasm which they call their wit may be a huge part of their matrix if you say to someone hey look this sarcasm is getting in the way of your relationships because there's a time when sincerity is called for and people are not going deep with you because you have you throw too many barbed comments in in a conversation and No one feels like they really get to connect with you.

26:34It would really behoove you to start having more sincere conversations. Well, you have a problem here. This person has been using this sarcasm probably their whole life. And if they're going to suddenly switch to a different style of speaking to people, a conversation, well, that was working for them in many ways. It was a, you know, it made them feel witty. It gave them power in conversations. It made them feel like they knew how to handle difficult people. It made them know how to break a silence. If you take all of that away, they're back to being a toddler in conversation who doesn't know how to walk yet.

27:08And that's okay. But we hate having to go back to suck at something. And that inability to go back and be bad at something so that we can actually build it as another source of confidence and diversify it is crucial. so all of that is happening at the identity level but people in there will be no shortage of people in mindfulness circles who will say all identification is the problem like that identity level right there is the problem in itself is that we identify I identify as being great in business I identify as uh being someone who is uh uh you know always there for people athlete yeah this identification is the source of your unhappiness and you have to stop identifying and create space between the the your consciousness and the identification that have become one i i think that's i i'm i'm a big fan of all of that material but i also know that every day we are facing out to meet the world and we have to decide how to spend our time and if you can spend your time and allocate your energy in ways that diversify your confidence on the identity level it still makes sense to you just have to know that anything on the identity level will still leave you vulnerable ultimately because friends can leave relationships can end your health can go away you can get injured your business can go under anything can happen at any point that will rock you in that moment having diverse sources of confidence can help you manage those moments where you get rocked, but you can get rocked on that level all the same.

28:56And God forbid, four or five big areas for you go down at the same time. Now you've got a confidence crisis and that has to be solved at the deepest level of confidence, which is level three. And that's core confidence. And core confidence is if surface level confidence is the relationship that is the way that other people see you, core confidence is the way you see yourself and this is the cliche about what i call call confidence and the way other people talk about this kind of depth of confidence the cliche is that you have to learn how to love yourself and that sentence there i think is the beginning of all sorts of trouble and inadequacy that people get themselves into i think that this concept of self-love that we have so it needs a rebranding it needs a huge rebranding in what sense by the way can i just interject one thing um what you're doing here is magic and profound what you just did are these three levels of confidence that's cutting edge work right there thank you it's outstanding work like stamp of approval awesome as is this next thing you're going to talk about which this by the way this core confidence is huge but also this idea that self-love needs a rebranding told you i read every word of the book so let's talk a little bit about that on it i'm honored that you spent the time i i i know this area intimately because i struggled with it for so much of my life okay this idea of loving yourself it's become a kind of bumper sticker right instagram meme yes and i don't think i think so much of the advice out there is so unhelpful and that's not me knocking the people giving the advice i just think that again i'm a hyper rational person i something needs to be bulletproof in its logic for me to be able to take it on board and whenever i would hear about self-love i would go well why okay then why should you love yourself and people would come up with answers like well because you're you're you know kind and because you're loving and because you're you know an amazing human being and because you're always there for people and because you work so hard and and and to me that would always in a way keep taking it back up to the identity level because it was like you what you're listing about if i if you're giving those as reasons i should love myself it's like you're listing all these traits you're right like i'm a top trump card i don't know if you have a version of that in america like like i'm a card that like these are all the attributes and because i score kindness at a nine out of ten that's why i should love myself and and i and then i was like but then what about days where i'm not kind what about days where i'm selfish what about times in my life where i screw up what about times where i don't work hard where i feel lazy what are you saying i'm not lovable on those days but i'm lovable on the others and then people would go no no no no no no it's not like that it's and i go well then why should i love myself if it's not based on those things and those things are really just another version of I love you because you get straight A's.

32:10That's right. I was literally just going to say that. If you bring home the report card, we love you. Exactly. I was literally just going to say that.

