How to know if it's Love

0:28Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. And my wife Lauren and I, we talk about our own personal definitions of what love is. We talk about in this episode the difference of what love is versus being in love. So like what it's like to love somebody versus being in love with somebody. We talk about the journey that we have both been on, especially Lauren and her self-love journey, where she used to have a really negative self-talk and how she learned to love herself more and accept herself more and how that changed many aspects of herself and her world. We also talk about vulnerability in a relationship, how to break down emotional walls, and also how to have empathy and understanding for other people and to be able to love other people, even people that you're not in a romantic relationship with, and how to have empathy and understanding for other people as well and how to love other people, even ones that you're not in a romantic relationship with.

1:24And then last, we talk about how to encourage your partner to grow and to evolve and to become better so that you can both grow and evolve in your relationship as well. So in this special Valentine's Day, this is the episode of What is Love with my wife, Lauren. Hope you enjoy it. I have a special guest with me back for round two. I have my wife, Lauren, who's going to be with me today. And we're going to be talking about what is love. this is uh it's gonna be a deep deep conversation and lauren and i are gonna give our perspectives which feel right for us but doesn't mean that it's internationally right for every single person yeah it doesn't mean it is the answer it's just ours from where we're currently standing sure yeah and so so lauren welcome to the podcast again nice to see you thanks we're recording this on the same day so we're in the same clothes for those of you guys that are watching us on YouTube.

2:19We're wearing the same thing because it's the same day. But we're going to talk about love. And this is a topic that I think is really good to dive into. And I can't talk. I mean, I could talk about it by myself, but it makes a lot more sense if I have my wife, who I've been with for over 10 years, who has helped me get better at discovering and figuring out what love is. And I love love. And Lauren loves love. And so we entered into the relationship with completely different experiences of life. And so let's start off with you. When you think about love, I want you to share yours. And I know that your dad used to ask you a question when you used to go to bed every single night.

3:00So if you could share that with the audience and we could start off there. Yeah, I think this is something so sweet and special that my dad started when I was, I mean, I couldn't even tell you how old I was, but it was just a ritual that started every single night. Before I went to bed, he would tuck me in and he would say, what does love mean? And I would come up with whatever I thought love meant that day. Love means, you know, making breakfast with your family. Love means giving, you know, your friend a hug or whatever, you know, came to mind for me that day. But it was really cute because every day, I mean, every night that was the question he would ask me.

3:40Yeah. And so, uh, Coming from that, when you first came into our relationship, what was your view on love? What did you think that it was? What is love? What was love at that point in time for you? Yeah. I feel like I have been really fortunate to come from a childhood and a background where love was very abundant. I mean, like everybody gave and showed love very freely. um my my mom was a stay-at-home mom and so I had her with me at all times and she was like my best friend growing up I remember like in high school we went on a girl's trip and my mom was the only mom that couldn't come and I legitimately cried at the airport saying bye to my mom and like I was a teenage girl you know I was probably like 16 or 17 um yeah like just I loved my parents my parents loved me I had two little sisters we all just I mean yeah my experience of I was just I'm super grateful and very blessed with how loving of a background I was brought up in and so um my perspective was definitely different with my dad not being around and my father being an alcoholic And so I never felt like I wasn't loved, but I would say that, you know, it was definitely a different perspective that we both brought into relationship.

5:04And I want to talk about and share our perspectives now that we're in this relationship. And we had a conversation a couple of months ago and we were talking about a friend in a relationship and you said, you know, oh yeah, but she really loves him. And I said, yeah, but is she in love with him? and then we had this deep conversation about what's the difference between love like loving somebody versus being in love with somebody and so I gave you my my definition and I don't think you gave me your definition because I think we arrived at home and then we went on to something else yeah so I'll give my definition in a second but what do you think from your perspective is the difference between loving somebody and being in love with somebody yeah so I feel like I have love for other people.

5:50Um, you know, I really care about them. They mean a lot to me. I will genuinely love a lot of my friends, you know, pretty quickly. Like I just appreciate and have gratitude for these people and I love them. Um, to me being in love is a little bit different because, and again, I think this is like where I stand right now, cause this is always evolving and changing. But as I was thinking about it, to me, it's somebody that you can be completely vulnerable with and feel safe to be your full self around. You don't have to edit yourself in any way. And you want to have every experience of life with this person.

