3 Secrets To Building Deep & Meaningful Relationships

32:05Now what? You're still holding onto it. No, thinking that way and feeling that way. And that person is no longer in your life. You're defined by that story, by that past event. Okay. The person is truly sincere and thinks there's something other than that emotion of resentment. What's on the other side of it? Am I willing to sit through it long enough? And no matter how much the pain is or what my body does, I'm going to sit this one out. I'm going to work with my body and keep bringing it back into the present moment. It's like training an adult. You keep doing it over and over again. You stay, you stay, you stay.

32:42I'm not getting up. I'm not eating. I'm not moving. We're going to keep lowering the volume. You keep reconditioning the body to a new mind. Sooner or later, it surrenders. It surrenders to a new mind. When that occurs, there's that liberation of energy. And energy moves into the heart. And you feel love for yourself. You feel a respect for yourself. You feel an honor for yourself. Something, you took your power back. You built your field. Something feels right. When we look at the data of people who do this, and we see their scans, their brain scans, or we see their HRV measurements, and they get good at this, we measure their oxytocin levels.

33:16Now, oxytocin is the love chemical, right? It's made in the pituitary gland. It is the love chemical that causes us to bond, to connect, to unify. And when I showed the values of oxytocin levels with these people to scientists, they're sometimes 200 times above normal. Now, that's not a little love. That's a lot of love. It's an explosion of love. It's a lot of love. And so oxytocin signals nitric oxide. And nitric oxide signals another chemical called endothelial-derived relaxing factor. And that chemical causes the arteries in your heart and your lungs to literally open up and blood flows into your heart and your heart is filled with energy.

34:03Just like when it engorges the sexual organs, there's an engorgement of blood in there and it activates it with energy and there's a mind that's created. It's a consciousness. Now, this one opens up. It's a whole different consciousness. In fact, the research on oxytocin shows that the slightest elevation in oxytocin, it's impossible to hold a grudge. It's impossible You say, dude, I feel so good. I'm good. No, no, no, I'm good. I'm really good. Now, that kind of state means I don't want to feel anything else but this. So, I am not going to compromise myself or my energy to a lower denominator just because of you.

34:46In fact, I'm really good around you. I'm really okay. I feel so good. I don't want to judge you because I don't want to lose this feeling. So then imagine being around a cat like that. Being around a person like that, that's really easy to be around because they're okay with themselves. And when they're okay with themselves, they relate with people differently. In fact, they relate with them unconditionally. They just love them unconditionally. And that causes an attraction. It causes a bond, right? So one of the things I learned last year in watching people in this work and week-long events, I do my best to pay really close attention.

35:20I looked at an audience one day and I looked out in the room. We just finished a walking meditation. Everybody sat down and I kind of glanced around the room and everybody had this radiant smile. And I said to them, hey, who's making you happy, by the way? Who? Who's making you happy? There's nobody doing that to you. You're doing that to you. You're making yourself. I mean, you're not relying on anybody in your life to do that. Now, that is an attractive energy. That's the person who relates well with money. There's a relationship with money. They relate well with people. They're very giving.

36:00They're very caring. They want nothing in return. They're more present because that's who they're practicing being. And so there's a natural affinity, a natural attraction, because the person is really present and they're really okay. And something is different about them. Something is unique about them. So the relationship we have with people when we're in that state where we're really okay with ourselves, or we've made ourselves happy, we're really happy with ourselves, allows us to love just about... We'll find beauty through the lens of love in anything, and no one else sees it, right? Getting there is the overcoming process.

36:41That is what creates self-love. Now, to be very clear, I think many people, I think I'll include myself, we confuse pleasure with love. And it's not the same thing. What's the difference? Well, pleasure is doing something that makes you feel good, but has nothing to do with love. Love has everything to do with something that you feel independent of pleasure. It's when you overcome yourself and you arrive at your goal, you reach your dream, never give up on yourself. You had hard moments. You fell to your knees. You brushed yourself up. You got up. You showed up again for yourself. It's amazing to watch this.

