Humble the Poet ON: How to Get Out Your Own Way to Find Love & Breaking Society's Common Myths About Relationships

Published Dec 26, 2022, 8:00 AM

Today, I am talking to Kanwer Singh aka Humble the Poet. Humble is a toronto-bred mc/spoken word artist with an aura that embodies the diversity and resiliency of one of the world’s most unique cities. He stimulates audiences with ideas that challenge conventional wisdom and go against the grain, with dynamic live sets that shake conventions and minds at the same time. Humble's latest EP titled Righteous/Ratchet features the first single H.A.I.R, a celebration of women of all shapes, sizes, hair and walks of life. His self directed video for H.A.I.R has amassed almost 2 million views since its release. The video features YouTube sensation and longtime collaborator, Lilly Singh. His first book Unlearn: 101 Simple Truths For A Better Life was published through Indigo Press in October 2017 and became Heather's Pick and has stayed on the Globe & Mail Bestsellers list since its release. Humble's next book Things No One Else Can Teach Us was released in the fall of 2019. 

Humble emphasizes the importance of making the relationship you have with yourself the best among all the relationships you currently have. This is because knowing your own self worth will make setting boundaries easier for you and for the people around you. We exchange thoughts on what makes us resilient, why self respect matters more than self-esteem, the constant validation we seek from others, and what makes love so simple.     

What We Discuss:

  • 00:00:00 Intro
  • 00:04:54 Why do we try to impress others?
  • 00:06:46 Self-esteem versus self respect
  • 00:12:27 What makes us resilient?
  • 00:17:04 Not everybody’s going to like you
  • 00:20:27 Be in relationship with yourself first
  • 00:25:36 There can’t be love if there’s resentment
  • 00:34:14 How to develop a healthy relationship? 
  • 00:40:21 We are attracted to what’s familiar, not what’s healthy
  • 00:54:46 Not getting a reward is not a punishment
  • 00:58:47 When you’re in a romantic relationship with someone
  • 01:06:45 Love is simple

Episode Resources

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 https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/

You don't win love, you don't find love. The love is already there. The analogy I like to use as love as the breeze, and the work that we're doing is to open our sales. You know, I struggled in my last situation because I could not receive love. It wasn't that there wasn't love there. It was my inability to open my sales because of the walls, the lack of vulnerability might need to win in an argument, all of these ideas, I realized that it was me. I had my door close, I had my sales close to the breeze that was always there. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to become a happier, healthier and more healed Now. One of the things I love about the show is sitting down with a friend who's an incredible thinker or a thought leader, a philosopher, or a poet. It provides a very special conversation when I get to sit with someone that I hang out with the law offline, but then we get to turn the cameras on and the recording devices on and do something online. I hope you get to hear that friendship, that brotherhood in today's conversation. And I find there's something really special about sitting down with someone who has really interesting ideas has taken the time to document them and systematize them into a book. I'm speaking about one of my dearest friends, Humble the Poet, a Canadian born rapper, spoken word artist, designer, poet, internationally best selling author, and former elementary school teacher. What began is reciting spoken word poetry and coffee shops to impress girls evolved into creative adventures that has spanned the last ten years, crossing genres, mediums, and oceans. His first two releases, Unlearned and Things Nobody Can Teach Us have become international bestsellers. And today we're talking about his new book, How to Be Loved, Simple Truths for going easy on yourself, embracing imperfection, and loving your way to a better life. I want you to go and grab a copy of this book right now, Order it right now. We're putting the link in the captions and in the show notes, How to Be Loved by Humble the Poet. Humble, it is so great to have you here man officially, Yes, thank you so much for having me. You didn't you including my bio Ping pong front of me? Oh yeah yeah, ping pong front of me. Yeah, I mean, well we shouldn't go there. We shouldn't. I mean the only official game we've had I won, and that's why fund in front of me. You won that pair of very old headphones. That was the prize. It was a birthday party and our friend found a pair of headphones and made that the fries. And then in the first round you knocked me out. No, it was so when we play unofficially, Humble beats me in ping pong all the time, Like, I don't think I've ever beaten you when we've been hanging out. Ever, when it doesn't count, it doesn't. God. Yeah. But then the official game, and then I gave the headphones away to someone who I felt deserved them more. I was lucky that day. I can't believe it. I was on some lucky street. Well, yeah, it was a party. Yeah, you're a little bit gypsies. I don't drink, so I got away. Yeah, you have a few competitive advantages. I love it, bumble man. We've been friends for like I'm like four years now. I feel like since since we started having our conversations completely, and it's been beautiful to like just you know, I think as two people in an industry where it's busy and we're doing so much, somehow I think we found a way to have these really meaningful conversations. I remember I was at your house earlier this year, at your apartment earlier this year, and we were hanging out. And then the next day everyone was like, well, what time did Jay leave or what happened? Because everyone I always leave early to go to sleep early generally is what I do. And I was at your house to like two am, and I was like, how did you get Jay to stay out to two am? And we weren't. All we did was have deep, meaningful, thoughtful conversation. It was so You're one of the few people that I can actually do that with. So I cherish our friendship very deeply. I mean, likewise, as I said, this is the first conversation. I'm not holding a notepad. I just sit here and try to pick your brain as much as I can and try to learn as much as I can. And I appreciate you always make time for me always man always. But I'm so glad you wrote this book, bro, because you know, I'm obsessed with love, my new books about love. But I think when you're obsessed with something and you get deep into it, it's really interesting to hear from someone else who's obsessed with it and gotten really deep into it. Yeah, And I want to talk to you about what we said in the intro about the idea of how you used to be spoken word to impress girls. And I think the idea of impressing someone is such a big part of how love starts, Like I can relate to that so much like the extent I've gone through to impress women in my previous life. It's insane and woke me through. Why do we try to impress people that we may be attracted to or maybe not even attracted to. Yeah, I think, you know, I think for thousands of years we lived in smaller communities, and we only understand ourselves in relation to everybody else. You know, you walk into your family, you know where you are in the hierarchy, and then we you know, many of us only two generations that go came from families and small villages. So it's like you find your definition and your value in relation to others, and in modern life in these big metropolis cities, it's not as relevant, but that need to be seen, that need to be validated, is completely there. And I think that's where we have a lot of challenges in realizing love is because we spend so much time try to feed our self esteem, not realizing that love comes from self respect, which is way more internal and it's completely you know, you're absolutely right. Like even me doing poetry back then, it was like I was writing about things as an artist that mattered to me, and I was exploring concepts, but my only motivation to share it was to get attention. And you start to feed off of that, and it gets really interesting now because we live in a world with that attention, there's a metric beside it. You can count your likes, you can count your comments, you can count your followers. So now it's like the world subtenly tells you who to be if that attention matters. Like, oh I did a post, it didn't get enough engagement, so let's go ahead and post something else, and then oh this really got a lot of engagement. Let me make five more things like that, and it's killing our ability to discover ourselves and our authentic selves, and instead it's making us live for display purposes, which is going to continually close pathways to love. This is why I love talking to you. I'm loving this already. There's so many things that you said that I'm like, yes, I want to talk about this. Let's I love what you just talked about. And I saw you post about this a few months ago about the difference between self esteem and self respect, and that really hit a nerve with me when you first posted about it. Walk us through how you define them differently and why that's useful in this journey of to love. So, for me, self esteem is external, self respect is internal, and I feel like the ways we go about it don't have to be much different. When you keep your promises to yourself, you know, you build self respect, and I think either you're chasing one or the other. The more self respect you develop, the less self esteem you're