6:31What I mean by that is like, there's friends that I really like to go to, you know, to travel with, or there's friends that I like to do podcasts with, or there's friends that I want to just go shopping with, right? Like there's different people for different things and I love them. But then there's also times where like, I don't necessarily want to be around that person, not because there's anything wrong with them, but it's, there's, there's just, you know, there's something there that like, maybe I don't feel safe opening up to them about certain things or maybe doing certain things. But when you're in love with somebody, I feel like you're in such a state of being your true self that you want more from your experience with them and you want to experience everything with them.

7:13Not only just like being together and showing them love, but like passion and even whether it's like intimately or sexually, like you want that with them too, right? Cause I don't want that with everybody, but being in love with somebody, that's such a beautiful part of the human experience is the intimacy. And that I feel like is another added component of being in love with someone. That's something else you want to experience with them. Yeah, I would agree with you on a lot of that. And the thing that I had said to you that has over the past couple of months kind of matured in my mind if I've started to get deeper into it is I think that there's definitely a lot of people that I love.

7:56But I think when you're in love with somebody, I think there's an aspect of realizing that there are parts of myself from childhood, from growing up, from other relationships and heartbreaks that has not been fully healed. And you make me feel safe enough to be able to work on those things with you. And I think that that's what I've come to realize is that I think that, and I was in, we were in LA last week and I was, I was on Matthew Hussey's podcast and he, you know, has a podcast called, uh, love life and he is a dating coach and stuff. And we were talking about this and I said, I think that one of the highest reasons for being in a relationship with somebody is I'm working on myself.

8:46I'm trying to love and accept myself even more and trying to become a more evolved version of myself. But I think that there's still some aspects of myself for most people where I can like, when someone's working on self-love, like they can get, if they're working really hard, like 95 % there, but there's still about 5 % where it's like, yeah, but if they only knew how, whatever I am, then maybe they won't accept me. And so a lot of people don't get fully, truly vulnerable with somebody because they think if she only knew this about me, she wouldn't want to be with me. If he only knew this about me.

9:20And so they, they open up almost fully, but they don't fully open up. I think when you're like truly, fully in love with somebody is when you can say, here's all of me and I feel safe to be vulnerable. Cause vulnerable, if you look at the actual root word of the word vulnerable, it's vulnerable, which means in Greek, um, to be injured. So like open to be injured in some sort of way. Yeah. I think it's about like, even if you're somebody who's working hardcore on yourself of loving yourself to accepting yourself, you'll get like 95 % there. And sometimes we need to see somebody else accept all of us and still love us for us to be able to go, yeah, maybe I can love that extra 5 % of myself.

9:56And I think that sometimes just having that person reflect love for who we are and accept us and not try to change us. That person, and it's one of the highest senses of what we can be in a relationship for is that person can help us heal ourselves by showing us what it looks like to accept and love ourselves. what a relief it is when you can be that vulnerable and have it met with love by somebody that you really care about like that feels so good and I think that's where the healing starts to happen is because if like for me when there's been times where I'm like oh this is the not cute real part of me that like just hoping for the best but like I'm gonna just go into this and be fully transparent, fully vulnerable, and you meet that with love, I really believe in everything that you have feedback on, right?

10:55Like I value your opinion. And so when you give me feedback, that's in alignment with love for something that I was judging within myself, it's like, oh my God, it gives you just like such a different perspective. And then you can feel so much relief in that. And I think that's what gets you back to that state where you are more in alignment with your true self, which I think we're all love. I think the true version of all of ourselves is so much more in alignment with love. So then it puts you into that state of being in love. Yeah, I would agree with you. And I think that, you know, I think that I have come to realize that Hollywood has really screwed up a lot of things for a lot of people is because we think, I think that we can fuse love with lust, like sweep me off my feet and I'm head over heels and like you complete me and I don't, I personally, this is my opinion, don't believe that any other person completes another person.

11:48I think that we have to complete ourselves and then we try to bring, so I don't see it as like, I'm 50 % me and Lauren's 50 % her. And together we make a hundred percent of a great relationship. The way I see it is like, I'm a hundred percent working on myself and trying to get to a hundred percent of potential of Rob and healed Rob. Lauren's working on herself to be 100 % of heel Lauren, the best version of herself. And we both bring the best version of ourselves to the relationship. Because I think a lot of times people get into relationships looking for somebody to fill a void versus just saying like, hey, I'm going to show up as the best version of myself and bring that to the relationship.

12:29It's almost like when you look at some people's attachment styles is they attach to somebody else because of the fact that they're looking for that person to complete a part of them that doesn't feel whole or feels like there's a void in some sort of way. Yeah. And that, I mean, it just puts so much pressure and expectation on someone else to be something. Right. Relationships are already hard enough. Yeah. And I think when you look at the phrase like in love, um, like I've heard people, uh, I heard a coach that I follow say this before, and he was saying, you know, someone asked him like, Hey, you know, how you been?

