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could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this please hit the follow or subscribe button it helps more than you know and we invite subscribers in
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every month to watch the show in person think of james bond in real life barely says anything not a hint of humanity
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this would be a terrible person to have a relationship with and we've been taught that that's what women want
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number one youtube channel in the world for dating and new york's times best-selling author matthew hussey let's
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begin we have to dispense with this idea that the one exists someone becomes the one by what we build with them any
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commitment long term requires true effort i had an issue with my head and my ear it created the darkest moments of
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my entire life i'd always found whatever was going on in my life i could fix it
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i couldn't fix it if i removed it what would i remove from
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matthew hassou imagine that you're not being judged on
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anything but how great a chef you are we spend so much of our lives mourning our ingredients don't aspire to have the
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best ingredients aspire to be the best chef so without further ado
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i'm stephen bartlett and this is the diary of a ceo usa edition i hope nobody's listening
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but if you are then please keep this to yourself [Music]
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matthew before we started recording we were having a conversation about how the thing that gets you your glory in your
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own words can often be your downfall and it always tends to be the case that the start of everyone's journey
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especially when i sit here with people that i consider to be anomalies like you there tends to be some kind of anomalous
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um situation or trauma or exacerbating factor that they can point to and say
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that was probably the the poke from life or the thing that happened in my early years that resulted
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in me becoming the man i am today have you been able to identify exactly what that is in your own life
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i think so to a large extent i mean we had a lot of financial insecurity growing up and
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i never knew if everything was going to be okay or not for me it was usually it started out as
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a major bid for control i wanted control over my situation
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and i i remember we were living in a in a
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trailer at one point in my teenage years and you know things were you know a
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certain way at home and you know i everyone loved each other but it was there was a lot of tension as you can
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imagine and i i remember going into school and saying i'm
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you know i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that and i would speak so forcefully and aggressively
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about where i was going but it and what was funny is there was a
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i remember a girl at school who had never noticed me before um one of the popular girls she said my mom
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wants me to marry you and i said i said why she said because she thinks
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you're going to be rich which so for me
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even though it's a fairly shallow thing to say there was something about that that was interesting to me at the time because i
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thought oh my god i i've never been further from that reality
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but from the way i'm talking someone really believes me someone really believes that i'm going
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to be something or i'm going to go somewhere but at the time i it what it really was
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was i was just afraid and didn't want to be at the mercy of of life didn't want to be at the mercy
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of whatever i had in my head as the the bad
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out there that could come and get you if you didn't get control and
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and i think most of my early adult life was defined by
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an obsessive need for control when people say that to me i often presume that that meant something was
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out of control well i think for me as a kid it was because i felt like there were problems
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when we had financial difficulties i felt like there were problems i couldn't solve i wasn't
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they were too big i wasn't able to do anything about them so as i
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as soon as i got the chance to go out there and do something that that became a kind of
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obsession and i think by the way combining that with an insecurity
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that i was just desperate to feel special in some way
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desperate to feel important in some way so you know i defined normal as bad
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whatever normal is and i always felt like i had to do something different
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i had to do something that was you know when i was a when i was a i my dad when i was a kid he owned a
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nightclub and i was a dj in that nightclub from 14 years old um he was a dj when he first
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bought that nightclub uh he went in there well actually the nightclub needed a dj and they didn't have one so he
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started djing that was how he became a dj and and then through my teenage years i did
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that but but i didn't just dj for fun i mean i was like
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you know while all my friends were going to parties and doing that kind of thing i was always the one djing the party i
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was always the one working i was always the one when everyone was going home at 2am i was going home at 2am to unload
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the car and all of the equipment and you know it but in my head i think it was
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still coming from that place of it was it was ambition but it was ambition i think driven by a kind of
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insecurity control and i just wanted to feel special
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what was your relationship like with with women in your early years so like when you're 16 odd years old and we start to get those
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first sort of we think they're real but uh real heartbreaks crushes romances
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i was shy i was i was quite it's not that i wasn't
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i was a likeable teenager i was i was good with people to the extent
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that i was i was kind i wanted to be liked i wanted to be close to people
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i kind of got on with everyone at school like there was no one there was no group
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that i belonged to necessarily i could hang with the guys who played football i could hang with the guys who you know
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played dungeons and dragons there was no one there was no one that i didn't like or get on with
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but i when if it came to someone i thought was attractive then it was i couldn't
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i i could not be my fun self my best self my confident self
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then i would kind of freeze up and that was sort of you know in a way
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i was how old was i i was about 11 or 12 when i first picked up how to win friends and
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influence people off my dad's bookshelf my dad was always into self-development so i picked up that book and i was
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i was really immediately taken by this idea that you could
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be better with people and that there were skills you could learn that weren't necessarily the
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things we were being taught in school that that really could magnify your impact or the opportunities that you
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were able to have access to and as a teenager one of the ways that that
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sort of manifests itself is oh i might be able to talk to a girl i like so
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that was one of my early kind of self-development journeys for myself
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was just trying to get the courage to be able to talk to someone that i liked because i realized early on oh the
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the girl that i'm dating right now chose me i'm dating her because she happened to
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be the one who asked me out or at school whose friend came and asked me out on her behalf
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and that's why i'm dating this person right now it's not because i
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went to choose who i liked is because someone decided they like me and i said
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well i'm not going to have the confidence to go and talk to someone i really like so i guess i'll say yes
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and that was sort of i would say that defined my early sort of teenage years with girls when
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you in your late teenagers what was your i want to be this when i grow up what were you thinking that your career was
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going to be when you were 18 years old at one point i thought i'm going to do this djing thing this is going to be my
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life and my dream was kind of i loved self-development i really loved i i was