going to chase. The more self esteem you chase, the less self respect is going to be in the room. They kind of can't hold hands. So for me, you start to realize that it's a relationship. It just depends on how you're going to spend and devote that energy. The challenge with self esteem and it being external is there's just way too many people with way too many opinions on who you can be, you know, like that Dita Vant's quote, you can be the juiciest peach in the world. There's just some people who don't like peaches, you know, and that can have an impact on people. And a lot of people are negatively impacted by the comments on their social media, by how well they're received when people are looking at them or what have you. So what I'm realizing is as we focus on self respect to me, which is I said, honoring your commitments, doing hard things, focusing on progress and not perfection, that's a really big one. I think when we have these ideas of what we think love is, it's oftentimes not love. Attention, control, power, admiration, beauty, success, these things are all external things that we can receive from the world, and they feel like love and they give us a lot of immediate gratification. I refer to them as bootleg loves, Like when you go to the outlet mall got a fake Gucci belt and you know, you get a little rush from it. Immediately, but you keep thirsting from more. You know it puts you in further scarcity. So when we focus on that, it's a never ending journey. Whereas when we develop more self respect, we feel a level of peace. It's not instead of getting everything you want, you start to want less. Yeah, and I think for me that's the really big difference. And self respect can be literally developed through anything that you commit to do and the more difficult to better. Let's say, don't do hard things for me as a cold shower in the morning. And when we focus on progress, especially as we're entering a new year, it's really important to set intentions instead of expectations because oftentimes we say, oh, I want to lose ten pounds. Now you subtly have told yourself I'm not good enough as I am, and when I lose ten pounds, magically, I'm going to feel better. Instead of doing that because you're harming your relationship with yourself. Focus on progress. I want to have a healthier breakfast, and maybe my breakfast has ten different elements to it. I'm going to switch out one at a time, or I want to wake up earlier. Let's say I'm waking up at noon every day and I want to get to six am. You can't just jump from noon to six. Let's focus on progress. Let's start with eleven forty five, slowly workout way down. Progress can be endless. You know, whereas I think society, especially in capitalism, they need to sell us stuff to make us feel like we matter. And the message they keep sending us is chase perfection, and perfect doesn't exist, and perfect is the last place love would exist. Because the only way to develop a deep connection with somebody is through your vulnerabilities. You are perfect, you can't be vulnerable. So for me, vulnerability comes through self respect, being brave enough to admit you know where you're difficult to be with, what you struggle with, what your challenges are, and then that opens up someone else an opportunity to do the same, and then you connect on a deeper level. Yeah, I want to reflect on some of the things that came to my mind as you were talking. It's interesting, isn't it. Like we say we want love, but actually we want attention. Yeah, we say we want love, but actually we want validation. We say we want love, but actually we just want compliments. So we don't actually know what love is or want love because we're chasing it through these other forms of cheap adoration or cheap affection. One of the things that hit me about what you just said about vulnerability and this pursuit of perfection when actually imperfection is at the core of love and relationships is I was coaching a CEO recently and we were working through some of their mental health challenges. It was really interesting to me because I was encouraging them to share that with their team. I was saying, you should share the challenges you're going through because it will be a healthy thing to do. And they said to me, they said, Jay, how can I share my challenges? I'm the strong one, I'm the brave one, I'm the one who has it all together. And I said to them, I said, what's stronger than you telling them your truth? Like, what's braver than you being vulnerable with that person? Like, there's nothing more strong, There's no greater act of courage. And when they went and told their team, they followed through on the advice. The team's unanimous response was us two like they were going through the same stuff and all of a sudden they felt connected. So I guess what I love about what you're saying when you talk about like not chasing perfection, when you talk about doing hard things. There was one more thing you said, commitments, honoring your commitments. So those three things that you mentioned to me, that's actually what self love is, Like we keep her in self love, and you've talked about self respect, which I think is a really great pivot a pathway. But those three habits are really deeply important when we're alone and when we're single, and when we're not in a relationship. Let's talk about why doing hard things is so important in the pursuit of love, because I don't think those things a lot of what you just mentioned. I'm like, is this a habit's book? Like you're helping people with their day to day habits, But there's a connection there that I don't think people see. Yeah, one of my favorite mantras from myself is an easy day at the gym was not a good day at the gym, And I start to apply that to life, an easy day of life is not a good day. I think what we have in this society is we sell convenience and we sell comfort, and both of those don't inspire growth or evolution. Or for us to unlock a better version of ourselves. So voluntarily doing hard things, you know, prepares us when hard things find us. You know, I think, for example, you know, when you know as an entrepreneur it's a very challenging job. But then when you're an entrepreneur, you understand that, hey, money's not guaranteed. I don't get a salary every two weeks. Nothing's promised to me. So then when you come across a situation where things shut down, layoffs for session, what have you, you're better prepared. You know, life's gonna throw curveballs. What we can do when things are good is practice our swing. So for me, doing hard things is picking a challenge. And my personal equation is one foot and what I know foot and what's familiar in one foot, and what's unfamiliar and what's uncomfortable. So I'm not overdoing. If I want to learn to swim, I don't jump into the ocean the first day. We started in the kiddie pool, and then we work our way up and picking things voluntarily that are difficult, whatever it is, and understanding that even for us, you know, it took ten years to learn how to read, there was a systematic program put in school for us to do it. Forget that, We forget that, and we didn't have We didn't have self esteem issues or confidence issues back then, being like I don't know the alphabet, I shouldn't even bother where. When we were babies trying to learn how to walk, you know, we got up and we fell back down. We didn't give up to say it's not for me. But as adults, because we don't have somebody kind of laughtering over us, we may start something we're not okay with sucking at it in the beginning, we don't see it as fun. But you know, I play a lot of video games. If I dropped ninety bucks on a video game and it's too easy, then it wasn't worth it for me. You know, we need challenges, We need to we need resistance, We need to push and pool. We need that tug of war because that's going to make us stronger. It's going to make us more resilient. Sitting in the ice makes you resilient, helps you recalibrate your fight or flight. So now your fight or flight isn't triggered through an awkward conversation or an email or a text message or a bill that comes you know, it gets back to where it needs to be, which is important. So I think for me, it's recognizing that it's not chasing comfort, it's not chasing the simple stability, it's not chasing convenience. It's being like, Okay, there is a harder way of doing things. Let's do that for the sake of doing it, because when the difficulties of life find us, we're much more resilient and much more prepared. And I think for me, that allows me to realize my value as an individual, what I'm capable of, and how I can spread that and be of service to other people, which to me is a massive language of love. Wow. Yeah, And I mean when I'm hearing you speak, it's like that getting comfortable in discomfort is almost like the number one skill needed in life, because I feel like most of as you said, what society is trying to teach us in your words, convenience and comfort, and it's trying to avoid discomfort that we're trying to avoid it, We're trying to dodge it, We're trying to hope that how can I avoid any sort of pain, struggle, discomfort, And while while you're not saying to invite it, but we've got to get comfortable in that uncertainty and comfortable with that pain. And that applies to anything from dating, through the breakups, through to loving ourselves of course through the journey we're on. One of the things you say in the book that I wanted to pick out was feeling left out and rejected brings up those ancient anxieties of danger. And I think that's one of the biggest discomforts, is feeling left out and rejected, Like when you talk about being uncomfortable when you go to an event and you