13:00And he's like, I'm in love. And they're like, Oh, with who? And he's like, I'm not in love with anybody. I'm in, I'm in a state of love. And so what I think it is, is that when you're with somebody who you are in love with is they bring out a state of you that exists inside of you. That's been there forever. That might just have been dormant for a very long time. And they make you realize that you don't have to have your walls up. You don't have to feel unsafe. You don't have to feel like there's something wrong with you. But we can be in a state of love together. And anybody, I think, can bring out love for you.

13:35And you can, you don't have to be like, I'm in love with you, but I can be in a state of love and try to bring that love to anyone that I go and I meet. But being with you and seeing you accept me and me accepting myself through you accepting me too, makes me go, you know what? What if I'm just in a state of love more? And when I go and I, you know, the cashier asked me how my day's doing. I try to bring that state of love to try to impact him or her. Not so I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm in love with him. but it's like I just want to bring a state of love to them which maybe impacts them and changes their day in some sort of way and they can bring it to another person yeah I mean how how amazing is that yeah it's quite amazing that's sweet yeah and we will be right back and now back to the show I'm curious your thoughts on it the thoughts on being vulnerable because this is something that we've worked on together um where I had trouble with being vulnerable you definitely had trouble with being vulnerable, but my even more trouble with being vulnerable made you have more trouble with being vulnerable.

14:35So I'm curious your thoughts on, you know, how it's progressed for you, how it's changed through our relationship, um, with the aspect of just being able to be truly vulnerable with, with me. It's interesting because I think, I mean, again, we talk about like coming back to like our true selves and being in love and my natural self is much more open and I think that because you were having a little bit of a hard time with fully opening up to the way I expressed love when we first got together I started pumping the brakes a little bit and I started to create an idea in my mind of how you wanted me to be.

15:19And of course I wanted to be in alignment with that. So I started to withhold love and that creates a lot of issues on two levels. Number one, I'm withholding love from this person that I care about, which is limiting your experience of me. and also it's just not natural for me to be that way and so when I realized that was happening it was a huge shift for us in our relationship because I could tell there was like a wall building but at that point in time I didn't have like a whole lot of self-awareness I just felt like there was just something blocking us right and it's like we had gotten to this like capacity which I knew it was, there was possible for there to be more.

16:03I knew there was more out there for us, but the level of vulnerability, it just wasn't there. Right. So once that was brought to our attention, I think that that was actually, was that through John when we went and did the therapy? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. That I actually became more conscious of the fact that I was actually withholding love. Right. I thought that I was just being who you wanted me to be. And I also, So I wasn't aware of how much I was actually holding back until that point in time. Yeah. And I remember him saying he was like, uh, and for those of you guys that John was a therapist that we saw together about two and a half years into our relationship.

16:41And, um, you, you know, me being having less capacity at that point in time to be vulnerable and not really knowing as much about what love was or feeling it as much. you kind of met me where I was versus being in your natural state. Right. It was that you were actually meeting me where I was and you weren't giving more. Yeah. And one of the things that he had said is, is, you know, it's Rob, it's, it's your job is to try to open up a little bit more in the relationship and to try to try to be more open and allow yourself to be more open. And Lauren, you need to teach him how to love. That changed everything.

17:18He's like, you're actually the teacher. And I was like, Oh, okay. And I had never seen it that way before. So it was, that was a huge eye opener and a really good perspective to understand what was going on. And how do you think that shifted things for you? And then also shifted things in our relationship. Oh, I mean, it was like huge because I started to understand, obviously my understanding of everything got so much more clear. And I took my role very seriously because, because I cared about you and also i was able to they had like a new window into why you were the way you were it wasn't just because initially i think i probably had the perception like i'm not good enough for this right he's withholding something from me because i'm not enough right was the initial story i kind of formulated from that but then having the understanding of okay rob is the way he is because of what he experienced and it's not that he's withholding he's just he needs to learn Like he just doesn't have the context or the background to be where you are with love.

18:15And I was like, oh my God, I, I just had never realized that. And so once I, I understood the assignment, I knew exactly what I needed to do. And I can't say I stepped into it like right away. It took me a little bit of time to. Took you a while to feel safe, to give me more love. Right. Like a while. It wasn't like a week or two. It was like slowly over years. I had a better understanding, but then it did take me some time to really feel safe to, I guess it was like, I was still a little bit afraid that I wasn't going to, it wasn't going to be reciprocated. Yeah. And for whatever reason, I, that, that was important for me at that point.