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14 when i got taken to a tony robbins seminar really in england
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at the excel center when i think of the people in society generally that
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are seen as special and important and have the admiration of crowds it's definitely the first two things that
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come to mind is like tony robbins and dj
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well i loved i loved music that was something that really is a
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that's always been true in my life i've always loved music even at my events today music play a big part plays a big
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part because i've just never lost that love but i also just love ideas there's
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nothing more fun to me than just discussing an idea but did you love the the attention
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and the admiration yeah probably i know i did i i think i
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still there's a part of me that that can be hijacked by that what are the symptoms of letting the ego
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drive for too long i think firstly living in a constant state of
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never enough living in a state of fear that you'll never
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be enough and feeling
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ultimately disconnected from
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from from the results of things from how good things are already
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and and when you when you achieve that thing there is a
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ultimately uh a scary moment awaits because it's not
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it's not just a numbness there is a there is a feeling of total
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disconnection and when that happens panic sets in and it's a terrible feeling it's a
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terrible feeling because it then you really freak out because as long as you're telling yourself
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yeah life is really hard now but when that happens it won't be so hard as long
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as you're telling yourself that what you have to hold on to is hope and the hope will drive you even if
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you're unhappy today but when you arrive and it doesn't work
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then hope goes away matt damon won the the oscar at 27 for
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good will hunting and graham norton i always remember watching this interview where graham
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norton said to matt damon on his show you know how does it feel
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when you were 27 and you won an oscar something people worked their whole lives to do how did you feel
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he said i went home my girlfriend went to bed or went to sleep and graham
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norton joked like so you didn't even get laid on oscar night he goes my girlfriend went to sleep
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and i laid in bed and i i had this oscar in my hand and i just felt so sad
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because i imagined this this version of me kind of in a parallel universe that had
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worked his whole life to get this and then realized 70 years later that this wasn't it this
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wasn't the thing that worked um and so i think that when when that ego
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is driving and that ego is never fed it's always hungry it's always wanting
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more um there is there is the danger of just constant
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comparison nothing ever being enough and ultimately anytime you do get
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something you think might be enough you feel completely and utterly disconnected from the result after
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the initial high of it which is no different from a drug fix here's the hard part because we've
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heard this a thousand times we all think that you know i get it i get it when you get
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money it's not gonna make you happy when you get status that's not gonna make you happy when you become known that's not
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gonna make you happy we all we all can regurgitate that and then five minutes later we're back
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to chasing it in our own lives and and what's curious to me is how do
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you take something that is a bumper sticker
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phrase and turn it into a kind of meaningful practical way of
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living and reconnecting so that you don't fall prey to not taking that advice that we all
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can say it because it sounds good how do we do that
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i if you have a hazard i guess i'll tell you well i'll
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i'll talk about what i do
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i'm i firstly am very aware of the simple things that make me
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happy and i i have them written down i was saying to
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you before we started i'm a big note taker i'm someone who i believe winston churchill said people
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occasionally stumble over the truth but most pick themselves up and carry on as if nothing happened
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well i would say the reason i write so much when i feel something if i feel
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something good if i feel an emotion that i like whether it's peace or happiness or i feel connected
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or i feel love for something or someone i don't anymore just pick myself up and
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keep going when i stumble over an emotion like that i i pause life
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i go okay hold on what's happening right now
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why am i feeling this i can just kind of treat emotions as an
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accident or i can try to bottle them and figure out what's my formula
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for getting to this feeling of peace i feel peaceful right now i don't feel peaceful a lot
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this isn't like my tendency is towards anxiety i don't feel peace a lot so when i feel
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peace i want to know how i got here how did i stumble into this wonderful
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room and i look at it i go what's going on around me what was i just thinking about
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that led to this thought that led to the thought that what what was the chain of thoughts that
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got me here who am i with right now what did i just do because what i want is a formula for
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getting back there again an hour from now when life does its thing because it will five minutes later
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life will do its thing i'll read an email i'll get a phone call someone will say something that annoys
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me and there is it's gone i need a place where i can get back to
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that and i need that formula so i i call these emotional buttons
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i have a list of emotional buttons in my phone on my computer and i teach this on my retreat
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but it started from this was selfishly just something i did for me and to this day
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is i'm always suspicious when someone teaches something but you never see them using that thing
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you never see them doing that thing i because not because that makes them a hypocrite it just i feel like how
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important can it be if you don't do it this emotional buttons concept i live
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this concept because when i wake up in the morning what i do
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is i immediately wake up and i look at these little formulas and usually there's one thing that
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kind of triggers that formula if i can the reason i call them emotional buttons is because if there's if there's one
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idea or thought or youtube video or person even an idea of a person if
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there's one thing that can connect me to that formula then
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i can get there instantly so like i don't know um
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anthony bourdain who who i really loved he did jujitsu and he was really
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really into it i do jujitsu most mornings when i wake up and do jiu jitsu i don't want to do
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it i really don't i'm so hot every time i come home from doing it i'm like i'm so glad i went
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that was so good i'm so why don't i do this all the time i almost
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never feel like going and therefore i have emotional buttons that
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get me to to want to go to jiu jitsu i have these little triggers one of them is a
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two-minute youtube video where anthony bourdain is being asked about jiu-jitsu and he speaks about it and the way he
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speaks about it and because i feel connected to him as an individual it makes me go
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oh i want to go i want to go. or there was a rich role had a phrase
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mood follows action and that one phrase became an emotional button for me because i went oh mood
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follows action this is so great i don't need i don't even need to feel like going before i go do you write your
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emotional buttons down somewhere yes yes in your notes or something yes you say jiu jitsu this is my exactly exactly
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it gets that specific for me that they become a kind of manual for living for me now the reason i say
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all of this even though this might seem disconnected from the idea of uh