feel like you'd rather lock yourself into a bathroom because you don't want to be around anyone, or forget that you didn't even get invited in the first place. And sometimes you get upset because you didn't get invited, even if you didn't want to go that. Yeah, so talk to me through that sentence. Feeling left out and rejected brings up those ancient anxieties of danger. Again. If we were ostracized from our communities back, you know, generations ago, it actually meant our death, you know, And that's in our programming now, which makes us in modern life prioritize likability over everything. And the challenge with that is there's so many things that create pathways of love and allow us to realize love won't necessarily make us likable to everybody. If you want to establish boundaries. For example, establishing boundaries will reduce the amount of people that want to be around you because so many people enjoy crossing boundaries or you know, find power in that or find significance in that. But it's important to establish boundaries. It's important to show your I have a chapter in the book called Love is Showing your teeth. It's important to let people know if they've crossed the line. It's important to let people know if they've made if they've hurt you. It's important to let people know if you're doing things that you're not okay with, because if you don't, you absorb it inside instead, and then you fall into this world of resentment, which to me, I think is one of the darkest places we can be. And you can't express or realize love in this place of resentment. So our fears of not being likable, you know, as I said in the subtitle, this book is going easy on yourself. This is in our programming. We want to be liked. We want to be accepted, and we are in a modern society which is given us scores for our likability and acceptance, but that will not necessarily help us realize more love. And we have to see the difference. Not everybody is going to like you and that's okay, and focusing on that will allow us to build deeper connections with people that do matter, you know, going back to this idea of the CEO and the vulnerability, you know, I was raised in a household that subtenly told me to suck it up, be self regulated. So now I also viewed vulnerability as a weakness. I viewed having a romantic partner that complained as just being naggy and weak, not realizing that my inability to have empathy, you know, was because of the fortresses I made. I made a fortress to protect myself, but really it was a prison. And then when somebody came to me that I cared about what their problems, I wanted to instantly solve it. I thought, that's what men do, Men solve problems. We're solution oriented. But the truth what I realized from myself was no, they were sharing their pain. It was triggering my pain. I didn't want to feel my pain, so I wanted to shut them up. And the three ways I was trying to shut them up was either not speaking to them, trying to solve their problems, or saying something really stupid like well there's other people going through way worse than you, like have some perspective, and then slowly realizing through this journey that empathy is feeling their pain, not saying anything, just giving them a hug and being in that pain together. And for me, like these are very recent realizations for me as I'm trying to figure out how to deepen my connection with human beings as well. And I don't hold it against anybody from being raised to think that vulnerability is a weakness. But you are absolutely right. The strongest thing you can do is be vulnerable and admit where you're having trouble. That's ultimate strength. And you know, I'm glad to hear that that story worked out for him. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, But I mean you just said something again interesting which I actually had noted down, was where is this? Oh? Yeah, you reference the need to sit with your pain in order to experience love. Yes, I don't think we naturally put those thoughts together. And that's what I've always loved about what you do with ideas is I don't think we kind of like when you hear that, you're like, well, I need to unpack that, because you wouldn't necessarily think those two things correlate. The inspiration behind this entire journey was, you know, a relationship that I was in that that didn't run the course, and all I would do, and in isolation, especially during the pandemic, was beat myself up over it, as if I had somehow failed. So there was a lot of reflecting and thinking about, you know, the what it could have should us, and city not realizing the subconscious because whether we're aware of a trauma, whether we're aware of a discomfort, we feel it and we're going to feel and then most often, going back to modern society, there are so many convenient options to suppress that temporarily. So for me, I was living that life was if I felt anxious, I would go and have a slice of pizza, or I would go and you know, watch television or go on my phone. And then you start to realize that so often the only reason we get involved with somebody is because we're outsourcing the antidote to our loneliness, not realizing that loneliness isn't having people around. Loneliness is a lack of connection. And I could contribute to why we have such a high divorce rate because people are getting together, but they're not getting to get as two individuals are getting together with these kind of romanticized ideas of your my better half, you complete me. Humans don't need completing humans aren't half a person. And I think, but these are ideas that are sold to us. They're sold to us in media. They're sold to you know, every single famous couple of Ross and Rachel's. They have to be people with very unhealthy attachment styles to be entertaining because the most healthy relationships we know are not very eventful. They wouldn't make for entertaining television. I don't. I don't think it's a conspiracy that these television shows exist. They're just entertaining us. Yeah, And I think realizing that for me, having a relationship with yourself is being alone. Being alone isn't sitting in bed on your phone. Being alone is being absolutely alone doing absolutely nothing, which for me is also a form of meditation. And for me it's my favorite form of meditation because it's it's a form that doesn't require you to ask, am I doing this right? The right way of doing nothing? Instantly you started to feel anxiety because you're not stimulated. You know, the dopamines, it's not coming. And but the longer you do that, the more ground did you become with yourself? Yeah, and now you're in a position to be in a relationship where you can serve. The book has love stories, and there's one love story about somebody I connected with wanted to pursue. They explained to me they don't have time and and and I was upset, and I was like, look, if you don't make time for people, then you're never gonna have anybody. Don't you get lonely? And she goes, I do get lonely. And then I said, so what are you What are you gonna do when you're lonely? She goes, I dance. It was when I'm lonely, I dance and then I connect with myself. Wow, that's super mature. Yeah. Yeah, I was on the phone, like, I guess I got together. Yeah, But and I left her alone after that, because you know, she was very clear with her bound she said, what have you and what you realize is we want connection the you know, the fast food version of connection. Self connection would be self pity. Nobody understands what I'm going through except for me. Nobody's ever had the heartbroken. I'm all by myself. I just want to be able to complain about it. But something deep to actually create an authentic connection with just yourself can be dancing to feel your body. How many of us, when is the last time we've looked at ourselves in the mirror and looked at our body and we're not critical and looked at our body from a perspective of gratitude, Like how many of us have already chosen our favorite body part, even though our body has been with us since day zero, And even when we make poor choices, our body tries its best to adjust. We have bad posture, our body tries to adjust we don't put good things inside our body. It tries its best to adjust. This relationship with ourselves, our physical body can be the first step to creating an authentic pathway of love, which can then inform the relationships we can have with everybody else. You know, this conversation is just in a beautiful way as always just connecting so many dots that are coming up, and I want to talk about a few things. One thing that came up was this idea of what you're saying setting boundaries. And I think one of the challenges that we have with setting boundaries is we want to be perceived as nice, and when we set a boundary, we think we're going to be perceived as unkind, and so we'd rather not set the boundaries so that again, someone likes me and thinks that I'm a nice person, but inside I'm going, God, I wish I wasn't around this person. I wish I wasn't here, I wish I wasn't doing that. Why do you think so often or what are your thoughts about how we compromise our own values and our own boundaries in order to appear more nice and likable Like that seems to be the biggest disassociation from ourselves. Yeah, I think it's the short term gratification versus a long term I think the short term gratification. For me specifically, I can say I became someone that people came to with their problems and I felt value that I was needed, and it took a therapist to help point out where she said, listen, the reason you actually want people you were receiving people is because it's such a one sided conversation that it gives you the impression that