37:24I watch it at week-long events. I watch people literally change in seven days, and they showed up when they said, I'm too tired. I have a handicap. I have a disease. I don't understand how rough my past is. I'm an addict. I was in jail. My mother was abusive. They showed up in spite of I'm too old, whatever that is. You keep showing up for yourself. You start feeling really worthy, really worthy to receive. And the universe only gives us what we think we're worthy of receiving. So when you're in love, you're in a whole lot less lack. And if you're in a whole lot less lack, in a sense, you're moving closer to source.

38:09And that's a really good feeling. That's a really good feeling. So practice that every day. Practice that every day and your relationships with people, your relationship with your body, your relationship with money, your relationship with your phone, your relationship with your car, your relationship with everything would be different. Yes. And so the overcoming process is the becoming process. You make yourself happy. You no longer need anybody to do that for you. You have a person in your life who is conscious that wants to make themselves happy and share their joy and their love with somebody.

38:53Yes. Well, you have something really unique. It's really special. It's really, and love is a bonding, a very bonding chemical. It's a very bonding energy, right? Like if you look at oxytocin levels in mammals, you typically see it when the female has just given birth and she's grooming the offspring and she's touching it and licking it and nudging it and taking care of it. There's oxytocin levels are released through the limbic brain, through the midbrain. that's the bonding brain. They're smelling, they're connecting, and they're attracting one another. It's creating a connection. A honeymoon stage relationship, where there's a lot of intense connection, a lot of intimacy, releases oxytocin, creates monogamy, creates a bond, creates unity, creates connection, right?

39:41So I show the values to some of the scientists and some of my colleagues, and they see oxytocin levels 200 times. Normally, they're like, dude, what are you doing? like the foot is going up there's a couple's week what is going on here and i say you know i say the same thing i say number one i want people to fall in love with the future just like they've fallen with another person because if they do they're bonded to that future just like they're bonded to another person secondly if you truly truly want to connect to pure love to source to singularity to oneness to wholeness to the fertile void to vacuum energy whatever you want to call that universal intelligence that's pure consciousness that's pure love if you hit you hit that moment where you hit connection you will feel that arousal of love it'll be it'll be profoundly memorable for you and it's it's it's not chemical it's electric it's very electric wow so you get a few of those it becomes you and you become it and so your love for the divine your love for the mystical, your love for the unseen, your love for source.

40:48The love affair begins. And it's like being in love. No one can tell you you're in love. You just know it. And it gets really hard to miss a date. Imagine you go and connect every day and you start your day from that place. That's a relationship. That's a relationship with the world that you're bringing. So I think the overcoming process is part of it. I think it's practicing getting to that place. I think it's practicing opening our hearts more, moving out of survival, working with our bodies. In survival, it's not a time to love. It's just, it's not a time to communicate. So your relationship that's built on emotions other than love, there's going to be a limit to love, right?

41:31And so you got betrayed, someone else got betrayed, you get together, talk about your betrayal, work yourself up into a froth, feel the emotions, get emotional agreement, get a connection. You're connecting the same energy, the same emotion, because you're sharing the same information. You're sharing the same memories, and you can relate with one another. That's a certain level of consciousness. For all the people that you've seen have successful long-term relationships, what is the thing that you see them do extremely well versus... Forgive. Oh. Yeah. They forgive each other. They forgive... They forgive the emotion.

42:05Now, the emotion is going to keep you in the past, right? So they have to be able to forgive. What happens if we don't forgive something that our partner or in a relationship does? If it hurts us or they said something or they did something, maybe it was really bad or just... We can't forgive, you'll never have love. Wow. The love that we withhold is the pain that we experience lifetime after lifetime. You know, it's how it is. Say it again, the love that we withhold is the pain that we experience lifetime after lifetime. Oh man. And then when we master our emotions, we master our creations. So that's a creation.