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of not allowing ego to rule and being connected to what's important
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is is that this whole concept what it's really about is being connected
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in life what i experienced a lot in my 20s which was really scary at a certain point
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was on paper i'm doing everything that i
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thought i wanted to do i when i was a teenager i was
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i was reading self-development books and talking about them for fun i'd grab uni mates and be like let me
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tell you about this thing that i just read and i'd have some very patient friends at uni who would be like tell me
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more that's really interesting i would do that just for fun
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at 27 i'm doing it for an audience of millions of people
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with a best-selling book and tv shows and all these things i'm doing this
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on the most incredible level this thing that i would do for free for fun
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and i can't feel it why can't i feel it what's happening
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and i had someone once say to me at the time you're disconnected
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and at the time i just couldn't i couldn't even i didn't even know what that meant i just said i don't i i'm not i feel
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somehow like i'm on the outside of my own life and
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and what i've come to truly believe in at my core
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is that so much of life is just about getting connected when when we
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you know whether it's simon sinek talking about the power of why or anybody who's saying you need to find
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your motivation or it all ends up being about the same thing really which is
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are you connected do you feel connected to why this thing
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you're about to do whether it's a conversation with a friend or a podcast or going to the gym
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do you feel connected to why that's even important to you
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not important in the world and blah blah blah everyone wants to change the world
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why it's important to you what makes it meaningful
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to you that level of connection a friend of mine aubrey marcus put it
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i don't know whether it was his or someone else's but he put it as being on the inside of the moment
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when there's a moment happening do you feel like you're on the inside of the moment
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or do you feel like you're on the outside looking in and and every day i wake up and the first thing
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on my on my best days there are days where life gets in the way and i rush straight into work and i always pay the
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price for that when i rush straight into work and emails and and all of that i pay the price for that
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but more often than not the way i start my morning is to wake up
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i get out my emotional buttons the things that remind me what's
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important to me and what makes me feel good and connect me to those things and i read those and i write sometimes i
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just write them out again i don't get creative i just i just write them out again and as i write them i connect to them again
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and i play beautiful music i play music that makes me feel really connected and usually not with words just just
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a track as an instrumental and that process immediately begins my day with a feeling
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of of being on the inside of my life instead of waking up and getting dragged
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through my day when we think about the things that make people disconnected from their lives or
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causes them to live on the outside of the moment because i was as you were saying that i was thinking about the listener and i was thinking there's
00:22:43
going to be so many people listening to this now that have you know veered off course of alignment
00:22:49
they've been dragged they're good you know there's something called the i think it's called the excellence syndrome or something or the curse of
00:22:55
excellence where you're so good at something that people start paying you more and more to do it and you keep accepting the
00:23:01
money and what you're what you're not ever asking yourself is you're being paid more and more to do this thing that you were good at or you were qualified
00:23:06
in is is it in alignment with myself you get 10 years down the line and people have these like mid-life crises or
00:23:12
burnout because they're so far from themselves but the temptation or the
00:23:17
money or the the applause was able to drag them away um
00:23:22
from your from your personal experience what was it that was dragging you out of alignment we talked a little bit about
00:23:27
our ego there but was there anything else that we haven't covered where you go that is the thing that keeps drifting me off course
00:23:33
it's interesting because i remember i was thinking as you're talking as well about the study about the impact money has on our motivation and you can take a
00:23:39
task as you you know you're a kid and you like doing personal development you can take a task that someone once loved
00:23:45
doing and when they introduce financial remuneration in the studies people's motivation to do that exact
00:23:52
same thing drops it's mad isn't it mad yeah makes no sense well there's a um
00:23:59
there's a study that involves two rats one of them is on a wheel
00:24:05
that it controls the the rat can run whenever it wants to run
00:24:12
there's that's right a rat b is on another wheel but rap b's wheel is
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hooked up to rat a's wheel so rat b doesn't get to decide
00:24:27
rat a whenever that rat runs rat b's wheel moves and rat b has to run
00:24:36
they're both doing the exact same amount of exercise but
00:24:42
the results of the experiment are the ra a has all of the markers
00:24:48
associated with all the positive markers associated with exercise
00:24:54
rat b has all of the negative markers associated with stress um
00:24:59
they're both running the exact same amount they're not do one's not doing more exercise than the other but one is
00:25:05
choosing and the other one is having to
00:25:11
when we start to think that we're no longer choosing when we're now having to do something
00:25:19
it could be the exact same thing that we were doing before we used to be rat a
00:25:25
but now because it made money and with that money we went and bought a house and we got an expensive
00:25:31
mortgage and we got the car and we did this we did that or we just had the expectation now because our identity is
00:25:37
built on earning that much money so it might not even be the stuff that's weighing you down it's your identity
00:25:43
that's weighing you down and the perception you want other people to have of you or retain of you
00:25:48
that now has turned you into rat b you're no longer choosing
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this thing so i'm fascinated by that idea and and i think that
00:26:01
as much as there will be people in life listening to this who
00:26:07
have maybe grown tired of what they're doing and therefore have concluded that they
00:26:13
need to do something else sometimes that's true
00:26:19
sometimes it's reconnecting with what you do from a different place
00:26:25
and there are a lot of people that have convinced themselves that happiness lies in a career change
00:26:31
happiness lies in them going in a different direction and we when we do that we glorify
00:26:38
everyone else's job we think everyone else does a better job than me everyone else has something more
00:26:43
exciting going everyone else has something that oh i wish i was where that person is but
00:26:49
that's not true either there was an imagineer at disney who who
00:26:56
was one of the main imagineers responsible for a lot of animal kingdom in disney world
00:27:02
and he got asked do you ever not feel excited about a project you're given
00:27:09
and he said sure he said but my job is to find what's exciting
00:27:16
about the project i just got given and i think there's something important in that because we're often seeking
00:27:22
passion elsewhere instead of creating the passion where we are i'm not saying every job is
00:27:28
made equal in terms of its ability to allow you to do that
00:27:33
but i do think that um there's a lot more room to there's a lot more room to experience
00:27:40
passion within the confines of where we already are than we think when we're constantly trying to change our
00:27:46
environment to make things better one of the three lines of like i guess business but life in general and also
00:27:52
with relationships is and i really wanted to ask you this because it's something that i've seen in my dms from people people sometimes message me about
00:27:57
relationships and one of the things that i find concerning when i meet someone in their personal development journey or in
00:28:03
my dm's talking about their boyfriend or in other facets of business is when i identify a lack of
00:28:09
personal and self-responsibility where you meet certain people in life where they just can never seem to take
00:28:16
responsibility they never want to like look in the mirror and ask themselves the question what role have i played in
00:28:22
this and i sat with lewis in london on this podcast about a week ago or two weeks ago something and one of the things that really astounded me about
00:28:28
lewis was when he said something about his ex-partner even if it was it seemed like a fault on
00:28:34
the surface he would say and that's on me and then end the little the paragraph
00:28:40
with why he was responsible even if it was like you know she wouldn't let me
00:28:45
have females on my podcast or something like that then he'd say and that's on me and i remember thinking damn this guy's
00:28:51
gonna go far so what role have you seen that part taking personal responsibility has on
00:28:56
the the positivity of your outcomes in dating life business and everything
00:29:01
in between well i think that to start with it it makes you a much
00:29:07
more likeable person amen the idea of extreme ownership
00:29:12
is a in some ways powerful but we all know there are things that have
00:29:19
happened in life that are not our fault at all there are things that we trauma we have
00:29:24
experienced that it would be insulting to say that
00:29:30
we have to take responsibility for these things uh it would be sinister in some cases to
00:29:36
suggest that but if we can get into the habit of
00:29:44
genuinely saying you know how this how this is affecting
