0:01

How did you find your way into

0:03

doing what you're doing now? Like just therapy,

0:06

the general world of mental

0:08

health, psychology, all those things. And then I

0:10

want to talk about that. And then afterwards,

0:12

I'd love to talk about how you got

0:14

into focusing on relationships in particular. But just

0:16

to start with, how did you find your

0:18

way into what you're doing? You

0:22

know, I

0:24

guess it started

0:27

with a desire

0:30

to connect with

0:32

myself more deeply. And

0:35

I've always been very physically active. And I

0:37

really, I mean, one day I was in

0:39

my 20s, and I was with my boyfriend

0:41

at the time. And

0:44

he was like starting to do yoga at the

0:47

gym. And then he

0:49

was like, you know, bent down and touched his toes. And

0:51

I was like, well, I can, you know, I'm a, you

0:53

know, I work out all the time. I can touch my

0:55

toes. And I was like, I couldn't touch my toes. I

0:57

was like, this is ridiculous. I can't touch my toes. I

0:59

need to get flexible. And I felt

1:01

very drawn to trying yoga. And

1:05

I did. And pretty much

1:08

immediately after my first class, I

1:10

was completely hooked. We

1:12

call it like, you know, being bitten

1:14

by the yoga bug, which is basically,

1:16

instead of liking it and

1:18

going to a yoga class once in a

1:20

while, it was like, okay, I have

1:22

to do this every day and every day for the rest of my

1:24

life. It was that kind of thing. And

1:29

so I started practicing yoga every single

1:31

day, and I became completely obsessed with

1:34

it and

1:36

decided that I had wanted

1:38

to teach it about a

1:40

couple years, about three years or so,

1:43

for three or four years into practicing

1:45

it regularly. And

1:48

I loved it so much

1:50

because the practice of the

1:52

physical practice of yoga, yoga

1:54

asana, is

1:56

to learn how to...

2:01

to balance the mind and the body. That's

2:03

really what it is. How do

2:05

we balance the mind and the body? And

2:08

it's with the understanding that,

2:11

you know, there really is no connection

2:13

between the mind and the body. It

2:15

actually is one thing. It's like really

2:17

one entity. And

2:22

I found that it gave me

2:24

great inner peace. I found

2:26

that it made me

2:28

feel just

2:31

totally better. It just made me feel

2:33

very connected. And I

2:37

didn't know it at the time, but

2:39

I think that there was just always,

2:41

I really believe

2:43

there's something in the

2:47

yogic text that refers to

2:49

a person's dharma. And a

2:51

person's dharma is really what their purpose

2:53

is in life. And everyone has

2:56

their own dharma. And I didn't

2:58

know it at the time, but my dharma, I

3:00

believe and continue to believe, is that I'm a

3:02

teacher. And so

3:04

when I become obsessed with

3:06

something and really dedicate

3:09

my life to it, I

3:12

feel a very strong urge.

3:14

I'm compelled to teach it.

3:17

So I felt compelled to start teaching yoga.

3:21

And that's what I did. And

3:23

I became very good at it and

3:25

very popular in New York City doing

3:27

it. And I taught group classes, but

3:29

I also really love to work with

3:31

individuals who were dealing with physical

3:35

pain and emotional pain, which

3:37

was, which is very

3:39

intricately connected. And

3:43

I was very good at

3:46

helping people see the relationship

3:48

between their thoughts and their

3:52

back pain, and also the

3:54

relationship between their physical patterns

3:56

of how they held themselves

3:59

and how they actually practice yoga that

4:01

was contributing to problems in their body

4:03

and then to help them use the

4:05

practice to heal

4:08

themselves. And

4:11

it was a very, very,

4:14

the most significant time in my life, because

4:16

it really set me on this path. First

4:18

of all, my I immediately

4:21

had a huge the yoga community, especially

4:23

this was in the early 2000s was

4:25

huge with was growing and becoming really

4:28

big. And so I had

4:30

this huge community of yoga and

4:34

of yoga teachers and the

4:37

community also included physical

4:41

therapists and acupuncturists

4:43

and meditators and

4:45

whatnot. And that

4:48

was sort of my world. But I

4:50

would say about seven years into teaching

4:52

it, I started to feel restless, like

4:54

I wanted something more. And

4:56

part of what I wanted was

4:59

more achievement. Like I wanted,

5:01

I wanted to achieve at a higher level, but

5:03

I also wanted to be inspired at a higher

5:05

on a higher level. But

5:07

I didn't know I had absolutely no

5:10

idea like I was like, you know, I didn't

5:12

want to open up my own yoga studio, I

5:14

was affiliated with a yoga studio that's

5:16

owned by two of my closest friends.

5:18

And I had no interest in

5:21

being like a studio like the because because that's

5:23

usually like the direction that some people take is

5:25

that they open up their own yoga studio. And

5:27

that's no, no interest. And

5:29

I didn't know what it was. But I also

5:32

had another dream, which is that I wanted to

5:34

get married, and I wanted to have kids. And

5:36

so I ended up meeting someone who would become

5:38

my ex my husband and then ex husband. And

5:44

and it was a really, I would say 90%

5:47

of our relationship before we got married

5:49

was like perfect.

5:53

And 10% was problematic. But that 10%

5:55

was actually very significant.