you have a relationship. But you're never vulnerable because they're just telling you their problems. They don't even notice that they're not asking you about yours. And you like that because that helps you avoid being vulnerable, which feels uncomfortable for you. But she goes in the long run, which you don't realize, and you said it, it builds resentment, and there can't be loved if there's resentment. So what happens is this feeling of I need to be needed, which, again, if we think about how we were raised, a lot of us were raised to find our value when we were needed. A lot of us made these decisions and decided our pathway of life when we were kids, when we were thinking very binary. It was either this or that, black and white. And as we became adults and we can see life a lot more complex, we never updated our policies, and so what happens is life is more complex, but we're looking at it through such a simple shade. And this idea is like okay. And when we were kids too, whenever something negative happened, we absorbed it as if it was our fault. You know. I have a story in the book my mom once got sick and I vomited all over my bathroom as a little child, and my mother was awakened from that. She had work, she got upset with me, and I blamed myself for that, not having context as an adult realizing, wait, you know, she works a night shift. He's not a horrible person. You didn't mess up. It's just everybody can be cranky and what have you. And now you know, making jokes about my mom because the grandmother version of my mom is completely sweet. She has time, she's not working anymore, no more survival mode. But me internalizing that story, that narrative stuck with me up until today. We've had conversations about gratitude versus guilt, you know, and my journey as an artist, crashing people's couches, people giving places to stay, hearing my mother's voice, don't be a mooch, fill up their fridge full of groceries. Make sure they know even for you know, the help that you've done with me in this journey what can I give J? What can I give J? And then questioning is that authentic gratitude or am I just operating from a place of guilt? And if it's not authentic gratitude, then it's not being done with love. And then if it's come from a place of guilt, that's usually related to fear, which is definitely not from a place of love. And I think going through that journey, I think is extremely important. So when we fear being unlikable, we're closing off an option in a pathway to realize love for some short term peace from our anxiety. You know, it's like pleasure, Like we're chasing pleasure to medicate a lack of peace. Yeah, when the peace would come from establishing boundaries, there's going to be an uncomfortable transition period, but you'll get to a point where the people who love you view your boundaries as an instruction manual on how to be with you and how to have a healthy relationship with you. Because what is for the people who have boundaries and you respect their boundaries, they will stay in your lives. Yeah, you know, instead of you just trying to avoid somebody who always tries to overstep your boundaries. Yeah, I mean what you just said that was so powerful. I was interviewing someone the other day and they asked me the question. They said, well, what's your working style? So they're like, what's how do you like to be communicated with? And how do you like to be informed of updates and things like that. I don't like, this is a great interview question, like for someone to ask me. I'm interviewing them completely, but they're asking me that. And I got to tell them and they were like, what are your pet peeves when it comes to communicating and so like I got to walk them through. What I realized was they made me feel really comfortable and confident with them because I was like, Wow, this person's really mature and knows that I'm not perfect. I'm not always going to be available. They need to understand a few things about me to work well with me. What was demanded of me, though, was self aware ns in order to infer that to them. And so what I find here is that what happens in relationships or in love is that we don't feel that way. We feel that person should be perfect. They should already understand me, I should understand them and we're going to do whatever it takes to love each other. And the other problem is, even if you ask that question, chances are a lot of people don't have the self awareness to share what their pet peeves are. So the girl who says to you, Hey, I dance when I'm lonely, that's high self awareness, right, Like, that's the fact that there was an answer there that was satisfying to you and that almost left you speechless to some degree. Yeah, it's like, oh wow. So I find that there's two sides. One is our openness that I'm going to get into a relationship where we're both not perfect. The other is the other person having the knowledge of themselves. And it feels like we're lacking in both right now, I think definitely. And I think one of the reasons is because of our ideas around love, we don't have to teach somebody that imperfection is okay in the world of love. Every single person we currently love, we could probably list out their imperfections and then the second question is do any of those imperfections disqualify them from your love? You know? Also, you know, the analogy that I always think about too, is like the first time I held my baby niece. I had never met her before, I had never had an interaction before, but just holding her filled me up with love. So you don't even need history, you don't even need interaction. So oftentimes we have this diskewed idea that love is something you earn, love is something you win, love is something you qualify for. Love is at the end of the rainbow. And I think these ideas motivate these types of actions where it's like I have to appear perfect. Another thing I realized about myself recently, and I think this is for a lot of men who are often seen as distant or avoidant. Is we spend and so much time on a date trying to win over the other person, charm them, make them, make them feel like we're really worth it, that we spend no time looking at the other person to see is this a good fit for me? We get over their wall, we penetrate their fortress, we make them feel safe. Then once they communicate to us that they like us, then we begin this process of like, wait, are they for me? And then also we are viewing a human being. And then also we get this realizations subconsciously or consciously that to further connect with this person, I'm gonna have to be vulnerable and then that raises anxiety and then we pull away. And I think often women women find that confusing. Like I thought he was into me. He was into the idea of you liking him without asking himself if you're a good fit. And I think before we enter any of these situations, we have to do that. And I know the activities and the practices for that will build self awareness and it really is going deeper than what we normally do. Oh, that's so well explained, all right, So that is no, no, no, But that is so well explained because love bombing is such a big thing right now. And I did that in my teens massively, Like that's how I spent the majority of my teens where I would be interested in a girl only to win her over to then retreat as exactly like you said, So I can relate to that so deeply. How does and generally I don't know. I've I've heard a lot of men admit to that, or at least men that I've opened relationships with where people will say that. I don't know how much women do that, Like, I just haven't heard that and I don't want to build gender stereotypes or anything. But I guess, as the person in the relationship on the receiving end of that, how do you know? Because it's somewhat a mutual exchange, right, So I'll give an example of what I mean, and I want to unravel this with you because I think that's very common the amount of friends I have that are girls recently that have said that's happened to them numerous So what's happening is I'm trying to win you over, but you're allowing me to win you over. You're also not doing the checking as to whether I'm for real or questioning that. So I guess what I'm asking is, if you're on the receiving end of someone love bombing you and trying to impress you and trying to win you over, what do you do in order to make sure that you are actually taking things slower? Because what ends up happening is you fall in love too fast, that person then walks away, and then you go, oh, but I thought we had something, So how do you avoid that? I think you have to be intentional with what you're looking for. Okay, if I don't you know, if I don't know you, I'm gonna love bombing you based off what I think your values are. You know, let's say, oh, I think based on the fact that she's wearing a pair of expensive shoes, I need to seem like I have a lot of money. So I'm going to pull out the Rolex. I'm gonna pull out the nice car. That's what I think matters to her. I don't know, and maybe for her she you know, she's looking for the spark, you know, which I think is a whole other conversation to itself. I think the best thing to do was abandon this idea of the spark and instead actually ask yourself what do you want in a person? So the activity that I was required as to do and my therapy was I had to relive my entire love life. I had to write it all down, and then when I read it, anytime I felt warm or I felt some love, I had to highlight it. And that's how I began to figure out what I specifically want. I think generically everybody kind of wants the same thing. Well, everyone goes like good looking, good sense of humor, like everyone says the same thing. I