18:52Yeah. And that's a really important part, which is that I want everyone to kind of know is that if you're not conscious of the stories going on in your head, you're never really in a full relationship with somebody. You're in a relationship that the image of them, you're in a relationship with the image that you built of them in your head. And in fact, you're not even fully in a relationship with that image. You're in a relationship with the image of yourself that you've built in your head. And so that might not make any sense. And I'll give people context of exactly what I mean. So there might be something where it's like, we've all done this before.

19:25It's like, I want to say something, right? But if I say this, she's going to say this back to me. And then I'm going to say this to her. And then it's going to turn into this thing. And we basically make an entire story in our head. Yeah. And it's not that I am in relation with you. I'm making a image of me in my head of how I'm going to react. I'm making an image of you of how you're going to react. And I'm making a whole story of how those two images are going to react versus actually just coming to you and being a certain way. And so you were thinking probably, and you can let me know if I'm incorrect, is like, okay, consciously, yes, I want to open myself up and I want to be show Rob more love.

20:03I want to be more vulnerable with him. But if I do, well, he's probably not going to fully open up back to me. And if he doesn't fully open back to me, then I'm going to be the one that's going to get hurt. And if I'm not, it's going to get hurt, then I'm going to act this way. And I might say this thing to him. And so literally in reality, I'm still might be sitting there like, Hey, I'm over here. And I might just be hanging out, working, doing whatever it is. But there's a whole story that's going on in your head. Right. That's actually getting in the way of us as two humans connecting. Yeah, it was totally me going into protection mode because I wasn't allowing myself to be just, you know, my true self, which is so much more loving.

20:39I think another key part of that that's really important too is, you know, I've heard people say, and we've talked about it many times, like, you know, I'm into working on myself. I'm into personal. I'm in this person I'm in a relationship with is not. And one of the things I think I've really become, I've come to terms with the most as of recently is someone doesn't have to have the same interests as you, but what the most important aspect is, is that they are putting in the effort to, if there is a problem, they're putting in actual effort to try to overcome that problem together with you. And I think that that's one thing that shifted a lot for our relationship is that whenever there was something that came up, I think we've both brought it up to each other.

21:20We've gotten better at communicating, of course. But also at the same time, as we both started working on each other, like we started working on ourselves, I feel like the relationship got a whole lot easier because we realized that it's almost never the other person's fault. It's usually our reaction to that person that ends up being their fault. Yeah. It's highlighting something within you. Yeah. I think everything shifted once I started working on myself more because you'd been working on yourself for some time before I really started to dive deeper into my own growth. And, um, it does change everything for the relationship because you can only really love someone to the extent that you're loving yourself.

22:04Yeah, sure. And I think that, that one of the things that's important too, and I love to hear your perspective on this is when we're talking about building the image of somebody in your head and what's going to happen and in the whole thing, one of the things that I found with you that really shifted, uh, was you started working yourself to get out of your head so much and more into your heart. So you started actually like being like, well, I want to get into my heart. I want to get into my body. I want to start to, to feel things. And you years ago used to three, four years ago, used to say like, you were, you never told me how mean you were to yourself in your head.

22:36And then became real. You were like, I'm going to tell you. And you started telling me, I was like, damn, you, you suck in your head to yourself. Like you were just such an asshole. And then you started going on this, this, this journey of like self-love yep and you started working on yourself and i actually now that we're speaking about it i don't know we've never actually spoken this i think our relationship became better as you actually started working on loving yourself more right what did what did that journey look like for you for people who are out there that are struggling with self-love or they are too negative to themselves in their heads yeah well i was just i think what ended up kicking all of that off was one day you asked me you were like are you happy and I was like no and it wasn't because of anything that was going on around me or within our relationship it had everything to do with my self-talk and then I finally decided to say out loud all of the things that I was saying to myself in my head and it started the moment I woke up and I would just start my routine of just shit talking to myself.

23:38And we, yeah, of course I was not happy because the things I was saying were horrible. And so once I was, what would you say to yourself? Oh, I'd be like, okay, well, here you are not getting up again on time because you're just so lazy and you have nothing to get up for anyway. So like, you know, you don't have any purpose. And of course you don't have any purpose because you're stupid. Right. And so it was like just this endless thing, like, oh, well, of course you're running late because you can't get your shit together enough. And oh, look at you. Are you breaking out again because you're ugly and you're gross like I mean I was horrible to myself it was like every single thing that I would say and at that time you know I was physically manifesting all kinds of crazy stuff right like I I was breaking out so bad so it's like everything that I was feeling on the inside was coming out was coming out on the outside and stuff yeah I had eczema I had a whole I mean for me it showed up with a bunch of different skin issues and I was really struggling.