00:29:49
me is something i can take responsibility for and if i do it
00:29:55
actually gives me a shot at feeling better about this thing it actually gives me a chance
00:30:00
of improving it because if i if i say i'm powerless
00:30:06
then i can't have it both ways i can't say i'm powerless and none i i i
00:30:11
have no responsibility over how i feel and then make it better
00:30:16
i have to say okay this thing is happening it's not that it's happening is not my fault that
00:30:24
someone is making my life really really difficult right now with what they're doing their behavior
00:30:29
their abuse their whatever that is not my fault but
00:30:34
i want to get really curious about how i can
00:30:40
handle this in a better way in a more productive way and the one of the things our mutual
00:30:46
friend louis howes who you're talking about one of the beautiful things about him both in front of the camera and behind the
00:30:53
camera is that he is lewis is not a complainer
00:30:59
lewis is someone who he'll talk about the things that that he's struggling with right now or he'll
00:31:06
talk about the things that he's trying to work on but it's never from a place of being
00:31:13
the victim it's always from a place of what what can i do
00:31:18
which i think is different people i think what part of the problem for a lot of people is they conflate the idea of
00:31:24
ownership with fault and and that takes us into some really
00:31:29
dangerous territory it it's not your fault that something's happening
00:31:35
but you can take responsibility for how you
00:31:41
how you turn that into art i i thought about um
00:31:48
i thought about confidence a lot in my career and the injustices of confidence right
00:31:55
because the we are not distributed things equally in life you're not distributing things
00:32:01
equally at birth we're not distributed opportunities equally you know it's super easy for anyone
00:32:08
who's objectively decent looking to talk about you know
00:32:14
how easy it is to go and approach someone or do this or do that and you're like you cannot even imagine
00:32:20
what it is for someone who has been rejected their entire lives
00:32:26
they are starting from a completely different position than you in their confidence it's so easy for someone to
00:32:31
say you just need to be confident okay start from where i'm starting from and then tell me that
00:32:37
you know the confidence is a really again it can be a very insulting concept
00:32:47
but i do believe that that there's a i there's a tv show
00:32:52
called chopped and i i'm probably i'm not familiar with the show but so i'm probably going to get wrong the concept
00:32:58
but in my head the concept of this show is very very interesting from the point of view of
00:33:04
confidence i think the chefs get given different ingredients
00:33:10
so you you it's like just lucky dip what do you get
00:33:15
what's interesting is if you get a basket of ingredients and i get a basket of ingredients
00:33:22
we're both getting judged on what we make of those ingredients in that format it's what are you able to
00:33:29
do with what you have and what am i able to do with what i have and i think there's something really
00:33:36
fascinating about that because we spend so much of our lives mourning our
00:33:41
ingredients really being upset or frustrated about
00:33:46
what the ingredients are that we were given imagine that you're not being judged on
00:33:52
anything but how great a chef you are because that show isn't about ingredients it's about chefs
00:33:59
well imagine life isn't about ingredients it's about chefs don't aspire to have the best
00:34:05
ingredients aspire to be the best chef and the best chef
00:34:11
is going to be the one who can be the most creative with the ingredients that they have
00:34:17
i i'm fascinated by that because if i apply that to my own life i just go whatever thing that just happened i wish
00:34:25
didn't happen whatever thing that's happened to me this year that is so painful
00:34:31
so devastating so whatever whatever that thing is it just became a new ingredient
00:34:38
in my life i can either judge myself or my ingredients
00:34:44
which if i do that i'm always at the mercy of the next thing that happens in my life something cataclysmic could happen in my
00:34:51
life and and i lose everything and then what i'm going to judge myself and my life on my ingredients
00:34:57
it to me it's always how great of a chef are you
00:35:04
ingredients are luck of the draw being a chef is something we can continue to get
00:35:10
better at our entire lives and it's actually the antidote to whatever happens if you're a great
00:35:17
chef you can cook something out of whatever you have it's such a such a powerful analogy and
00:35:23
it really really did like yeah i sort of do what you probably do when you hear an analogy you kind of test it from
00:35:28
multiple scenarios and it really stands up and i was thinking then again about when we look into that basket of the ingredients we're handed if we if we
00:35:35
believe that the ingredients we were handed are inadequate or inferior to the chef stood next to us we're probably
00:35:41
also going to prepare the meal with a certain level of pessimism that's going to result in a worse dish anyway and the
00:35:46
the agony also of looking over at someone else's basket of ingredients and going [ __ ] oh they've got the ribeye
00:35:52
and look at me and that you know because we both know the negative power of comparison and how it can drive down performance belief confidence and all
00:35:58
those things but it's a beautiful beautiful analogy and sometimes imagine if you took pride in being able
00:36:04
to still make even if you knew like this ingredient is this one sucks
00:36:09
like there's no getting around it these ingredients i have right now suck
00:36:14
but you took pride in look what i can make out of out of this
00:36:21
i get you made something amazing with your truffle salt and your you know your caviar and your uni like i get you did
00:36:29
something amazing with that no [ __ ] look what i just did with kelp jerky
00:36:39
yeah it's a it's a real powerful um analogy for privilege as well isn't it because you know 100 because you then
00:36:46
you realize i'm in a different game altogether this is why comparison is so insidious
00:36:55
because what am i gonna do compare myself
00:37:01
to someone who got a completely different basket of ingredients and say and by the way the basket of ingredients
00:37:06
isn't just what you got in life in terms of circumstances or parents or whatever
00:37:12
education your basket of ingredients is also what you got here
00:37:19
you have a sharp mind thank you now
00:37:25
you've no doubt honed that mind you've respected it you've honored it by reading and by educating yourself into
00:37:31
all of these things but you also started with a sharp mind yeah probably i'm really it's funny
00:37:38
because i'm really bad at math english and everything i'm good at the thing i honed but you're right i definitely had a predisposition like your speed
00:37:44
of like you hear something and you i've watched you in in interviews and when you talk your speed of how you
00:37:50
assimilate information and draw patterns you're good at pattern
00:37:55
recognition which is why from a philosophical standpoint there's a strength there right because
00:38:00
you're good at pattern recognition these things you just won the lottery on that one
00:38:08
like with your brain you just happen to win the lottery on that one right that's this is going to be my
00:38:14
confidence button gonna get this
00:38:23
those ingredients extend to everything they extend to everything you you can
00:38:29
have grown up in the most dire circumstances but have a sharpness of mind that other
00:38:34
people can't even relate to and for that reason you've if you know how
00:38:40
to double down on that thing anything can happen i love the idea
00:38:47
and i think that everyone could benefit from a kind of acceptance of
00:38:54
just i'm starting from where i am forget starting from when you were a baby and
00:39:00
you know all of the circumstances you were born into and so on i'm talking now forget what's happened forget everything
00:39:05
you've done i had a great brain but then for 10 years i did a bunch of drugs and then i hurt myself and then blah blah
00:39:11
blah whatever doesn't matter i think about it like this imagine that you woke up into your life right now and your
00:39:17
only job was to make the most of that life so forget the years that stephen has
00:39:24
already had your 29 right now so forget the 29 years that have already happened
00:39:29
you this brand new soul is waking up this morning into stephen's body at 29 with whatever his opportunities are and
00:39:37
whatever his problems are it would be awesome you'd be so happy for the
00:39:43
opportunity i'd be honestly [Music] terrified do you know why
00:39:50
because i'd lose the lessons as well and then i think i literally was thinking of this soul coming down
00:39:56
getting my credit card and going and buying a lamborghini he was like he will go back to the club
00:40:05
you start with a 60 year old level of wisdom but i guess you keep the wisdom it's so funny i started i was having
00:40:11
this conversation with with uh my fiance the other day and we were like we would not go back to our 20s for any
00:40:18
amount of money in the world there is nothing i would not take i would not want those
00:40:23
extra years back if it meant that i didn't have the lessons that i have today that have
00:40:29
brought me more peace than i had done mo gowda sat here and he said when he
00:40:35
was the head of google x he said that when they did the eraser test which was asking people if you could erase the most traumatic
00:40:41
experience of your life these are really horrific things but in erasing it you'd erase the
00:40:46
lessons that came with it 99 of people said no and it's the same thing it's like i wouldn't even go back to being younger
00:40:53
if it meant that i'd lose the last 10 years of lessons as you said yeah because you you erase that trauma and and you
00:40:59
want to because my god who would want to go through that but you're playing roulette with your wisdom yeah who wants
00:41:06
to take that gamble and some trauma not all of it got to be clear there some
00:41:11
trauma is a consequence of a lesson we had to learn and so if you're so
00:41:17
life will probably have to teach you that lesson again in my my case whether it's heartbreak or whatever it is or failure there was a lesson i had to
00:41:23
learn about the nature of the world and people and if you remove it then i'm gonna have to learn it again that means more pain
00:41:28
and that that trauma that you went through even if it wasn't a result of something that
00:41:34
you needed to learn may have been the catalyst for you to learn something that
00:41:40
is going to prove essential for something you've yet to experience amen
00:41:46
there are things for me that
00:41:51
have prepared me for the rest of my life in some way that
00:41:58
i i i had an issue with my um i have an issue with my head and my ear
00:42:04
that bothered me to say it bothered me is as
00:42:10
is ridiculous it it created the darkest moments of my entire life
00:42:18
tinnitus isn't it well i have tinnitus right it's but it's not tinnitus alone
00:42:23
it's um it's a it's a kind of a pain and a throbbing that that rides up through my ear and my head
00:42:31
it's been very traumatic because there were times when i was there were times when
00:42:37
i couldn't i couldn't imagine i didn't know what i was gonna
00:42:44
do it robbed me of all of the joy in life i i couldn't
00:42:50
i couldn't experience any joy i was so it was so centralizing this pain this
00:42:56
chronic pain and i would go through cycles of every time there was some new treatment that i
00:43:02
thought could help i would get some hope and that hope would give me a momentary kind of
00:43:09