literally went on the streets a couple of weeks ago, a couple maybe a month ago now, and I was asking what are the top three things you're looking for look for someone? And they were like a nice smile, good sense of humor, and like, I was like really, like literally everyone said the same thing. So yeah, sorry, carry no completely. But and again I'm guilty of that as well. But the next question is you're you're focused on the details and not the feelings. So the next question should be what does a nice smile make you feel? What do good looks make you feel? What does knowing somebody is rich make you feel? That's your that's your actual list, you know, knowing like, oh I want him to be rich. Why, well, that's that's going to make me feel like I'm secure. You know, that makes feel I'm taking care of So what you want not someone who's rich, You want someone that you know what to take care of you. Now, there can be people who may not have the juiciest bank account, but their energy, their effort, their determination, you can just see it in their eyes, you can see it on their day to day activity. You can always put your money on that person. They're always going to show up that'll give you that'll that'll scratch that same itch. And I think when we get very specific with what we care about and how it makes us feel now, that love bombing just won't work. Yeah, you know, because they're going based off of things that they think. They're kind of generic. And as I said, like, we have this generic idea of what beauty is, you know, but beauty isn't that you know, for some person might be watching me right now. I think I'm super handsome. Somebody else may not. And that's completely okay. Everyone's allowed to have their own taste. But the feelings is what we're actually chasing. Even when we think about a person of the past an X, we don't miss them. We miss the way they made us feel. We can carry that feeling forward and require that as we get to know somebody. Can you establish all those feelings and those markets in a first day. No, And I don't think you should. You know, I think it is important to be open to people, give them about, give them that opportunity and see if they can elicit those feelings. And I don't think love bombing someone can be clever enough to love bombing you through those feelings because love bombing is not going to tap into a pathway of love. It's going to tap into this fast food version of it, the attention, the validation, making you seem like you matter. You know. I read one of these posts recently that said, listen, stop bragging that you were chosen over somebody else. Most likely you were chosen because you have less boundaries. Wow, you know, so this isn't a bragworthy thing. And again, our media, our songs, all the things, you know, making us seem like, you know, we should be competing for each other. All of this stuff. It informs what we think matters. You know. We have this idea of the night and shining armor and the damsel in distress, Like I went deep to try to figure out where that that came from real life, back in feudal society, is the only social mobility, you know. A man had to increase his chances of finding a partner was to join the army, you know, because if he grew up on a farm, you know, there was an access to education or anything. He had to join the army potentially come back a hero. And now that he's a hero, he will have more more opportunities in an arranged mirrorge society as well to choose something. So now it's like be chosen and be chased. And I think that that that dogging cat situation right now is really making us focus on external things, whereas if we're grounded and who we are, develop a healthier relationship. Initially, it's going to close us off to a lot of people who aren't on this journey of self awareness, but in the long run, it'll allow us to be that very minority now who stay in healthy relationships throughout their life. Wow. Man, if you're listening right now or watching, I'm talking to Humble the Poet. The book is called How to Be Loved by Humble the Poet. Simple Truths for going easier on yourself, embracing imperfection, and loving your way to a better life. Make sure you go and order a copy while you're listening. This conversation is blowing my mind. It better be blowing yours too. And I think there's just so many, you know, huge insights that I'm taking away from you listening to you today, because ultimately you're demanding a sense of vigilance from a person. I think we're all still living in that very basic sense of I just want to be validated. I want to be complimented. I want to be appreciated. So as long as someone's doing that, we must be in love. They must be kind, they must be nice. And that's too shallow, like it's it's not a healthy way of inferring whether someone feels good about you. And it's funny because it can be really intoxicating, Like it can be really intoxicating that you lose all sight of reality and you think, well, this must be love or this must be the truth. I guess, how do people slow down the idea of falling in love when, like you said, it's sold is so important and special and we're so desperate for it almost right, like we're wired to just want it now? How do you kind of take your time, as you're saying? And I read a study that said it takes two hundred hours to get to know someone, And when I saw that number, I thought, well, how many people in my adult life have I spent two hundred hours with? Yeah? And I was thinking, not many people have I spent two hundred hours. I don't even think we have two hundred dollars. I don't think so either, And so you know, when you when you start thinking about that, you're like, wow, and we're all trying to fall in love and like two months. I think the study said that men say I love you after like three months and women take maybe four to six months to say I love you. But that's quick, yea. So how do you kind of slow this process down? And what do you do in that slowness because as me and you know, this isn't just about how many months you've been together. It's more than that completely. I think the big realization that I have is chasing the delicious. Well, we'll never bring you around the nutritious, and I think you know, and that's really what this is. So when when you say that, you know, the validation is addicting. It is. It's it's salty French fries and you can't just have one. But you do this long enough, you're gonna feel like crap, you know. And now if you've been eating French fries all day and now here here's a plateful of broccoli, it's going to be an adjustment. And that's what I'm saying here. You have to establish a healthy relationship with yourself or you will be incapable of having a healthy relationship with anybody else. I had a friend yesterday. Tell me, if I break up with my boyfriend and he doesn't call me nine times panicking, then he doesn't love me because he's not fighting for me. I'm like, first off, he's not fighting for you. You know. The only reason he's calling you nine time because he is super anxious. Yeah, that's he's trying to suppress anxiety. There's not There's no love in this conversation at all. And what we have to understand is we have again the Bobby's in Whitneys, the Ross's and Rachel's, all of these things that we see, you know, even are including our parents. You know, our first models of love were those who raised us, and they were imperfect beings, you know, And now we often find ourselves attracted to what's familiar over what's actually healthy, you know. And if your parents, if your mom or your father was hard to impress, you're gonna find yourself being gravitated towards somebody who's hard to impress, you know, if you were a caregiver in the house and you want someone that you can take care of. And again, it's building this awareness, it's understanding that I can keep doing this again. I can keep eating fast food every single day and it'll feel like sustenance. But it will take a toll on me, and all of this stuff will exhaust us, you know, versus taking the long route, which is, Hey, I need to establish my relationship with myself. I need to actually have a clear definition of what I want and a partner. And the deeper I go with that, the more unique it is. That I I shouldn't be in a room full of five people and we all have the exact same wish list for a dream partner. It should be very specific, based off our experiences, based off what we care about, and based off where we're headed in our lives. One of the analogies I use, especially for my last relationship that didn't work, is I don't have a bad thing to say about that person, but we weren't going where I needed to go in that relationship. And it's like if I got to go to Boston and there's a beautiful private jet going to Hawaii, I can't get on that jet. You know. If there's another amazing limo going to Florida, I can't get on that. If the only the only vehicle going to Boston. Is that bike. I have to get on the bike. But the first question is do I know where I'm going or where I want to go? And I think for everybody right now, if you feel alone, you cannot outsource that, you cannot address that on the outside. And now we do live in a world where Okay, you make the decision to get someone else to make you feel less lonely. You build a life together, you share a mortgage together, you have a bunch of kids together, and now you're just in that world. And then you know you're doing external things to medicate from that as well. And the challenge with that is, as this modern life gets more and more convenient, most of the things that we use to medicate ourselves turn into weapons against us as well. You know, it's a lot easier to get access to alcohol, it's a lot easier to get