42:43And you have to overcome the memory and the emotion. And when you do, you belong to the future instead of the past. So otherwise, well, that's a perfect explanation of karma. You live by that emotion, that emotion is going to drive a certain behavior and cause you to think a certain way and you're on the wheel. People are living the same lifetime every day. They're in cycles. They're living the same lifetime after lifetime because they haven't overcome the emotion. No one's doing that to them. The soul can't go to the future. It can't go. It can't go if it's stuck in the emotion of the past. So the soul has to overcome the event by overcoming the emotion.

43:25Forget what happened. You'll never hear me say to anybody, tell me your story. I will never say that. I would never do that to you. I would say, overcome the emotion. And then the story ends. Wow. Because the memory without that emotional charge is the wisdom we get from the experience. We never have to do it again. And now the soul says, okay, I'm ready for the next adventure. Okay, so I was betrayed. Okay, I learned the lesson. I did this, I did that. Okay, I got it. But we discovered that when people analyze their life within some disturbing emotion, they make their brain worse 100 % of the time.

44:00Holy cow. Because you're thinking in the past, the answer is not there. Overcome the emotion. Actually, thinking about it makes the brain worse. It drives them into higher states of arousal. Overcome the emotion of the answer to your own question. Because it's not in the known. It's not in the past. You got to get beyond it. So, I say to people, when they ask me questions, just seven days, just cross the river. You're going to have the answers to your own questions. There's going to be no better life coach for you than you. Right. Right. So then the person who shows up worthy in their life, the person who's happy because they're making themselves happy, that's such an unknown for everybody that they've just left and showed back up in their life or they usually complain with.

44:43They're like, oh my God, this person's joined the cult. Oh my God, this person seems way too happy and they're happy without me. And really it's just an energy that the person has broken out of the chains. They freed themselves from the chains of the past. right and so that doesn't mean that they don't get frustrated don't get angry they just don't waste their time staying there because living by that emotion will create a gap between the way things appear and the way things really are wow and if we respond during that period we'll always say the same thing should have never said that i should never done i should have sent that email or that text you're altered in some way so learning to shorten the refractory period of your emotional responses is emotional intelligence right and getting really good at that then allows a person to show up differently.

45:27And when people create the life they want, which happens a lot, why would they hold a grudge? Why would they do that? They trust. They free themselves and they free that person. Everybody's been betrayed. Everybody's been hurt. But if your life is wonderful, who cares? Like, whoa, I wasn't conscious or whatever. And then now it's when your life isn't working and it ain't working and you're living by the same emotion and that past is you're going to keep it alive but you're the only one keeping it alive where did where is it where is your past where is it it's only there right it's in a memory it's a memory it's not here yeah it's not here so then people spend enormous amounts of time not even knowing not even aware that they're living in that state and always predicting the default mode network in the brain is always predicting the next moment based on what it's learned in the past, right?

46:30And if you're holding a grudge of the past, it's going to predict that in the future. You're just going to get ready for the next one. You're recreating the past. Your future is your past. Oh, man. Yeah. And that's all the known, right? So getting a person to no longer live in the predictable future, where they're just habituated, where they get up and do things and they're on a program. Getting a person, that's the predictable future is the known. Familiar past is the known. Living by the emotion, remembering the event. If the familiar past is the known and the predictable future is the known, there's only one place where the unknown can be.

47:08That's the present moment. Getting a person to labor for the present moment liberates energy in the body. And that's when the person starts feeling more like themselves and they don't feel as altered. And so you overcome the emotion of resentment. Just use this as an example. Sitting in the fire for a week and just facing off with it and just working with your body and retraining it to a new mind. I guarantee you that when you see your ex, you'll see a part of you you used to be that you no longer are. And you'll have nothing but compassion and love for her. And you'll be like, wow, wow, I get it.

47:40I totally get it. There's no longer the past anymore. You're not connected to it any longer. and you free that person and your relationship changes and something shifts and there's she's he's she's seeing you differently because you're showing up differently and it's not not anything you're saying you're not lecturing them they're just not showing up as the memory they had of you and that allows them to be different and that's that's a great service yes you mentioned about survival mode when we're in survival mode we're feeling stressed and when we're feeling stressed, we're unable to feel that kind of self-love, love for self.