for a couple of weeks or a month before the treatment i would feel uplifted even though i would still be in pain i would
00:43:15
feel like there's this thing that's going to work and i'd talk about it to friends and family i know i'm they'd be like how's
00:43:21
your head and i'd be like oh it's bad but but i'm going to go and do this thing and i did
00:43:26
so many different things and every time when it didn't work i would i would plummet even deeper
00:43:34
and and it got so dark that i didn't know
00:43:39
i thought oh i'm not signing up for this i can't do this i can't i i cannot do this for another 50 years
00:43:46
in my head it was the closest i'd ever been to suicidal without
00:43:52
truly going there in a practical sense it was a kind of conceptual thought
00:43:57
where i thought i'm i can't i can't sign up for this for the rest of my life
00:44:03
and because i had friends that i love family i love more
00:44:10
than anything in this world staff accompany all of these
00:44:15
things i had a big life there was never a real option it was never like a real thing that i'd
00:44:22
considered but i remember the thought that that triggered
00:44:28
was i am just gonna live for the people that i care about
00:44:34
now i'm just gonna live for other people whether it's my audience when i make a video or whether it's by family or
00:44:39
whether it's my team who rely on this company for their living i'm going to live for other people
00:44:45
because i i don't experience joy anymore
00:44:50
this just this robs me of everything in my life i'm always thinking about it 24 hours a
00:44:55
day there would be 15 seconds when i'd first wake up in the morning where i'd forget
00:45:02
that i wasn't that i was in pain for just a brief moment and then it would rush back in and i'd remember
00:45:08
for me it was the first brush in my life with anything it was my first brush with something that
00:45:15
my ingenuity my determination my ambition
00:45:20
my intelligence my problem solving could not i'd always found whatever was going on
00:45:27
in my life i could fix it i couldn't fix it and in that sense it
00:45:33
sort of became my first brush with mortality because i went i i just have to
00:45:39
i have to somehow learn how to make peace here and
00:45:47
in doing that and and there's a whole conversation to be had on how i did that but in doing
00:45:53
that i've now learned to deal with something that i know in
00:46:01
one form or another is going to come up again and again in my life it may not be in the same context
00:46:08
it might be through the death of somebody i care about it might be through some other
00:46:14
traumatic circumstances i can't even picture right now that are going to happen to me but i know that in the process of
00:46:22
handling that trauma i have become more robust
00:46:27
in my ability to deal with all manner of chronic conditions in life
00:46:34
that there isn't an easy answer to if i removed it what would i remove from matthew hussey
00:46:42
i mean so so much i it would remove
00:46:51
an extraordinary amount of empathy look chronic conditions can come in the
00:46:57
form of physical pain but they can also come in the form of emotional pain and and there are people that
00:47:04
when they talk about being depressed or when they talk about struggling with anxiety
00:47:10
there's a chronicity to that that they are dealing with that is incredibly hard to understand if
00:47:18
you've always been able to make things go away there there is something about a thing you
00:47:25
can't make go away that brings you to your knees
00:47:30
and truly truly humbles you and and so it wouldn't just take away an
00:47:36
enormous amount of empathy it would take away an extraordinary amount of humility to lose that would be to lose i think
00:47:44
the most powerful parts of who i am today
00:47:49
do you still have the [Music] pain now yeah but i i what i learned
00:47:56
and this is true for many people with chronic pain is that
00:48:02
there is an emotional component to it and so
00:48:10
the way that i relate to it is has the ability to either make worse
00:48:16
that emotional component or reduce it the the pain is always there waiting to
00:48:23
flare up and some days it's a four some days it's a nine when it's at four
00:48:29
i can get on with my life when it's at a nine i have to almost do the opposite i have to practice immense self-compassion
00:48:37
because i'm like you i'm like i want to wake up every morning and get
00:48:43
after it and there's so many things i want to do and that's like into a fault i pack my days and i'm always trying to
00:48:51
and what it taught me was how to slow down and not beat myself up for slowing down
00:48:57
because there were days where i was so miserable with it that i had to learn how to just be okay with being miserable today
00:49:03
i'm so unhappy with this today this is so affecting that
00:49:09
i can't do that piece of work that i really want to do i can't get that thing done i
00:49:14
don't want to hang out with people i don't want to it and once i let go of all the
00:49:20
expectations of myself on that day and said you know what then [ __ ] it
00:49:26
let's just be in pain today once i did that that would impact the emotional
00:49:32
component of it because now i wasn't i wasn't
00:49:37
upset about being in pain and i wasn't stressing about being in pain and i
00:49:44
wasn't beating myself up for being in pain because i felt like i'm i'm it would even sometimes go to
00:49:50
the core of me being a man i'd be like i'm weak i'm deficient somehow i'm not
00:49:57
this you know i don't feel able and that that made me feel like an elderly
00:50:04
person in a 30-somethings body i was like what's wrong this is so they don't beat myself all of this by the way
00:50:10
is just making the pain flare up so when i flare up emote when emotions
00:50:16
flare up for me it goes straight there for me and
00:50:21
what i learned is oh that's interesting because the game now is
00:50:28
can i control stress or anxiety or self-judgment
00:50:34
or any of the shame any of these things can i control these and get a handle on them and reduce them
00:50:41
because for me there's a very literal consequence
00:50:46
to them going up and there's a real benefit there's real treasure to be had in
00:50:53
being able to get a handle on those things so that again was a gift very few people will be able to relate
00:50:59
to the chronic pain um experience that you've had but people will be able to relate to how their
00:51:05
out of control emotions have an impact on their broader immune system so when we get stressed we get ill like for me
00:51:12
in my life when i was running my my company i would get ill so rarely that when i did i would know
00:51:18
the email or the situation or the cash flow issue that had caused it in the preceding 48 hours i'd go ah [ __ ] yeah
00:51:25
you know and then i'd get a cold right so it happened like twice a year and it would always be typically always be when we had a cash flow problem
00:51:31
um is there anything you've implemented in your life to get to get control of your emotional sort of stress response that
00:51:38
life you know will um cause because of whatever's because life happens
00:51:43
whether it's meditation or something else just to bring yourself back down to a place of peace
00:51:48
one of the things that's important to me is to recognize that
00:51:54
the actually what i need to be happy is not it's not actually that
00:52:00
impressive if i get to
00:52:07
i have um a certain i call them my criteria
00:52:12
my criteria are the things that need to happen every day for me to
00:52:19
feel like i'm living a good life and therefore my head hits the pillow
00:52:25
and i feel like today mattered today was a good day and i've distilled that down to
00:52:32
a few key words create move learn
00:52:38
connect appreciate and contribute
00:52:44
interesting and i really thought about those as like my my personal formula for
00:52:50
happiness the reason that those words sound quite vague is because i actually have
00:52:57
many many different ways of achieving any of them right now i'm writing a book
00:53:03
it just so happens that every day i write is contributing to the goal of producing a book but
00:53:09
even if it wasn't it still ticks my create box every day when i sit and write for
00:53:16
45 minutes or an hour i tick that create box in my criteria
00:53:22
now it doesn't matter whether i'm writing a book or making a video or doing something else that's creative i just have to take that box
00:53:29
i don't by the way have to tick it for six hours a day there's diminishing returns
00:53:34
if i do it for one or two hours a day i take that box movement or move
00:53:40
i typically i do jiu-jitsu or i do uh boxing or i'm in the gym
00:53:48
but i could even if if you and i went for a hike tomorrow i'd meet that movement box with that
00:53:56
multiple ways of achieving our criteria but it matters to me immensely
00:54:02
it's everything that i do meet them each day and an unhappy life for me is one where
00:54:08
i don't where too many days in a row i didn't
00:54:14
hit those criteria it has nothing to do with how big my book deal is
00:54:20
or how many people watched a video today or you know it all those external things
00:54:26
that are stressing me out because in that moment when i'm stressed i've convinced myself that that's what
00:54:33
really matters what helps me is stepping out of that game altogether and stripping my life
00:54:40
back down to the absolute basics if today
00:54:46
i call my mom or my brother and have a a nice conversation to connect
00:54:53
if i go spend an hour doing brazilian jiu jitsu if i
00:54:58
uh write 500 words if i learn something new from a book
00:55:06
if i help someone that's my contribute if i help someone
00:55:12
i've done what i need to do to live a good life all the rest and none of those things
00:55:18
are dependent on how well everything is is going in my life and that that to me is really liberating
00:55:25
because it means all the stress that i'm creating is is self-imposed one of those boxes was connect
00:55:32
and you have connected with someone
00:55:37
who's actually sat in the room i am you know you historically not posted a lot on social media about your
00:55:44
relationship situations you've been as you said in your own words on that wonderful proposal announcement post you
00:55:50
did you'd been quite a private person one of the lines in that that um post you did when you announced that you and
00:55:56
audrey had become engaged was and finally thank you for teaching me
00:56:01
how to love in a way that i was too scared to before i found that quite intriguing
00:56:08
i i think like a lot of men i struggled with
00:56:15
genuine vulnerability we all have our fake version of
00:56:22
vulnerability the you know it's the version of going into for a job
00:56:28
interview and saying my what's your biggest weakness i i work too hard
00:56:34
everyone's got their pr version of vulnerability it's vulnerability if on some level it
00:56:40
just makes me feel like i'm expressing a part of myself that you might not like or you you know i can't control your reaction
00:56:47
to this and i had been in relationships in the past where i had revealed an insecurity
00:56:54
like i was jealous of somebody you know i felt threatened by somebody else
00:57:03
and it was fed back to me that that was unattractive
00:57:09
and in my mind that that kind of stuck
00:57:14
i think there is a especially in a lot of men there is a kind of there's a kind of double thing going on
00:57:21
in their head where they go yeah yeah i know that's really important but i'm not saying that
00:57:27
because if i say that she's not going to think i'm cool anymore i've spent a lot of time curating this
00:57:33
sexy alpha core image that has attracted this person you
00:57:39
really think i'm going to jeopardize that by showing an actual weakness something that and i'm again i'm not
00:57:46
talking about the weakness of i cry in movies that's not vulnerability that you
00:57:52