access to any substances or drunk food which are quick, easy, convenient, and cheap. So instead, let's focus on what's nutritious. And we all, everybody listening knows what's nutritious for them. They know that people when they're around that fill them up with energy instead of the people that they're around that drain them. They know the places, they know the activities, we're all aware of those. It's taking the long road because the long route lasts longer. You know, it takes longer to get there, but it'll last longer. And these short bits of like I just need to feel like I matter to somebody because my entire life I didn't feel like it. That has to get addressed, and that has to get addressed through journal writing, potentially therapy, potentially coaching. But and all of that is getting us out of black and white thinking and encouraging us to be more self aware. What I'm hearing is like, there's a big difference between people that feel good for us and then people that are good for us. And we're so addicted and obsessed with what feels good that we're not able to focus on what is good because we're almost compelled to be like, well, this person feels great, they look great, they sound great, my friends think they're great, my parents think they're awesome. The world thinks really highly of them. They must be the right person. Rather than what you're saying, and all all I keep hearing and everything you're saying is like there is just so much work to do individually and personally and simultaneously in being in a relationship. There's just so much reflection. There's reflecting on the way your parents loved you. There's reflecting on your axes. There's reflect which is what you've been doing through this whole book journey. There's reflecting on like how you got here. There's reflecting on where you're going. Like, there's just so much reflection and introspection required, and most people just want to throw the towel in because it's exhausting. It can be hard, But I guess what we both agree on is that it's a hard lot harder to not do the work. Yeah, it's the pain of the work or the pain of the regret. You know, it's one or the other. And I think also, you know, the subtitle says going easier on yourself. Look, nobody is weak. You know. If I open up a bag of salty potato chips and I give you one and you want, you're not weak from wanting another one, you know. And for people who eat really healthy, they understand that that's not having unhealthy food in the kitchen, that's leaving it at the grocery store, you know, And you do that long enough, you can start to change your taste. And you know, personal story, you showed me your snack drawer and you've pointed to a bunch of things that were delicious, and after trying them's like, oh, this is all super healthy. His definition of delicious is way healthier than yeah. And I've seen that before because we can actually change our taste. You know. Addiction. We all have addictions, you know, and there's to go from a bad place to a better place, we have to travel through a worse place. And the multiple addictions we have, whether' addicted to our person, whether we're addicted to social media, all of it falls under the exact same category of unintended rewards. I scroll through my phone, see a bunch of stuff that makes me feel insecure, See a bunch of news that heightens my anxiety. Oh, look at cute Puffy. It was all worth it. You know. That's no different than gambling on a slot machine. You just keep pulling it and then all of a sudden reward comes. That's no different than being in an abusive relationship. The bad days are really bad, but the good days, we don't know where they're coming, but they feel euphoric and getting ourselves out of that. I think it's really important. It's like, if I'm like, oh, I'm in the mood to have to go to this fast food restaurant, I'm so in the mood, I go, I eat it. How long does the satisfaction from that actually last? And also when things feel good, they're not. You know, our roller coaster isn't going super high and super low, so it's hard to even pay attention to that. How you know, we don't notice when we're not feeling anxiety because it's not a feeling. And I think we have to really be mindful of that because we're not in a world that is designed or encouraging us to make these healthy decisions, because this world just needs us to run on fumes. Contribute to its economy. Work work, work, work, work, keep up with everybody else. If you're sleepy, have some caffeine. If you're too hyped up, have a xanax. Take them both different times. And it's like this contribute and being aware of ourselves means we would find a lot of you know, we'll realize and the Reason to Cover says how to be loved with a D in parentheses is the only way to realize love is to be love, is to realize you're the source of love. And when you're the source of love, you're not going to be going out and doing retail therapy. When you're the source of love, you're not going to be, you know, traveling halfway across the city to take an Instagram photo account your likes. When you realize you're a source of love and that you can give it to everybody, and it's a gift, it's not alone. You're not giving it hoping it comes back. You're giving it because you're overflowing with it, the same way you would give it to a baby. It doesn't need to be reciprocated. The more we realize that, the less we need it from the outside world. And as I said, nothing is designed around that. We just have to again, keep this junk food out of our kitchen, keep it out of our homes, and not be hard or critical on ourselves when we falter or when we have a bad day. The last chapter of this book, I specifically say, I am all I'm doing. I am not a love guru. I'm a kid who I am somebody who's despinitely trying to understand this because I've made mistakes in my life. I'm the kid at the front of the class taking notes and at the end of the day, all I'm telling you is a difference between French fries and broccoli. And while I'm telling you the difference, I'm eating some French fries when I'm eating some broccolis, you know, And that's important, I think, and for you and I we both noticed being in being embraced in the wellness community, you know. Over on this side of the ocean, everything's very linear. It's like, hey, I used to be really messed up, and then I learned all this stuff and now I'm awesome. If it's three payments of nineteen ninety five, you could be awesome too. And I think for guys like us, we're more in the cycle, and like, hey, I'm messed up. I figured out what the problem was. I learned some stuff. I'm sharing what i'm learning. I'm still struggling with stuff, but I'm going to continue this journey and it's a cycle. I'm gonna have my winter, spring, summer, and fall, and that's going to be a constant thing and I'll be constantly working on it. Joined me on that journey, and let's compare notes, let's compare best practices, and let's realize that we're not because we're critical when we think we're the only one unrelated to love. I remember finding, you know, finding an accountant and having so much anxiety because I was an artist for so long and didn't do any taxes or anything. You know. He helped me out in an hour, and it told someone that story realizing that they had the same anxiety, and told someone else and they had that exist. There's a lot of anxiety that people have and they feel shame and guilt that they're the only ones going through it. And I think the more we reveal this stuff, the more we have these conversations openly, you know, it may not get us a lot of likes on Instagram, and it may scare away some people who want who have an idea of who they think we are. And and for me, one of the biggest lessons I learned in the last year was more damaging than any criticism I've ever received with the compliments, because the compliments put me in a cage. It was one friend that said, yo, humble nothing ever bothers as this guy it's always cool, he's always calm, and then I want to live up to that, and I almost crumbled with that facade. Wow, you know, and that became Reputations themselves can become a prison. So we need to do our best to break out of those, knowing that half the time, those reputations we create were there to protect us and we don't realize now they're imprisoning us. I mean, that's a whole another level of Yeah, No, it's so true. It's so true. I you know, I was just in the studio recording my Calm Meditations. So we once a month, I'm in the studio of like four or five days a week, four or five hours at a time to do a month of content for my daily meditations on Calm. And me and the crew have a really good like banter. So there's a producer in the studio, there's a sound engineer in the studio, and there's two sound engineers remote. But it's the same team we work with every month, and I've worked with them for twelve months now nearly, and it's we have such great banter and all we do is lay into each other. We're joking around and then I'm teaching meditation at the same time, and I kind of set that culture from the beginning, where I was joking around with everyone, messing around with everyone for that same reason that I don't want to be perceived as a guru. And I'll often go out my way to talk about soccer or FIFA or whatever it may be, just because and I love soccer and FIFA, like that's a real genuine love for me. But I'll do that in order to get away from this kind of pedestal, because what I've realized is everyone's a theist. Like everyone's looking for God in their own way, whether your God is your football team or whether your God is your favorite restaurant, or your God is person, and so everyone's looking for God in some way or the