32:20So I was like, how do we get out of this system we have for ourselves? And by the way, the way they're saying it is also a reflection of what they're doing to themselves and the way they're judging themselves. So how do we get out of this report card system? And by the way, those things might be why you're proud of yourself. But if you're talking about a bulletproof recipe for self-love, then you can't be talking about attributes that I have on my best day and not my worst day. Because then you're saying I'm not lovable half the time or I'm not lovable the times when I do wrong. And by the way, the time I'm in need of self-love the most is when I'm doing everything wrong.

32:57and when I've screwed up and when I feel shame and I'm judging myself and hating myself because I've hurt someone or because I've made a mistake that's hurt me because I've done things in my life that I'm like, oh, I really damaged my life with that mistake. Oh, I've really hurt myself with that mistake. I can never go back from that. And I've spent years beating myself up about mistakes. So I need a better recipe for self-love than this. And I had to start looking for other models okay now if you look to the romantic model for love that doesn't work for self-love the romantic model for love is you know you fall for someone right and esther perel puts it beautifully in her work you know the difference between love and desire that that love is the coming together of two people but desire that thing that makes you want to fall in love with someone that exists in the space between two people.

33:53You need space for there to be desire. Love wants to bring you together. Space needs room to breathe. And by the way, the inverse of that is the saying, familiarity breeds contempt. So if you look at the relationship with yourself, the one where you've spent every waking moment in that relationship your entire life, since the day you were born you've been with yourself what relationship are you more familiar with than that there is no room for desire with yourself so the romantic model doesn't work the romantic model doesn't work and that's why we have I believe that's why we have so much contempt for ourselves because who are we more familiar with so I said okay the romantic we're not narcissists we can't look in a pool of water and instantly just fall in love with ourselves right That's what happened with narcissists in Greek mythology.

34:49For us, we look in the mirror every day and we're like, I hate myself. I can't get myself to love myself. What are you talking about? I barely like myself, let alone love myself. So, okay, romantic model doesn't work. What could work? If we could look at other places in life where there was a different kind of model for love, what would it be? I started looking at the parent-child relationship and saying, if you ask a parent why they love their child, how many, maybe some would, but how many parents as a percentage would start reeling off qualities of their kid? If you said, why do you love your kid?

35:27How many of them would go well because they get straight A's and because they're kind and because they're loving and because they're, if you ask most parents why you love your kid, they go, because it's my kid. What do you, they give you like almost a strange expression. It's unconditional. There's no condition to their performance on straight A's. Yeah, they're mine. What do you mean? It's my kid. Okay. That, for me, held a clue. What's the clue? That there are people in this life that we love for no other reason than they're ours. I feel the same way about my brothers. On their worst days, you ask me why I love my brothers.

36:03I'm like, because of my brothers. Now, not everyone feels like that about sibling, but it's common in the parent-child relationship. You can find it in other places, too. You can find it in the child and the stuffed toy relationship. Tell a child to get rid of the stuffed toy because you've got a better looking one. yeah i've got one that hasn't got fluff coming out the seams that child will be like what are you talking about that's my rabbit it's true it sounds crazy but i'm thinking of my dogs i know that sounds crazy no the dog is the perfect example if you can walk down the street and see someone walking the ugliest scraggliest mangiest dog and try walking up to that dog owner and saying i've got a more stately beautiful dog for you if you want to swap they'll be like what are you talking about this is my dog so so now imagine something this is the part that changed my life what if when someone said to us what if someone said to you ed why do you love yourself and instead of going to any of those traits or things you do on your best days or things you make think make you unique or special or all of that because all of that is just another way to judge yourself when you find someone who's better you're right what if instead someone said ed why do you love yourself and you said what do you mean because i'm mine i'm mine i have i'm my human think of it this way out of eight billion people on this earth you're the only person that's there to truly take care of this human there's no one else I think of it like our parents, whether they did a good job or not is irrelevant.

37:37They just had the responsibility for keeping us alive until a point where it was like, over to you. This is your job. Your job is to take care of this one human. And I sometimes think of it like the Lion King when Simba leaves the pride. I think of it like he left himself. Like the pride is him. It's his job to look after the pride. the the pride is you you're you're the one human that you have been given to take care of nothing else is certain you just the one thing you must do in this life is take care of this one human that you've had since the beginning and and anytime i'm being horrible to myself beating myself up anytime i'm telling myself i'm not good enough i go matt what's wrong with you you had one job You had one job.