know that's going to be cute you know that she's gonna see that and go oh my god he's sensitive too
00:58:00
that's not vulnerability real vulnerability is this is something that
00:58:08
i never really wanted anyone to see and
00:58:15
and i'm taking a risk that when you see this you're gonna still think that i'm what
00:58:21
you want have you got something in mind when you say that when you had a conversation with audrey and you think now this is
00:58:28
one of the things where i wouldn't normally have had the safety i think that for me
00:58:34
times when i was anxious i would normally bottle those up and keep them to myself
00:58:40
i wouldn't express what i was anxious about or what was doing that to me
00:58:45
times if we were arguing where i wouldn't really be honest about
00:58:52
why i was upset um i'd give the kind of strong version of why i was upset
00:58:59
the pr version yeah yeah but i wouldn't give the real reason i was upset that went to the core of me not feeling
00:59:05
enough of me not feeling good enough of me feeling scared of me
00:59:10
feeling like something was being triggered that i didn't know how to handle
00:59:16
sometimes even when i was in pain and there would be other situations from my past where i would kind of not want to
00:59:22
reveal how much pain i was in with my head because i was worried that someone might determine this is not i can't
00:59:30
i don't want to deal with this so i kind of keep it to myself
00:59:35
for a lot of guys their experience of growing up wasn't one where being vulnerable would have been rewarded
00:59:42
and then you add on to that the additional layer of
00:59:47
as a guy we've been culturally led to believe that being the
00:59:52
caricatured alpha male that's what women want
00:59:59
and some of our experiences have confirmed that we lost out to the guy in high school
01:00:05
who was much meaner than us and who we knew was not a very nice
01:00:10
person but he had his pick and that that's quite scarring for a guy
01:00:18
because you go what does that mean yeah what do what do i so i have to be more like that
01:00:24
and so we close parts of ourselves down and and then it's and then you know
01:00:29
god forbid you come across or have a relationship with someone who confirms that yeah now you really feel like i need to be
01:00:36
that guy and and it can take a lot of
01:00:41
rewiring and deconditioning to get to a place where you go
01:00:47
oh the if i keep if i keep being this way i'm actually going to attract i'm
01:00:52
just going to continue to attract people who do value the wrong things who are looking for an instagram
01:00:59
man can you do that from the jump though i was just thinking about some of my friends in my head and i was thinking they're going to hear that and i know
01:01:05
some of my friends who are actually probably scared of especially at the start in the dating
01:01:11
phase of laying it out so they come they put the makeup on they get the hair done they go get the tan whatever and their objective
01:01:18
is i just need to keep this [ __ ] person and i believe the way to keep them is just you know keep trying to be
01:01:23
that sexy perfect at what point do you go from sexy perfect to
01:01:28
listen i'm you know pretty [ __ ] up in a number of ways i think that we have to
01:01:35
there's a way to firstly vulnerability in the beginning of dating
01:01:40
isn't it well vulnerability is is can be really attractive
01:01:47
but not in a way where you've exposed all of your wounds and the things you don't like about
01:01:52
yourself instantly and offloaded i guess exactly there's a you know it's fine to talk about
01:01:59
something that you're working on or you know even in a playful tone kind of
01:02:06
nod to something that you're not very good at but that's not the same i remember being on a tv show
01:02:13
in australia where i there was this one woman she was an
01:02:19
amazing woman but every time she went on a date it would just be a kind of
01:02:25
all on the surface laughing and just on the surface on the surface on the surface on the surface and i was like part of the problem is these guys that
01:02:32
go on dates with you by the end of the day they don't feel connected to you in any way and the reason they don't feel
01:02:38
connected to you is because there's no real vulnerability at that stage
01:02:43
so i said the next day i want you to actually connect and be a little vulnerable
01:02:48
now what she did with that advice is when on the next first date and told
01:02:54
the story of her dad getting in a car accident that changed her whole life in a really
01:03:00
awful way at the time and i was i had to say at the time
01:03:07
when i said vulnerability i didn't mean go and tell the story of the worst thing
01:03:13
that's happened to you in your life vulnerability can be
01:03:18
paying someone a compliment because in a way when you pay someone a compliment you're handing them a little power right not in a bad way but you're
01:03:25
saying like there's something great about you and i'm acknowledging it and now you know that i think that you're great in some way
01:03:32
or it can be laughing at somebody else's is joke or it can be talking about something that you really
01:03:38
enjoy doing that's a little bit nerdy that you you know i might not put on social media all the
01:03:45
time but it is something i actually do in my spare time that's kind of geeky but i love it
01:03:50
sometimes or even if it's not geeky if it's just something you're super passionate about and you talk about something with passion that's a
01:03:56
vulnerable act to to express that you're passionate about something is vulnerable because they may not think
01:04:03
that thing is cool or or even just to be passionate is to be vulnerable
01:04:08
you might think that my passion is too much or you might think it's silly or so you could be vulnerable about the
01:04:15
right things early on and the more someone gets to know you the more you can kind of
01:04:21
let them in on some of the things that you struggle with vulnerability isn't
01:04:27
necessarily revealing all of our insecurities all at once and one important reason for that
01:04:35
is because when we tell an insecurity i tell you something i don't like about
01:04:42
my face i'm telling you what to think about my face
01:04:47
i'm not letting you have your own opinion of my face you can take the view that there's some
01:04:52
part of your body or there's something you're not a fan of in yourself you can take that opinion
01:04:59
but you don't get to be the opinion for everybody else
01:05:04
the reason we're saying it is because we're almost trying to beat them to it
01:05:09
you know let me just tell you that i don't like this thing about myself because then i'll feel better that's out in the open but i'm presupposing what
01:05:16
you're going to think about it that's an awful quality people have that self-disparaging thing it's really insidious in many ways and that
01:05:23
isn't vulnerability that's a different thing from vulnerability vulnerability can be
01:05:29
acknowledging that there's something that you don't like about yourself all the time that can be an act of vulnerability
01:05:35
but you have to suspect yourself if your instinct with someone you don't know that well is to immediately go to that
01:05:42
place i've been in relationships where i felt like my partner was trying to fix me
01:05:48
and it really is a shitty feeling for men i think it really emasculates us as well right we want to be
01:05:54
i guess perfect we want to just make our woman happy i've been in relationships where i felt like she was trying to fix
01:06:00
me and it [ __ ] sucked that's a rough situation to be in it's really i had a conversation with her
01:06:07
about it where i was like by the way when you when you do that thing where you try and correct correct me constantly what you're actually also
01:06:14
doing as a consequence is saying that i'm not good enough i remember having that conversation with her fortunately she was someone that
01:06:19
could really listen but women i think women and men i only can speak from the perspective of
01:06:26
women because i've only ever been on the receiving end of it from women but um what do women need to know about that of
01:06:31
this because a lot of them do it they they meet someone he might be they're doing this he might be down the pub too much he might be have this bad habit
01:06:37
this thing what do they need to know about this desire they have sometimes to try and fix us
01:06:43
does it work where does it lead well i think people have to suspect themselves in the
01:06:49
beginning if they're choosing people that they're not aligned with in the first place
01:06:56
that i think is a the fixing thing is often a big symptom of the fact that
01:07:02
instead of choosing a partner you chose a project of some kind
01:07:08
right and now i'm unhappy because i needed these things from the beginning but this
01:07:14
person isn't doing them but i knew that in the beginning it's not like i suddenly found out that he enjoys going
01:07:20
to the pub our first four dates were in a pub
01:07:25
you know the guy likes a drink i i knew that in the beginning and does that mean there's
01:07:30
a certain level of acceptance that's required when you meet someone well i think that we have to
01:07:36
we have to um to a certain extent say am am i at peace with
01:07:45
who this person is today because if i'm not why would i get into a relationship with
01:07:52
them i'm literally getting into a relationship on a wager that they're going to become what i want
01:07:58
what are the chances of that it goes back to the point we were saying about this inauthentic initial connection when you you kind of you're
01:08:05
not really sure who you are and you might also have a presumption that the bits you don't like about them you're not going to mention it just yet
01:08:11
or you know you're going to kind of maybe not 12 months in you're going to start mentioning that that's really a
01:08:17
big problem to you but you connected and authentically from the start so yeah i just i just i'm totally thinking
01:08:23
about my own experience of that and the other part of it was hugely my fault in the sense that i would compromise
01:08:30
so say that i loved watching the football and she didn't want me to watch the football or whatever
01:08:35
sure if i can turn the football off for the first couple of months just to keep happy families and then this resentment
01:08:40
starts building where you go i [ __ ] miss the football and you're the reason i can't watch it you know what i mean again that's like i was inauthentic i
01:08:46
wasn't honest and we all in some way are prone to that we we are trying to
01:08:52
we're trying to oil the joints of of early dating so that everything moves in
01:08:58
this nice smooth romantic direction and and we kind of
01:09:04
if we're not careful we do end up playing a part that we think will just create the most
01:09:10
energy the most good energy the most romantic energy i i think that what i've learned
01:09:18
as a personal lesson is that i would
01:09:23
judge things very quickly in people without trying to understand
01:09:30
what was behind them like why why is this thing important to you
01:09:37
why do you like doing this what is it about this thing what because it's very
01:09:42
easy when someone's different to how we are it's very easy to decide what that means
01:09:48
yeah amen to decide what the intention must be behind that yeah and then to
01:09:54
judge someone on that and one of the things i think would help people because it's very easy to say
01:10:01
well date people who you already like the way they are and don't date
01:10:06
people or don't go any further with people that do things you don't like that's a
01:10:12
oversimplification that what i would say to people is there's always going to be differences between
01:10:18
you and the person you date there's always going to be things that you i'm not talking about things that
01:10:24
you genuinely ethically abhor
01:10:29