other. And we keep projecting godlike imagery onto people, and then they let us down, and everyone will let you down. There isn't anyone who live up to that godlike imagery, and then we almost make it like it's a fault in them, as opposed to realizing that it was a fault in a vision that someone could be that way. It's hard to feel that pressure on yourself, like what you're saying, like if humbles always the calm, collected guy, that's like a godlike projection. None of us are always calm. I'm definitely not always calm. I'm definitely not always you know, thoughtful and reflective. I can be irritable and irritated. So yeah, I love that idea of breaking your own reputation for yourself, and I think just the reminder that it will not disqualify you from love. There is a four minute compilation video on YouTube of Beyonce falling off stage, and I challenge anyone to watch it and think if it changes their love for her in any capacity. It doesn't anything, it increases it. And and again, going back to our our village, small tribe days, this was this is also a survival tactic. It's you had to find the best hunter and start to emulate them and almost worship them, because you would hunt like them, and that would be good for the whole tribe. But not only when we start hunting like them, we would start dressing like them, walking like them, talking like them, you know, And that's built into our culture where it's like I love the way Lebron James plays basketball. I love the way Steph Curry plays basketball, but now I'm also going to drink whatever beverage he drinks. I'm also going to wear the shoes he wears. And then also they're encouraged to not film their practice and just let us see them become superhuman on stage in front of us. We don't watch them to be good, we watched them to get better. So this also puts in this message that perfection is something that you want, but again, perfection is not real. These people aren't perfect. I'm not perfect, You're not perfect, And that's important for us not to be perfect because that's the only way we can actually be vulnerable and have these meaningful connections and knowing, you know, And it's having these conversations, especially having conversations with people who are on social media that don't even have they're not even public figures, and they still refer to the people like the people need, the people want to see where I'm going on vacations, and you're like, who is the people? The big and the big thing I've been thinking about, you know, recently, is this concept of again getting out of the black and white thinking. You know, there are rewards and punishments society and social media and your friends groups will reward certain behavior, and it can be subtle, and you can see that your parents growing up, they reward a certain behavior. We have to realize that not receiving a reward, it's not the same as the punishment. You know, someone people say, society expects me to be beautiful. You may be right. I'm not going to argue with that society. I can't tell someone what signals and cues they get. But what I can tell you is if you decide not to play the game, you won't be punished. If anything, you'll be left alone. You know. If I don't play social media the way it needs to get played, I may not grow. But they're not going to blow up my phone, you know, and you know and make it impossible for me to exist. I just may not get any more rewards. And I think that's important to understand that not getting a reward is not a punishment. Let's get out of that black and white thinking, and then again we can be a little bit easier on ourselves, a little bit more liberated, because maintaining these expectations expectations are going to only close more pathways to love, Expectations from other people, expectations of ourselves. What we have to do is just have intentions, which is I want to get better every day, you know, and that progress is something that we can celebrate each self respect and we can also do that with other people. We can the intentions of what we want things to be, and those intentions will also include our boundaries. Oh man, So powerful want to I want to talk about We've talked a lot about like finding love within yourself, you know, being alone, finding that inner growth, that confidence. We've talked a lot about meeting the right person. How do you know whether the figure are out, is someone's right for you? Knowing what you want in someone I'm intrigued by. You know, when we have been in a relationship for a long time, and you were in a long relationship that inspired you to write this book, and you find, as you said, you're going those separate ways that you want to get to Boston, private jet, going to Hawaii. Sometimes we spend longer in a relationship trying to figure out whether it's going to last then we do in actually building it making it last. So we're questioning a relationship for longer than we're creating a relationship. So if someone's in that phase of their life. What are some of the things that you thought about, What are some of the things you discovered the writing of this book that you'd encourage them to reflect on our introspect on without playing the blame game. Let's always focus on where we can take responsibility, because that's where we'll have power in any situation. You know, if somebody rear ends my car, that's not my fault, but it's still my responsibility. I gotta go to the mechanic, I gotta go handle insurance. And I think in our conflicts with people, we have to look at our responsibilities as well. And I think that's super important in these situations. When we look at our responsibility, what we can start to focus on is love as the verb love through service. One of the simple things that I realized was like, Okay, when I feel enthusiastic about somebody, I want to share my world with them. That doesn't build a connection as much as me enthusiastically diving into their world. So true, man, Yeah, And this doesn't just apply to romantic relationships. This can be you and your grandkids, This can be you and your siblings, This can be you and a co worker. You know, these relationships. We make them about ourselves because we want to find that value. But we'll gain more value and build stronger connections when we dive into the other person's world and start to see that. Now, for some people, communication, I think, you know, communication is key. You know, everything needs to be a conversation. We need to become more aware of a couple as well about what we have expectations of, because so often it's a template having a conversation with somebody yesterday. Even like the definition of things, what's the definition of cheating? Everyone has different definitions, you know. And if somebody's like, oh way, well it's physical, but then somebody else might be emotional, you know, and that is something that you know, these are uncomfortable conversations need to happen for folks like us. We grew up around arranged marriages, and I think the one thing that I always thought was cool about arranged marriages is they ask a lot of the inconvenient, uncomfortable questions. They asked those up from the jump, you know, family history, medical history, finances, all of this type of stuff. But I think all these uncomfortable conversations which we think, you know, we'll just kind of fall into place. Jordan Peterson talks about this. He goes, have a definition of what a made bed looks like, have a definition of what you know, the rules are at the breakfast table, you know, including yourself, recognizing the micro issues that can become bigger issues, and you address them. You nip them at the butt, you know. And I think those are really interesting things to do. I love the Shirley Glass analogy too, which is walls and windows, which is when you're in a romantic relationship with somebody, there is a window between you. So first acknowledge there's a window. So now let's not look at the other person as our possession. Let's look at them as someone who's opened a window to us and we have access to them, and then we need to create a wall around us because the moment somebody outside gets a better view what's happening on the inside, that can be a really strong definition of infidelity, you know, whether it's physical or not. But I think that's a really important thing to understand. This is not your person, This is somebody who's giving you access to them, and now you can continually strengthen that relationship. And I think the other one is love is a game, but the goal of the game is not to win. The goal of the game is to keep it fun, so everybody keeps wanting to play. So treat it like a game, but treat it where the goal is for every You want to keep everybody in the room wanting to play. And I think that's important because when we get into battles or disagreements, the disagreements turn into something else very quickly. And there's something called the bagel method or donut method, depending on what you like better. And you have the small circle, you have the big circle. Whenever there's a disagreement, the small circle is where you should identify and this is from the Godman Institute. I'm not taking credit for this one, but the small circle is where you identify your non your actual non negotiables. Me and you're gonna go to dinner, what are the actual non negotiables? You're vegan. That's an actual non negotiable. Now all that everything else becomes a lot clearer, or there might be three or four more things that maybe hide Mexican yesterday, so today we're not We're not going for Mexican. Don't want to have carbs, so I don't want to do pasta or what have you? Doing? That for yourself first prepares you to communicate to somebody else, and