48:17Well, when you're in stress, you're altered. You're altered. You're altered. You're not, you're altered self. You're not yourself. You're shaken. You're not feeling whole. You've moved from love. Right. Yeah. And when we enter a relationship from survival or stress or lack of worthiness or neediness, I need someone to make me feel more loved because I don't have it myself. What do we usually attract and create when we're attracting from neediness, survival, and a lack of wholeness? Yeah, I think that all of that lack, all of that separation is separation from love, right? And the problem is, is that we've just been conditioned into thinking that it comes from out there.

49:03It comes from that person, that drug, that circumstance, that thing, that object, the app, whatever it is. You're relying on your outer world to change your inner world. And so when things are good, you feel good. When things feel bad, you feel bad. So you're out of fact. You're not a cause in any way. So what if, though, you had a way to find that independent of your outer world? The data we have suggests it's absolutely possible. Now you're free. You're free. You don't need anybody or anything. You'll be a lot cooler to hang around with. Everybody would be like, well, that would allow them...

49:41I know this. Your presence would allow them to move out of survival. They would open their heart a little bit more. They'd trust you a little bit more. They'd be more kind. They'd be more soft-spoken, less egocentric. Your presence would do that. And it may not be the first time, but they would start figuring out like, wow, this guy is really different. Something's different about him. And that's just because you're present and you're giving them your attention without judgment. You see how hard it is to change. You've actually made that change because you've made that change and you see that you've made that change, but you see that in them, you're no longer judging them.

50:21You have compassion for them. Like, dude, that's a tough one. It took me a long time to get over that, but you're not judging them. Like, what's wrong with you? You're like, oh my God, I totally know what that's like. You've crossed that river. So of course you would never offer them advice unless they asked you. You would probably give them a one-liner. I mean, people who heal in our work, so many times, you know, people in a state of desperation will say, what meditation did you do? And they laugh at them like, there's nothing to do with the meditation. It was just, I changed. like and it was a it was a it was an arduous process but yeah they're telling a difference they're telling the story of their future they're not telling the story of their past their ex or their betrayer or whatever that person is they have no regrets about that because why they wish them well they're happy it's not even it's not like they're even trying to forgive to be spiritual you know people who try to forgive like i'm really going to try to forgive that working hard yeah it's just not how that works like you are in love like you don't have to try to forgive you're just you just don't want to lose this feeling and you take your attention off that person you're good you there's a lot of freedom in that and that's how people heal they're they're building their own field they're they're they're giving their body their energy back again they're taking their power back in so many ways so and then there is then there is community a collective consciousness like i i i like great conversation i like spirit and conversation i like to be scientists or people in my life that I love, I like to engage in just what the limit is and like everybody take us on a journey to see how far we can go.

51:59I don't like to talk about like things that really, that are, that where there's pain or suffering or what I don't, I don't, or there's ego. I don't really like that. Like that's a consciousness and, and, and everybody's done it. But if you're truly on the path of evolution, you outgrow it. Yes. You outgrow complaining like you just don't want to make yourself unhappy anymore. You outgrow talking about yourself like you're better than anybody else because if you do, you got to face off with that person tomorrow and overcome them tomorrow. After a while, you're like, dude, just stop that so you don't have to deal with you like that anymore.

52:33So you just start outgrowing things that are just the side effect of your evolution. It's not like you have to try to do it. It's just the side effect of a change in consciousness, a change in energy, a change in awareness, change in emotional states. And so, in the heart, it is the selfless place. It's a selfless place. We give up from the heart. We care from the heart. We're kind in our heart. We're compassionate in our heart. We're inspired in our heart. We fall in love with our heart. We're grateful in our heart. And so, I think people feel with every other part of their body, but their heart.