that's a problem right but if someone is doing things that are different than what you do or what you enjoy
01:10:38
take a moment to be curious about that thing what is it for them
01:10:44
about that thing that they really like what does it represent to them
01:10:49
what's driving them there why are they that way i have found that to be an immensely
01:10:56
connecting experience because you may do something different to me but why you
01:11:02
like that thing might actually resonate with me
01:11:08
in terms of why i like this thing i might find that we're actually at the
01:11:13
core quite similar even though the way those values or those desires or those
01:11:20
needs are represented on the surface is different and i think people give up a lot of
01:11:26
great people because of their immediate judgment of the differences because they haven't actually sought to
01:11:32
understand the the connections that are under the surface i had a few words to say about one of my
01:11:38
sponsors on this podcast my girlfriend came upstairs yesterday when i was having a shower and she said to me that she tried the heel protein shake which
01:11:44
lives on my fridge over there and she said it's amazing low calories you get your 20 odd grams of protein you get
01:11:50
your 26 vitamins and minerals and it's nutritionally complete in the protein space there's lots of things but it's hard to find something that is nice
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especially when consumed just with water and that is nutritionally complete and that has
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about 100 calories in total while also giving you your 20 grams of protein if you haven't
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tried the cured protein product do give it a try the salted caramel one if you put some ice cubes in it and you put it
01:12:15
in a blender and you try it is as good as pretty much any milkshake on the market just mixed with water it's been a
01:12:22
game changer for me because i'm trying to drop my calorie intake and i'm trying to be a little bit more healthy with my diet so this is where heel fits in my
01:12:29
life thank you hill for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend
01:12:34
likes but for me salted caramel is the one what's your longest relationship
01:12:42
ever proper one two years two and a half years
01:12:48
mine's roughly the same yeah you don't know what it's like to go 50 years in a relationship right are you
01:12:55
not scared on any level do you not have a fear
01:13:00
of boredom i have humility about long-term relationships you've just got
01:13:06
a fiance as well that's a as you wrote on that caption a forever commitment right i have massive humility about
01:13:14
commitments like that in the sense that like i said to you earlier in this conversation i don't pretend to know
01:13:22
about things i don't know but do you personally have a fear of boredom in your relationship because i i
01:13:28
don't she's going to listen to this i i wonder i think well i've never i've only ever done two or three years so what how
01:13:34
do you get 30 years in and still have the spice and you know i love her you know
01:13:39
well i think that firstly it's you you have to look at
01:13:44
i almost take it out of the context of relationships and say there's lots of areas of life where
01:13:51
you could say how do you
01:13:57
not drink or not get high and not eventually find life boring
01:14:02
where you need to do that but then you also know if you're drinking or getting high there's a cost
01:14:08
to that right it's a there's an actual cost it it makes you feel like crap afterwards
01:14:14
there's a hangover and and so there's a price to pay for that
01:14:19
i don't think of it just in terms of will i get bored i i i'm always thinking
01:14:26
in terms of okay but what's the other option
01:14:32
and has the other option ever worked for me now the answer to has the other option
01:14:37
ever worked for me is no i got to a point in my life where i felt like i have empirically proven
01:14:45
that this thing doesn't work casual relationships
01:14:51
don't make me they they don't make me happy there's a you know
01:14:57
it literally is just a feeling followed by hangover and that was became reliable in my life
01:15:04
where i just went oh this doesn't work for me to continue down that path would
01:15:10
be literally that definition of insanity i'm well i'm gonna be i suddenly am
01:15:15
gonna find the right set of casual flings that's gonna make me happy
01:15:21
it just it's nonsense i got to a point in my life where
01:15:27
i i saw two things happened i met someone
01:15:34
who had everything that i could ever want in someone that you would build with
01:15:41
not to mention the obvious stuff the chemistry the you know the fun we have together and all of those things we're
01:15:47
all there i'm not one of those people who you know when people talk about like a relationship as if
01:15:54
chemistry's overrated you just need someone who's a great teammate or whatever i i don't think chemistry is
01:16:00
overrated i think an absence of chemistry can be dire
01:16:05
and will hurt you but those things were there
01:16:11
but what was also there is i thought this is someone that i can really build with
01:16:17
and i'm in a place in my life where i want to build because there's so much more that can
01:16:23
come from building something here there's so much more that can come from
01:16:29
the beauty of what gets built than just like for me dating was like resetting
01:16:35
every time it was like go build a lay a couple of bricks down and then
01:16:40
move on again and reset reset reset it's like renting it yeah it was like there's nothing yeah
01:16:46
every time you leave i'm i'm back to to the same place now there's nothing wrong i have no judgment
01:16:53
on any of that if someone's enjoying being single if someone wants to do that if it makes them happy i have no judgment anywhere i'm not
01:17:00
i don't want to be an evangelist for a long-term relationship
01:17:06
i can only speak to what feels good to me in my life and what feels like i want to be careful not just what feels
01:17:12
good but what i actually believe is a
01:17:19
is a path to a more meaningful life to a happier life and i truly believe
01:17:25
that is the path that myself and audrey are on is she could be single and she could like
01:17:32
she's a beautiful person everyone loves being around her everyone loves her company
01:17:38
she could be out there having a ton of fun she could be out there having all of this excitement she could
01:17:43
but she also is someone who values she is very very big on
01:17:49
valuing the things that lead to long-term happiness not short-term pleasure
01:17:56
and i always want to be in a relationship that is you know has pleasure in it
01:18:02
i don't you know i don't want to ever settle for a relationship where you say well i'll sacrifice that because
01:18:09
i have all of this other stuff but you know i i do believe that it's it
01:18:15
takes i think that takes effort i don't i'm suspicious of anyone who says when it's right it's easy
01:18:21
i'm suspicious of that because to me anything anything long-term any commitment long-term
01:18:26
requires true effort my last question then so on that in that example of you and audrey
01:18:33
i'm trying to get so i'll tell you the the basis behind my question i'm trying to understand if we have to be in the
01:18:38
right place and this goes back to my point about sort of personal responsibility if we have to be right when we meet this
01:18:45
person or it's just a case because there'll be a lot of people listening to this going okay i've just not met the right one i've not met my audrey so i'm
01:18:50
going to keep waiting but what i see a lot is um i met my girlfriend actually three years ago we dated for a year then
01:18:57
broke up i was totally not the right person well for all the reasons i said immature not willing to communicate if
01:19:03
she said something and it was an issue i thought this isn't perfect so it's not worth it um i had all of those faults in
01:19:08
me we took a year out i did a lot of work came back and i genuinely will marry this person we genuinely have gone
01:19:14
through those things so i think timing is an issue but largely because sometimes like we're we're we haven't
01:19:21
done the work we've gone through life bla i've just i'm too picky i've not found the right one all of this [ __ ]
01:19:26
what would you say what would you say to that about the self work we need to do so that when you
01:19:31
do meet your audrey we're also ready to receive them well i
01:19:37
i think we have to dispense with this idea that the one exists i think that's really really important i
01:19:43
don't think the one exists any more than the one true career exists uh i think that we
01:19:52
someone becomes the one by what we build with them now they have to start with the right raw materials as do we you
01:19:58
can't just not anyone can be the person we do that with but
01:20:05
the person who becomes the one is the person that i mean it sounds so funny but
01:20:12
is the person that becomes the one you know what i mean if it if you go the distance with
01:20:18
someone they were the one if you don't go the distance with someone then
01:20:24
they weren't the one they weren't the this idea that there's one person for you
01:20:30
in the world that you're supposed to meet is silly to me
01:20:36
because it it gets into all these ideas of love at first sight and you know i just
01:20:42
we came to each other ready made to be each other's person i think that's an insult to the amount of work that a
01:20:48
long-term relationship actually takes and and i think that we get so terrified of
01:20:55
making the wrong decisions in life that we avoid the decisions altogether and
01:21:01
that's a form of commitment phobia is avoiding the decision
01:21:07
because you're so terrified that you're going to make the wrong choice in a decision that feels so high stakes
01:21:14
i i never um i realized
01:21:21
i never i always used to kind of when i was younger friends of mine that would get tattoos
01:21:27
i'd be like you're insane you're crazy why would you
01:21:32
put something on your arm that you can never take off again that
01:21:38
every fiber of me said that's a terrible idea
01:21:43
i had never enjoyed anything for my whole life
01:21:49
i'd never i can't point to a piece of clothing i've always liked
01:21:55
so why would i think why would i have faith that i'm gonna tattoo something on my arm and i'm still gonna like it 20
01:22:00
years from now that freaked me out and why i came to realize not with
01:22:07
everyone who gets tattoos there are plenty of foolish tattoos out there but what i did realize is that
01:22:14
actually a lot of the people that i knew who got tattoos just had a different relationship
01:22:20
with the idea of permanence i i knew someone with a lot of tattoos and she said
01:22:26
you know this just the meaning changes over time she was a client of mine who said i
01:22:32
over time they come to mean different things and they kind of evolve with me
01:22:38
and so in a way though to you it may look like the same tattoo to me it's
01:22:44
it's always evolving in its meaning and and what it represents that's actually what someone said to me because i was
01:22:49
telling them i was going to ask one of my team in the room that i was gonna ask ask you this question and he's been in a marriage for some time he has kids and
01:22:55
he said well you have different relationships with them over time and that adage of you fall in love with them over and over again in different ways
01:23:01
right i couldn't agree more and i can't speak as somebody who has done
01:23:09
it already i can only speak as someone who i realize that my
01:23:18
relationship with the idea of permanence
01:23:23
has not been a very productive one has it been
01:23:29
for me it was definitely an insecure one and it's get a fearful one well i think that you know there's a oliver burkman
01:23:35