24:34And the more I started to like physically manifest all of these skin issues, of course, like the more gross I would feel. And then it would just, it was a cycle. And so, um, you know, I was doing everything skincare wise and I became obsessed. And then some one common thread, whenever I was reading and reading and trying to figure out what to do for my skin was always like remove stress anxiety and um and and you need to just care for yourself you know self-care and then that's like a combination of that and then you also asked me if I was happy I was like you know what's the emotional side of everything that I haven't tackled like I'm just being such an asshole to myself and so saying out loud what I was saying to myself in my head really made me more conscious of everything and I was like this is disgusting because I would never say those things to anybody else.

25:29So why the hell was I saying it to myself? No. And then from there, I just was really consciously shifting the things that I would say. And what did that look like? So like for someone else who's like not good with self-love, like what was the practice like when you would notice that pop up? Did you have something that you would do or go back to? I would have to switch it. Whatever I said about my, if I said something mean, I would have to say something nice. And I also worked really hard at reprogramming. So I got mala beads and I would pick, I would just Google like, what is a self-love mantra?

26:05And I sat there with my mala beads. And if I, even for one bead felt like I became unconscious and was just going through the motions, I would go back and re say that mantra and be very present with every single bead. so that every day I was reprogramming what I was saying to myself. And that was my ritual in the morning every single day. And then what ended up happening is I remember, I remember one day I was making the bed and I was, I randomly said something to all I said to myself out of nowhere was Lauren, you're so awesome. And I was like, holy shit. Like this is not something old Lauren would have said.

26:46And I didn't have like a real good reason for like feeling like I was super awesome. I mean, I was literally just making the bed, but it was then that I knew I had finally created a change in myself because I said something nice for no reason. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think it's, um, that's a big piece of like getting out of your head and getting into your heart because I don't think your true self, there's like our true self, which is who we come into this world as. And there's our conditioned self, which is who we've built ourself into being based off of all the programmings and patterns and what our parents want us to be and what society wants to be and what bullies say to us.

27:18And we reprogram ourselves and we accidentally program ourselves. And basically what it comes down to is you went, you were in your head so much. You're like, I'm going to get into my heart and your heart. If you ever get into your heart is not going to, your heart's not an asshole. No, your head's the asshole, right? Oh, for sure. It can be the asshole depending on who you are and how you're raised. And, um, you, you kind of got a little bit more into your heart. And, and I think that that actually shifted a lot of stuff for you because Because I think that now that we're talking about it, I think that a lot of times, like, because of the fact that you were so mean to yourself, there wasn't like an underlying agitation that was always there.

27:53Oh, for sure. And that would kind of show up in our relationship where it would be like, you'd be very short fuse and you'd want to blow up about something. Yeah. You would make a story about something. And so actually, I think that actually shifted a lot in our relationship when you started shifting your internal story within yourself. Right. And I think that it comes back to when we talk about love and we talk about acceptance is what I have found with most people is that what we're usually searching for in the external world is actually what we're searching for in ourself. And so if someone's sitting out there like, well, I want someone to love me or I want my husband to accept me or I want my girlfriend to accept me more.

28:33Sure, that's a piece of it. but there's also a difference of going, okay, what do I want from them? I want, I want them to accept me more. Do I accept myself? Yeah, I accept myself. Okay. Do I accept all aspects of myself? Oh shit. Maybe I don't. Do I love myself? Oh fuck. I don't know if I do. I think I do. Maybe I do. And so it's, it's really about going, okay, if, if I can actually learn to love and accept myself more for all aspects of who I am, the good sides of me and the quote unquote bad sides of me. And I can go, I'm just going to love and accept all of it. You don't even have to love all of it, just accept all of it.

29:11Because what I believe is that, is that we have built ourselves into being who we think we need to be in order to survive, in order to fit in, in order to be what we're supposed to be in society, whatever it might be. And in turn, what we do is we build ourself into a kind of a different person than we truly are. And I think that the problem with self-love is that and the reason why it's so hard is because we, our true self doesn't accept our conditioned self. And if you can't accept them to something, you can't truly love it. And I think that the true state of a human is love. Oh yeah. But we get in our own way because there's aspects of ourself that we don't like and we don't accept.