38:32Take care of this human. And by the way, through that lens, comparing ourselves, because this is what makes us not like ourselves, is comparison. I'm comparing myself to this person, this person, this person. They've got more than me. They're better looking than me. They're more intelligent than me. They're whatever. Comparison makes no sense through that lens because you realize it's irrelevant. I can't exchange my human. Yes, right. You're right. I can't swap my human out for another human. I got given a human. It's me. Right. My only job is how happy can I make this human? And if I was treating it like that, like it was my job, it's not, I don't have to love myself as a noun.

39:12I have to love myself as a verb. It's my job to love this human. That changes everything because here's the big part that I think would help a lot of people is help me. When you look at it through that lens, you don't even have to like yourself to love yourself. you might not like yourself today and that's okay you might be frustrated with yourself you might have a lot of mistakes and things that are hurting you or things you wish you'd done differently you might not like the way you're living right now whatever you might not like yourself but you can still love yourself and you can the liking part come later oh brother brother whoa i introduced you today by saying i'm really proud of your evolution bro you're on a profound magic streak with your work right now.

39:59Listen to me. This is, everyone, you rewind the last 15 minutes of this interview, the last two things we've covered. Are you kidding me? Has there ever been, bro, that's some of the best stuff I've ever heard. And you made one distinction there because the self-love thing the other way, for me I have a hard time with is when someone's not, I just love myself the way I am and you know that they're capable of being healthier or not, you know, someone's shooting heroin and I've always thought like, yeah, I love myself the way I am, But what you've just made a distinction on there so profound is you can love yourself and not like yourself.

40:31And that not like yourself part is the part of you that can create change, that can say, look, I don't I love myself, but I don't like the way that I my nutrition is. I don't like the way that I am treating myself. So there's that distinction because that other the other side of the self-love thing that I think is like it's just accept everything you do. And you're but you've made the distinction between love and like. And that is a huge distinction. You must always love yourself because you're your only human. Bro, I'm going to repeat this like a hundred times the next two days, what you just said to people.

41:02That is some of the best stuff I have ever heard come out of someone's mouth about life and confidence and loving oneself. Like the best. Thank you. So good. That difference, I think, is so crucial because it also makes a distinction between when you really love yourself, it starts from a place of total acceptance. And again, acceptance isn't I like everything about myself. Acceptance is just I'm making peace with my starting point. Oh, it's so good. And that changes everything because there's a big difference between self-acceptance and self-esteem. Self-esteem is built by what we do. Self-esteem is built by sticking to your promises and all of the things that you talk about all the time that build that pride and that knowledge that you can make things happen, that you need reference points for.

41:58And when you do hard things, you build reference points, and that builds that self-esteem. But self-acceptance on this deepest level is about making peace with where you're starting from. And that is one of the most beautiful things you can ever do for yourself. And by the way, all self-esteem, I believe, starts from that ultimate acceptance of what our starting point is. Because if you don't accept your true starting point and if you're lying about your true starting point, you won't even feel good when you do things that should give you self-esteem. Like if, here's a fun example. If I had, let's say I'm 100 grand in debt.

42:47But I've told the world that I have 100 grand in the bank. Everyone, my friends and family, they all think I have 100 grand in the bank. But really, I have 100 grand of credit card debt. now if I do something wonderful every day I wake up and I work and I save I invest and I am sensible with my money and I start paying it off and let's say I pay off 20 % of it I'm now down to 80 grand in debt that's amazing you've paid off a fifth of your debt it's amazing that should be celebrated but you can't celebrate it because everyone thinks you have 100 grand in the bank. And so something that actually should have given you a true milestone in your self-esteem.

43:34You weren't honest about where you're really starting from. No, and so no one can celebrate you. No one can support you. You feel alone in it, and you feel like, you don't feel like you made any progress. All you feel is, I'm still 80 grand in debt, and everyone thinks I have 100 grand in the bank. And that happens, by the way, at the end of so many marriages, where someone is getting divorced and the world has felt like that was a great marriage from the outside. And you've been talking about it as if everything is fine because you've been afraid to talk about just how bad it's been and just how unhappy you've been or your partner's been or just how, in some cases, abusive that relationship has been.