53:08Like, they just don't feel with it. So, practice feeling with your heart. And we have such great data. You know, we put these monitors on people for 24 hours, right? And I used to think primarily it was women that had these moments. Now we're seeing that men have them too. In fact, the men whose spouses take them or partners take them to an event and they really don't want to come, these guys are going to be fine. They have really, really big moments. So we see them in their meditation where you can these little blocks of five minutes and you see the heart just drop in the coherence and it's just beautiful lines, beautiful looks.

53:44you can see this. It's very easy to see. You see this person sustaining it for 45 minutes during their meditation. So you're like, hmm, all right. This person nailed it. You go to the next meditation, another 45 minutes again. Done it once, done it twice. This is, looks like this person's getting a skill. All of a sudden they do it a third time, another 45 minutes. And then lo and behold, those three meditations in one day, then they're in their room. and they're unpacking and getting ready for bed. They're still wearing the heart rate monitor. And while they're not in a meditation, for one hour, while they're just unpacking and getting ready, there's an enormous amount of heart coherence that's taking place for a whole hour.

54:24Why? Because just like a person who has a panic attack, who's embracing the worst case scenario in their mind every day and emotionally feeling the anxiety and the fear of that event actually occurred, that image of that emotion that stimulus and response that thought and feeling is conditioned the body to become the mind of anxiety the body has a panic attack with you or without you try as you may to control it with your conscious mind you can't control your program subconsciously right so is it possible to have a spontaneous love attack and that's what she had she had on one hour or her body went into ecstasy and you You could see it.

55:02A love attack. A love attack. I said to her, what did you do? She said, and I saw it. She laid, she got in bed and she laid down and rolled over and went to sleep. So you see her about an hour and 10 minutes, perfect heart coherence, and just see it drop off into sleep. Well, 13, 1400 different chemicals released to restore and repair the body. So the love that you feel is the glue that creates connection on a cellular level, on molecular level, atomic level, peel the atom all the way back right to the center of the nucleus and you have nothing but energy. And that energy is what's called low entropy.

55:40And low entropy is high order. And high order is high energy. And it's a lot of power. So, as you move closer to that source of everything physical and material, we have such great data to show that people actually run into it. And when they do, their autonomic nervous system goes into these elevated states of high, high, high gamma brainwave patterns. Now, gamma is super consciousness. Gamma is very conscious, very aware. So the person's whole entire autonomic nervous system is processing hundreds of standard deviations of gamma outside of normal. That's not a little gamma. And it's so coherent.

56:25Now, the autonomic nervous system touches every single cell in the body. It controls and coordinates all those systems, right? So now imagine stress is autonomic dysregulation, incoherence. This is autonomic regulation, but this is not a little regulation. This is enormous amount of energy that's taking place in the brain. And the autonomic nervous system is on fire, and every single cell in the body is getting touched by that frequency. and that frequency is carrying information and energy is informing matter. And that connection creates that feeling of pure love, of exasity, or bliss. And now the person takes a piece of it with them, they become more of it and it becomes them.

57:05And so we measure their blood and there's a lot of oxytocin. We measure their blood and there's information in that blood that wasn't there before that heals cancer, that reverses Alzheimer's, that causes viruses to not enter the cell. I mean, it causes the microbiome to change in a matter of days. So that interaction with that unifying field of energy that exists beyond our senses, whose signature is oneness, whose signature is wholeness, whose signature is pure love, means then that it lives within you and all around you. Then you'd be remembering who you are and where you came from, which is pure love.

57:42And it is the most familiar, unfamiliar feeling you'll ever have. And it's not chemical. Wrong. It's electric. And when you have that moment, many times, there's an upgrade that takes place in the body. There's the disease, now it's gone. There's the eczema, it's gone. There's the myasthenia gravis, now it's gone. There's the Parkinson's, now it's gone. There's the blindness, now it's gone. There's energies in forming matter and that enormous amount of regulation, high, high amounts of regulation is raising the body in frequency, it's raising the body in light and all diseases lowering frequency.