I think that's really important. So often we expect people to just know us, just understand us, read our minds. Through all we've been talking about a self awareness and it's an endless journey. We don't even know us. I don't know me. How can I expect you to know me? And then when you do know me through your observations of me, externally recognize that you're on my team and you're telling me these things for the benefit of us. When there's a problem, it should not be me versus the other person, It should be us versus a problem. And the big idea and explaining all of this is realizing that love is fuel, not glue. Love doesn't keep us together. Love is what we use to work at it. And this applies to romantic relationships, our relationships, our co workers, our friends, our family. We have to work at it. We sometimes feel like it's autopilot because especially I know Brown boys and their moms, we get this unconditional love just for existing. That can't be what we're looking for in our romantic relationships. There needs to be conditions, and then we need to stay. We need to be on our toes, putting in energy and effort, you know, and I think that's really important. Where you know, back to what I've learned from you through the Githa, you were only entitled to the labor, and that labor in itself should be the reward, not the outcome of that labor. And in these relationships, saying I love you and I want to serve you, and serving you is the point of revealing. And this is where the love is revealed. You know, love is going back to the original. You don't win love, you don't find love. The love is already there. You're doing the word. So the analogy I like to use as love as the breeze. And the work that we're doing is to open ourselves. You know, I struggled in my last situation because I could not receive love. It wasn't that there wasn't love there. It was my inability to open my sales because of the walls, the lack of vulnerability. Might need to win in an argument, might need to be in control, my silly ideas, there might be something better out there. All these ideas, I realized that it was me. I had my door closed, I had my sales closed to the breeze that was always there. When we do that work, and that, by default, will create a better relationship with ourselves, which will inform every single relationship we have around us. Master class, Man, Master Class. I want everyone to know when you open up this book, because you're going to order it straight after this conversation if you haven't already, there are chapters in there that will blow your mind. I want to share some of them with you. We've talked about a lot of them today, but there's a lot we have not talked about. So we have. We discussed this one, we did not talk about Love and ego won't hold hands. Definitely going to read that chapter. Chapter nineteen, Envy pulls us away from love. I definitely want you to go and check out that chapter. This one is one that really struck out to me. They can only love us for yesterday. Love is saying no. There are some phenomenal chapters in this book. I highly recommend it. The book is called How to Be Love. The Simple Truths for going easier on yourself, embracing imperfection, and loving your way to a better life. Humble. This has been I mean, we should record our conversations more often because I'm like, this has even been one of those like it's been a really fun Like what I love doing with you, which we've done today, which we do in real life all the time, is we like really unpack stuff. We kind of like critically analyze stuff. We kind of try and like break down as much as we can to try and get to the core of what we're talking about. Is there something that I haven't asked you about today or that you feel compelled to share with our community that's really on your heart that you want to pass forward. I mean, as we were reading all the chapters, I want people to every chapter is only two pages. That's why there's so many chapters, just over sixty chapters. And the way we designed the book and I would love for you to do it. You can open to any page and you will find a quote that that stands out immediately that will give you that. So what do I say, The more we keep our word and act on our commitments, the more momentum we create and the better habits we can build. And that is talking about self love. So all it is is you can open this book, to any page, you'll find something you love. If you read that first chapter, you know you'll definitely be in tears, as I was in tears writing it. And if you finish this book, you're gonna walk away and not considering love complicated. You know, love is simple, not easy. I'm not saying love is easy, and I'm saying love is simple. You know, this was a labor of love and a labor too love for me to write. And I really really really appreciate you, you know, opening me up to your community and all the help that you've done for me, even behind the scenes with this. You know, it taught me. The journey of going through this has taught me a lot in terms of service, in terms of authentic love, and super grateful for that, and thank you so much for having me man. Of course, brother, I highly recommend this book. As Humble said, it's one of those rare books that you can literally flip to any page and you're going to find wisdom right there. And so if you're one of those people who needs it made really simple, really accessible to kind of shake you up, woke you up, you know, take your mind away from distractions. This book is beautifully created. For that, I highly recommend this book. I'm going to be picking it as one of my books of the months for my genius community as well. Please please please go support Humble. He's an awesome dude as well in real life. Please go follow him on Instagram, on Twitter, on all forms of social media, and make sure that you tag me and Humble with your insights and your takeaways from this episode. I think we've really got into some fascinating territory that I didn't even think we would and I want to know what your thoughts are on that, what your reflections are on that. So make sure you tag us both on Instagram with your biggest, biggest insights. And I can't wait for you to listen to another episode of On Purpose. Big shout out to Humble for turning up again. Humble was I mean, I want to end with this because you were one of the first guests to ever come on the show. You were in the first couple of months when we launched, and that's really special for me because when we started the podcast and when you would have recorded with me, the podcast didn't even exist, I don't think, and for everyone who believed in me to come on the show back then means the world to me. So the credit goes back to you, because I mean when you asked me, I was like me, well, me on the podcast, and it was you know, it filled my heart and yeah, it was definitely. You know, there was a little kind of a juxtaposition here, like I'm coming to talk to my friend, but this is also the biggest podcast in the world, and it's like the excitement of talking to Jay, but the anxiety around being on the podcast, it's just it really tripped me out a lot. And I appreciate, as I said, I appreciate you having me, but I'm so happy and proud. I think what I want your audience to know. It's one of the reasons our conversation goes too long. It's because you are so clear and purpose driven with what you do, so you don't when we La is a city full of dreamers and you are you are your your mission based, so you don't tell me your ambitions. You tell me your mission. And then I watched the mission come to life. And you know, with most people, you know, your goals should be clear, your strategies can be negotiable, and I think you know when you mentioned this podcast or you mentioned a million of the other things that you that you're doing. To watch you speak about it, to watch it come to life and to watch it grow, and to watch it become like and everybody's people quote you all the time to me, not knowing we know each other. I think recently in an episode you mentioned my name, my phone blows up and it becomes But it just makes me so proud because this is a this is purpose driven, but it takes work, and you have an amazing team helping you do it, and you're consistent with it, and good things happen to people who stick with it. So just like congratulation with this, For me, it's being full circle being being one of the first episodes and me being here now seeing all the changes that you do has been. It's just it fills my heart. Yeah. That that also lets me know where love exists well, and as your friend and also as someone who you know doesn't like to falsely glorify and just pump people out with the zake of it, because I don't see the value in that in the same way as I don't see the value in criticizing people for no reason. You crush to them, man, like everything that you shared. There was so many great messages and I honestly haven't like thought this fast and reflected on so many things this much in a long time. And so you have this unique ability to get me in the zone really quickly too. And I value that friendship so much. Man, it's such a rare intellectual pleasure and joy as well. No, it's always fun, man. I wish you know. I'm glad this is recorded. It. I don't need to know Pad. Yeah, well everyone else gonna need to know, Pad. But thank you, humble again. Everyone in the book is called How to Be Love. Go and grab your copy right now. And thank you so much for listening to this episode.

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

My name is Jay Shetty, and my purpose is to make wisdom go viral. I’m fortunate to have fascinating  
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