who i you may have met i think you maybe interviewed oliver burkman
01:23:41
his book for anyone who's struggling with with being ready for commitment is a
01:23:46
really powerful book you could read that book as a dating book uh because he he talks about the
01:23:53
the issue of deciding deciding to do something and then
01:24:00
the thing that we decide on we resolve to make that as good as we can make it because by
01:24:06
definition you can't experience all of life you can't experience every man in the
01:24:11
world you can't experience every woman in the world you can't like it you can't
01:24:17
so when we're trying to what he describes it as is almost a fear of our own
01:24:23
mortality or a lack of acceptance of our own mortality he talks about it in a time management sense that the fact that
01:24:28
we're trying to cram so many things into our day is really a representation of our lack of acknowledgement that we're going to die
01:24:35
right i keep telling myself i'm going to do all of these things that i'll never get to but because i can't come to terms with the fact that i'm going to die and
01:24:41
i'm not going to get to do even a quarter of these things i'm planning to do because if you really understand how
01:24:46
short life is you know you're not going to go to half of the countries you want to go to so you better start picking the ones you really want to go to however
01:24:54
that make that seems to make the stakes of every decision really high right this is berkman's point that it makes
01:25:02
the stakes of every decision really high and that would make us even more decisive even more indecisive my god if
01:25:08
you're already telling me that i have to carefully select the books i'm going to read because i'm only going to get to read one percent of of the books that i
01:25:14
ever even want to read let alone the number of books out there then how would i ever choose what book to
01:25:20
read next when i know i'm only going to read 60 more in my whole life or a hundred more in my
01:25:26
whole life what he says which is so compelling is that
01:25:32
there's there's no one right book there's no one right country there's no one right person
01:25:40
there's the person that and there's the person we in we decide we resolve to make the best relationship with
01:25:46
there's the country we decide to make the most of living in there's the job that we decide to make
01:25:52
the most of and the way i think about it is
01:25:59
not people settling is a very um emotive loaded word
01:26:06
i used to write in people's books when i signed when people would bring me on tour a copy of get the guy
01:26:13
i used to write as standard in the front of their book never settle
01:26:19
and i now look at that and i'm like
01:26:24
i don't think that was strong advice i don't think that was strong advice
01:26:30
because what i did was demonize the word settling which self-development
01:26:37
tends to do it's all about optimization never settle
01:26:42
and i was coming from that kind of maximizing optimizing self-development place
01:26:48
but there's a difference between settling for and settling on
01:26:53
settling four says that you had a standard that
01:26:59
you accepted less than settling on
01:27:05
says i'm gonna put my focus and my energy on
01:27:10
something and it's gonna be extraordinary because i'm gonna make it extraordinary
01:27:16
and it sounds voluntary doesn't it whereas a form is kind of like you were given that and four is like i gave up
01:27:22
yeah yeah yeah settling on is i made a conscious decision i settled on
01:27:28
living in london i didn't settle for living in london i decided i this is a
01:27:34
great city yes there are many other great cities but this is a great city
01:27:39
and i am gonna make living in london incredible for myself i'm settling on
01:27:45
living in london and i for years i noticed in my language even though i've been living in la ill
01:27:51
in la for 10 years anytime someone would ask me so is la home i'd go i don't know
01:27:56
i might leave i'm right next year i might not be here i'm not sure we'll see i've been doing my job for 15 years i
01:28:04
clearly in a practical sense do not have an issue with commitment i've been doing what i do for a very
01:28:10
long time most people more longer than most people do any job but if you'd asked me in general
01:28:17
do you see yourself doing this for your whole life i'd say i don't know i mean we'll see now
01:28:22
that's okay to build in flexibility but not if it's a way of ever avoiding settling on
01:28:29
something because when we don't settle on something we actually rid ourselves the opportunity of making it the best
01:28:36
it can be and and iron when we were going through a time recently where we were talking about
01:28:43
should we stay in la or should we go somewhere else you know what do we think
01:28:48
and we kind of thought about all different places we might go and we did this whole
01:28:53
exercise this mental exercise of thinking about all of these places we could live and would live and so on
01:28:59
we ended up settling on la and we came right back to where we
01:29:04
started but but we both said actually no we want to be here and what
01:29:10
was really funny is the moment we decided okay no we're going to be here
01:29:15
we started doing all of these little things in the house and we went out and bought a couple more plants
01:29:21
and we started thinking about what we wanted to put on this wall that doesn't have anything on it right now and we in
01:29:26
other words the moment we decided to settle on we started investing differently and
01:29:32
consciously in the house that we were actually in and that's actually where all the enjoyment
01:29:38
comes from is once you start investing where you are you start making the best of where you
01:29:44
are and you lose this idea that there is some perfect state of
01:29:49
anything outside of where you are perfectly comes back to your point about the ingredients as well and making the most of where you
01:29:56
have settling on your ingredients matthew thank you honestly i could sit here for 10 hours um this was so much fun thank you for
01:30:03
having me and thank you for such thank you thank you for such thoughtful questions like you
01:30:09
your vulnerability comes across and that's not you know when you've when you've achieved a lot
01:30:15
it it's easy for your identity to calcify and and yours hasn't and you
01:30:21
stay vulnerable and it's reflected in the kind of conversation you're open to having so i
01:30:27
i really appreciate it well yeah i sit here every very often and i get to hear from people like you about the importance of a vulnerability being
01:30:33
honest with myself and controlling and containing ego so again this has been a real refresher about what's important in
01:30:40
life and i i really really you know you've really reinforced the central id i mean so many central ideas but the one that i think about in the context of
01:30:47
i mean the ingredients one is definitely the one that will stay with me the most but as it relates to the relationship part that important the importance of men and
01:30:54
i plead with men because i know they're listening trying vulnerability out in their relationships it was the thing that
01:31:01
changed my relationship the thing that changed my life in that regard it's the thing it's the reason why people listen
01:31:06
to this the reason why this podcast has done well is because i took the bet on recording myself at 3am saying i was
01:31:12
really struggling with some [ __ ] and this and masturbation and my family and all these things that you're not allowed
01:31:17
to talk about make you feel uncomfortable vulnerability has been the thing that happens before all the good things in my life and you're a real um a
01:31:25
testament to vulnerability and also the the importance of it we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the
01:31:30
previous guest writes a question for the next guest so our previous guest wrote a question for you that's cool
01:31:36
yes it is because it's a nice through thread so they're all connected which we love um
01:31:42
okay so i i look at the question when i open the book and i looked at it i opened the book a second ago
01:31:49
the question is what is your dark side
01:31:56
i i think my dark side is the part of me that thinks
01:32:04
everyone has an agenda that they can't be trusted
01:32:13
and that
01:32:18
if they're being even if they're being nice there must be some angle
01:32:25
somewhere and therefore i should be on my guard and suspicious at all
01:32:31
times that i think is my dark side and i think that that
01:32:38
i think that has been one of the things in recent years that i've really had that's been part of
01:32:44
my vulnerability is opening myself up to
01:32:50
acts of kindness and connection that aren't driven by any agenda
01:32:56
and making peace with the times where they are but i was i i brought forward my best
01:33:03
and most authentic self anyway do you know where that came from [Music]
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i don't know i don't know i i
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i don't even know when it started i i can't remember if i ever felt like
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that when i was a kid but certainly as an adult that's been something that i've
01:33:31
i think has it's been a part of my life that i've really had to let go of and one of
01:33:38
the things that allowed me to start to let go of it was
01:33:43
real friendships real friendships where
01:33:48
i noticed that there were people around me that just
01:33:54
were really kind or if i needed help if i needed advice
01:34:00
and i think probably during when during that period of time where i was desperate with with my chronic pain
01:34:09
there were people that gave me their time and their energy even if they didn't know how to help
01:34:16
there were people that had no reason to give me time and energy it would have been perfectly acceptable for them to not
01:34:23
who decided to give me their time even people who had no time
01:34:29
and that a kind of that limiting belief started to dissolve in the face of that
01:34:36
and it made me want to you know it really made me want to represent that in the world and not even
01:34:42
if people can take advantage not going into life waiting for that
01:34:48
waiting to to like spot that but instead just going some people will take advantage and
01:34:54
other people won't but i want to be someone who trusts people
01:35:02
thank you thanks steve really wonderful conversation and for all the reasons i've described you're a really
01:35:07
necessary important voice in the world and if we need more men that are willing to be vulnerable and open because i think it's a catalyst for a very
01:35:14
important systemic change in us as men um receiving and achieving what we want and
01:35:20
when i reflect on the statistics around men their mental health and the consequences of their ill mental health
01:35:26
a lot of it is rooted in an absence of expression so i love having these conversations thank you so much matthew
01:35:32
thank you sir quick one as you might know crafted are one of the sponsors of this podcast and crafted are a jewellery brand and they
01:35:40
make really meaningful pieces of jewelry i think i've worn this piece for almost a year
01:35:46
it hasn't broken hasn't changed color because it's really really good quality and it costs roughly
01:35:52
50 quid i'm not the type of person that has rolexes or jewelry that cost tens of thousands of pounds i want pieces that
01:35:58
are reliable that look beautiful and that holds meaning and significance for me and that's exactly why i've worn
01:36:04
crafted for so long and when we had the conversation about them sponsoring this podcast i was so unbelievably keen for
01:36:09
them to do so check it out if you're a guy crafted london.com and yeah if you get any pieces of crafted tag man let me
01:36:16
know what you think [Music]
01:36:24
oh [Music]
01:36:30
[Music]
01:36:41
you