58:16So the person is connecting to something way bigger than their senses, way something beyond their senses, and it's coming from within them. Now, you only need one of those, and you're okay from that point forward, and the way you see life. Some veil, some illusion, some conditioning, some hypnosis is removed, and you're now way more relaxed in your heart, and way more awake in your brain, instead of unconscious, stressed out in a program, right? And when I think you're more awake in your heart and your brain, you start to attract more great opportunities and you start to see, is this person in alignment with my type of...

58:58Resonating, resonating in that consciousness. Exactly. You'll be able to find your tribe. It'll be as obvious as anything. Exactly. Whether you're looking for a partner or friends or community or a place to work. A business partner that you can trust. Exactly. You resonate and you feel that. And the heart is a strong element in the creative process. So if you have a coherent brain, then you're sending the signal out into the quantum field. That's the potential in the quantum field that you're selecting that already exists. And you've got to have an intention. The more coherent the brain, the more the electrical signal takes place in the field.

59:33But if you want to create the experience, the synchronicity, the opportunity, you've got to need a coherent heart. And the heart is the magnetic field. and the magnetic field draws things to us. So now we don't have to go get it any longer because that's what we do in three-dimensional reality. All of a sudden you start noticing, I really didn't do anything. Well, I got the email. I got the phone call. I got the opportunities. I met this person who led to this. And wow, all of a sudden I have this life. And so if you're going to believe in that future that you're imagining with all of your heart, it's got to be open and activated.

1:00:05We train people to get in that place. And when they're in that place, they have wonderful relationships with everything and everybody because they're okay with themselves yes what is the main thing you would recommend people work on themselves whether in transition of relationships or in a relationship is there one thing that they could always be working on to improve themselves to be better for other relationships if their entire story about the relationship that just ended is about what the other person did wrong to them, something is missing in the story. Yeah. That doesn't mean that the other person may not have done things that were hurtful to them.

1:00:52But add to it, who were you in this relationship? Absolutely. What role did you play? What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to? What things do you wish you had done differently? what pieces do you wish that your partner had seen and accepted from you differently where did you wish you would have said less and where did you wish you would have said more what do you learn from this relationship and if when you say what you learn is just that i want to make sure that the next person is right gives me what i need you know or is less of this or more of that, you know, who do you want to be in the next relationship?

1:01:38How are you going to add value? A relationship is a story of many people. It's not even a story just of two. Who was too involved in your relationship? Who was not involved enough? So there's a cast of characters in a relationship. And it's all those questions that you want to ask when you are in transition. What, I think that's it. But they are both directions. If you find yourself with a spotlight only on the other person and you in a passive receptive stance, you're missing a whole pan of the story. Yeah, and you're probably more of the problem of the relationship than them, if you're just focusing on them probably.

1:02:24A relationship is not about this person and that person. The relationship is what happens in between. This is my view on relationships. It's not an essentialist view. This is this personality and that personality. It's the dynamic. You can have a dynamic with a certain partner. You've had dynamics with certain partners. And, of course, it was just the right fit between the match and the ignition. And so you had enough inside of you to react with a certain kind of, let's put, your jealousy. but you may meet another person who acts differently and you may still have a little bit of that jealousy inside of you but it doesn't get activated because this person is responding very differently to you and when you say where were you they don't say why do you always have to ask me that question they just say I just went to do this it's all good darling I'm right here I've got you back and then you don't go into your chest pain you know pain so this is very important to understand we are not the same person with different partners.

1:03:31We may have certain things that come out depending on what is being sent over to us. So the relationship is a figure eight. It's what I do that makes you do something, that then makes you react to me a certain way, that then draws that out of me, that draws that out of you, and each one actually creates the other. And when you get that view of relationships, When you come out and you're in transition, you say to yourself, let's say I was with someone who completely disconnected. Okay, they disconnected. Did I push them away? Are there ways in which I contributed sometimes to the disconnection?