44:14And now you find yourself on the brink of divorce. Again, it's that I'm losing my identity here because everyone on the identity level, everyone has thought that I'm in this happy marriage. But when I work with people, the moment they can accept what their true starting point is, which is that I haven't had the marriage I've been telling people I had for the last 10 years. I have not been happy. This has been crushing my soul or my confidence. I am starting again in this area of my life. maybe in some ways I'm starting again financially because this divorce is going to devastate me financially maybe I'm going to have to truly like I'm going to have to go and get a job I never thought I'd have to go and get I'm going to have to fend for myself again in way I'm going to have to move out of this house and into an apartment I'm going to like all of these things that that have to happen you have to strip back all of the layers of what everyone thinks I am and just say this is my actual starting point today and people are so afraid to do that and I understand because we're terrified of the loss of ego and the reputation and what would happen if people didn't realize I wasn't where I thought I was and this identity I've constructed for myself but if you can start from that place of total acceptance and almost imagine like okay let's just play an experiment for a moment imagine i just got given this human today and this human starting point it was like a video game this human starting point is they're starting newly single again at 50 they are financially they they have this much in the bank they have to go and you know get themselves back on their feet if you saw that as like a video game and you just got given this human starting today to play this game you'd be excited you'd be like what fun thing to get to do but it's all that baggage and that identity that makes it all seem like it's the end of the world and the beautiful thing is when you take even the tiniest step forward from that place but now the world now you're honest with the world and yourself most importantly when you take a tiny step forward

46:34it may to your previous self who was putting on the mask of where you were it may have been nothing but to you now from an honest starting point it's a miracle and it is a sign that you're growing and moving and that life is changing and that you that the confidence that comes from that is real and it's yours the gains are yours at that point okay unbelievable i'm just sitting here brother like so like you when i hear something i put it through my stress test or litmus test of validity right so as you're talking let me tell you what i was thinking of i want to unpack a little bit of that and then this has been so good like i have a hundred more questions i'm going to get to one more which frustrates me but so my dad you know profound thing in my life is my dad getting sober.

47:22And I was thinking about what would have had, what happened when my dad got sober, three elements took place. Number one, my dad had to actually love himself enough at that point to have, to accept where he really was. So what you just said a minute ago is so profound. You have to have self-acceptance, right? So my dad had to love himself enough to accept, I can't control this anymore. I'm an alcoholic. My life is out of control. simultaneously he did not like the way he was behaving or like himself so there is a massive distinction between those things in fact that not liking it is one of the things that caused him to do it but here's how profound it is once he got sober to your point and admitted what his real starting point was then the smallest tiniest step was huge that first day of being sober was a big deal.

48:1130 days, you get a chip in the AA program. Just 30 days of not drinking. There's millions of people who go 30 days without drinking. But to my dad, that was massive, even though for most people, that's a small step. But it started with loving himself to accept where he was and acknowledge that as the starting point. That's only when you can create change. He didn't like himself at that time. In fact, he didn't like himself at all. But that is the recipe and the formula bro what you're working on right here is cutting edge huge stuff for people to understand like everyone I don't you know I always tell you sure you need to share this episode with anybody who wants to build some baseline confidence create some level of change and have these relationships with other people in themselves and obviously with life so good Matthew

49:00and and just to add one more thing there when when we do that over time i i almost would encourage people to look at it the same way we look at parenting which is that so many of the rewards come later that you know when i talk to parents and maybe this is true for you ed they talk about so many of the rewards being when they've grown up it's true and then you get the reward for all of that love that you gave these people that they may not have appreciated at the time or they may not have really seen for what it was at the time or how much you were doing for them but it comes later and if if we're starting again with ourselves today you can see yourself like a teenager who might not appreciate it right now you know but but sooner or later you're the the like will catch up to the love um brother unbelievable i gotta tell you unbelievable um let me ask you one last question by the way you guys you need to get love life you can tell this is a book by the way there's parts in there about dating because it's you know that's matthew's go zone.