1:04:16And that is not self-blame. That is understanding the dynamic. You can take responsibility about things without blaming yourself. and you can hold the other person accountable without blaming them. It's not a blame dance, but it is an understanding of what did I do that made you do what you then did to me that then made me. That's the relationship. And if someone's like, you know what, they listened to you, Esther, they really want to have an amazing relationship. They want to have a rich life knowing it's not going to be perfect, but they want to create beauty and adventure and play and go through life through the sadness and the adversities and all the things that happen in life.

1:04:55And they're thinking to themselves, how much should I pour into myself for my dreams, my health, my friends and family? How much should I pour into the other person, into their life that I'm creating a partnership with? And how much should I pour into the relationship itself? What would you say to that? But you asked me, it's different questions, right? what keeps a relationship alive is one question how much do you invest in a relationship is a different question so I'm going to go to the one about what keeps it alive because it's part of and I'm suddenly watching the box and thinking it is what I'm mostly interested in because I work on eroticism what keeps us alive what keeps us hopeful what keeps us engaged with possibility not physically alive but connected alive connected to life life force life energy why because because i think everybody understands relationships that are not dead versus relationships that are alive teams that are not dead companies versus companies that are alive what is flourishing versus surviving.

1:06:16And because it is part of my personal history, and I come from a background of survivors, of parents who were in concentration camps, and I wanted to understand how do people stay alive when they spend five years in a concentration camp. So that's why I've got interested in eroticism. Sexuality is a piece of this, but sexuality is not eroticism. You can have sex every day and feel nothing. Eroticism is the poetry that accompanies it. It's the meaning we give to it. It's the story that's attached. So eroticism in a relationship is the quality of imagination, curiosity, playfulness, mystery, risk-taking, novelty that people bring to their relationship.

1:07:05Those are the things that I think bring life to a relationship. So in the research of Eli Finkel, it means doing new things together, taking risks beyond your threshold, out of your comfort zone. Because if you do pleasant things that are familiar, it's cozy, it's friendship, it's love, but it's not exciting. It's not erotic. It's not necessarily desire. it's calibrating your expectations so that you have and that means diversifying your intimate connections or your deep connections for me intimacy doesn't mean sexual either it just means people that are important to you that accompany you through the life stages and through the big events in life these three things expectations, calibrating expectations diversifying your social connections and taking risks and doing new things is the research of Eli Finkel for thriving relationships.

1:08:03But then in that piece, I think play is essential. It's huge, right? It's huge. And it is actually the quality of emotions that is the least talked about. How often are you playing in your relationship? All the time. Humor is essential. It's an essential salve and balm in my relationship. I can be in the middle of an argument and then I start to laugh. And then I just get perspective and we just kind of ground ourselves back again. It's flirting, it's teasing, it's making fun of, it's that whole realm of we're not really serious and we don't take ourselves that serious. And what happens when relationships are taking themselves very serious and they're not playing?

1:08:52Look, I had a teacher who once said to me, If a couple comes to you for therapy and there is absolutely zero humor left, it is diagnostic. Really? Now, is it true? You know, nobody has proven that scientifically. But what you know is that humor, and if you listen to my podcast, if you listen to the sessions on where should we begin or on how it works, You'll see in the middle of talking about trauma, painful event, major fights, strife, I laugh with them. I manage to see if they can see themselves, if they have a bit of distance, of perspective, if they understand sometimes the absurdity of the things that we get into, the things over which we fight, the way we do it.

1:09:40and even if it's just a glimmer, a smile on the side, on the corner, I know they know that I know that we know and it creates that complicity and it invites a new possibility. Some people may be resisting the humor. They may be like, they want to hold on to the seriousness. Yes. If you want to hold on to righteousness, to I am right, to victimization, to I have the view that is the only view that matters and only my perception and my experience is the truth, then you are in a polarized system that is rigid and unyielding. Humor and play is possibility. Possibility invites change. Change invites healing.

1:10:27Yes. I want to ask you a few more questions, then I want us to play your game for a little bit. Over the last two years, was there anything that came up for you personally in your own inner world that you noticed, oh, there's something, like we talked about it, it created a lot of pressure for people if there were things that came out. Was there anything for you that you were like, oh, there's something I still need to work on myself or need to continue the healing journey of that came out in the last couple of years with being at home and, you know, not doing things the way they used to be? I will answer this in two ways.

1:11:03The way that I experienced the pandemic. So in the first, in the beginning, right after I left you, I went back to New York and I went in lockdown. And basically, it was in the, you know, suddenly kind of, I got gripped with a bit of a panic. And primarily because I thought I can't catch this thing. Because if I catch it, I am now suddenly considered elderly. I'm past 60. But you're 35. Yeah, yeah. for the pandemic it changed it suddenly shifted overnight i became elderly and that meant i wasn't sure if we enter the hospital me or jack that we will pass the triage interesting he's older than me and i got really really scared i had a lot of post-traumatic stress symptoms that are very much connected to the Holocaust and to my family experience.

1:12:02That sense that overnight, this whole life I have built could just disappear like this. And it was irrational. I was terrified that Jack would die to the point, you wanted to know about humor in my relationship? So we are in the middle of construction at the time, and the workers, and at that point he comes to me and he says, I asked the workers to dig a hole in the garden. I said, oh, yeah, why? so that when I die, you can just roll me right in. Oh, my God. Wow, talk about humor. But I cracked up because he showed me, girl, you're gripped in fear. And I just started to laugh, and I just realized, no, no, no, he's not dead.

1:12:43Because I was ready to stop construction. I said, we're not making this. No one can come here within 1 ,000 yards of a... No, no, it's more like we will not survive. No way. I was really... When it's post-traumatic, it's trauma is the word, right? So I really was very, very, very scared. And his humor diffused it for me and just brought me back and said, we're continuing to build. We're going to live. We're going to survive. Don't worry, girl. It's like, so this was one. And it slowly, you know, I entered into the long term of the pandemic and it dissolved. And that's when I understood this came out of that.

1:13:23I missed my friends. I missed my dinner parties. I missed intimacy. And I created a host of different group experiences, pods. I had a movie club on Zoom on three continents. Oh, that's cool. I had a book club. I had a yoga group that met four times a week still till now that is over two continents. Wow, that's cool. And I had a hiking group. I had a swimming group in the summer. And then one day I said, I need to play. and I need to continue to have conversations where I learn something new. I was so freaking tired of talking about the pandemic all the time. Sure, sure. And I said, I'm going to create a game.

1:14:02Not having any idea of what this thing was going to become and what it represented, I just thought, oh, I want to do something creative and I want people to be able to talk about something that isn't just like, you know, when you leave six months like this in lockdown, you begin to have the same conversation. Of course, yeah, yeah, of course. So I just thought, how am I going to make couples have fun get energized be curious about each other, talk about something else and I thought we need to play because play is a container play gives you the possibility to take risks to talk about things that you would otherwise not talk about because it's under the guise of play, play allows you to ask questions that you would otherwise not ask certainly not to your partner because we get more shy with the people that we live with than with strangers sometimes You know, you're more daring to ask sometimes questions to strangers.

1:14:56You're never going to see again. Or people you've just met than the person you live with for decades on end. That's interesting. I just, so play became very, very central. When you play, you still are able to lift yourself from the ground, and it means you can enter the world of imagination where the rules are different. And every child at this moment, you know, around the Ukrainian crisis, you can see when kids are still able to play, it is the moments when they are not in hypervigilance. It is an essential survival skill. Yes, yes. Underrated. And from that place came... That's correct. Where should we begin the game?

1:15:41It's one of the key things in a relationship and in life is what I'm hearing you say. It's essential.

1:15:48I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. We have some big guests and content coming up. Make sure you're following and stay tuned to the next episode on the School of Greatness.

1:16:29I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.

1:17:07And I wanna remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.