5:59

It was wasn't the 10% that

6:01

is like, oh yeah, no relationship is perfect,

6:04

and sometimes we're going to have an argument,

6:06

there's certain things that we're going to have

6:08

our issues. It was very significant. And

6:10

I tell people that when you get married, you

6:14

think that that 10%, or

6:16

whatever percentage that's like

6:19

a red flag, let's say, is going to go

6:21

away. But actually, that 10% becomes the

6:23

90%. And

6:25

the 90% that was perfect actually becomes the

6:27

10%. It just magnifies

6:29

everything. And

6:31

that's what happened. And it ended

6:34

up being from basically like the

6:36

very beginning until the very end

6:38

of our short two-year marriage, extremely

6:41

difficult. And the

6:43

way that he decided to end

6:45

the relationship was credibly

6:48

wrong. He

6:50

did it overtaxed. And my mom

6:52

had just recently been diagnosed with a

6:54

terminal cancer and been given just a

6:56

couple months to live. And

6:58

so he abandoned me. And

7:02

I don't really see. When I say he

7:04

abandoned me, I say that

7:07

with no emotion tied to it. He used

7:09

to have a lot of emotion tied to

7:11

it. I say that just very objectively now.

7:13

I don't feel like an abandoned person. But

7:16

when I look at it objectively, he did.

7:20

He abandoned the relationship. But

7:23

at the end of the day, thank God,

7:25

because we don't belong together. So

7:30

when that happened, it

7:32

was just emotionally

7:36

catastrophic for me. And

7:39

it was like the day that my world

7:42

completely fell apart. And

7:45

it was just one of those moments

7:50

where I could not believe how

7:52

horrible life was in that moment.

7:54

It was shocking to me. And

7:57

I entered a very, very. dark

8:02

night of the soul. And

8:05

I became obsessed with the fact that

8:07

my marriage didn't work out. And I

8:09

was like, what the actual fuck? Like

8:12

what like really what? And

8:16

so I I've always been

8:19

very interested in relationships. I've always

8:21

been a huge advocate of the

8:23

relationship that we have with ourselves.

8:25

Yoga was my exploration of that,

8:28

and how to kind of free our minds

8:30

from the mental prison that most of us

8:33

find ourselves in. And

8:35

I and I

8:38

also have always been really obsessed with

8:41

love, like I've always been somewhat leaned

8:43

more towards being like a sort of

8:45

romantic. I've always like my

8:47

greatest wish was always to be in

8:49

a room, you know, in this amazing

8:52

romantic relationship and not to follow in

8:54

the footsteps of my parents that had

8:56

a horrible marriage, blah, blah, blah. And

9:02

I became obsessed with

9:04

the question, what makes

9:06

a relationship thrive? And

9:09

I became

9:11

obsessed with that question. And I also became

9:13

obsessed with how the hell am I going

9:15

to claw myself out of this hell. So

9:18

it was a combination of

9:20

trying to help myself survive.

9:23

It was pure survival. It

9:26

was pure like, I wasn't like, Oh,

9:28

now I have an opportunity to grow was like, how

9:30

do I fucking live? And

9:32

so I figured out

9:34

that way. And then I became

9:37

totally inspired by certain teachers and

9:39

learning about what about what

9:43

it means to be a woman in a

9:45

relationship, how that differs to what

9:47

it means to be a man in

9:50

a relationship, communication, all

9:52

of that became totally obsessed. And what

9:54

I learned is that what makes a

9:56

relationship like people who have

9:59

successful relationships, relationships aren't

10:02

Aren't smarter necessarily. They're not

10:04

they're not better looking. It's

10:06

got nothing to do with

10:08

looks It's got nothing

10:10

to do with luck. It has to do

10:12

with certain decisions and you

10:15

know and taking some

10:18

accountability and so

10:20

I just became obsessed

10:22

and What

10:25

happened to me when I started doing yoga I

10:27

was like this this is this is my new

10:29

path I must must teach this and it

10:33

totally allowed me to leverage all

10:35

the the Knowledge

10:37

that I had at the mind and

10:39

the body and psychology just through teaching

10:41

yoga and just through teaching being

10:44

being you know, I I've

10:47

become because I was teaching yoga for

10:50

almost 20 years very skilled at being

10:52

able to take Certain things

10:54

and just fill it and share

10:56

it verbally And

10:59

so that's really it and I've

11:01

been obsessed ever since and that's

11:03

and I started doing relationship

11:05

coaching on it's been almost 10 years

11:07

and That's

11:11

it in a nutshell Beautiful beautiful.

11:13

So I'm really curious, you know,

11:15

you mentioned that you Were

11:18

able to get yourself out of this rather

11:20

catastrophic place where you felt like everything was falling

11:23

apart we didn't feel like that things were falling

11:25

apart for you and You

11:28

mentioned like finding your way out of that. What did

11:30

that look like? It

11:32

looked like help so it looked like Therapy

11:36

twice a week, but I did therapy twice

11:38

a week for about six months And then

11:40

that became very very boring and old to

11:42

me, but it was the thing but

11:44

therapy for me personally

11:49

Is the thing that helps that

11:51

has helped me out of a particular? Situation

11:56

when it's when it's ongoing. I don't

11:59

find it helpful to sit

12:01

by somebody during crisis, therapy

12:04

for me. So it looked like

12:06

therapy three weeks. For

12:09

me, it was discovering Tony Robbins. That

12:11

was extremely, it was life-changing for me.

12:18

And then from there, I had

12:20

coaches. And

12:22

coaches actually became

12:24

my mentors. And it was coaching me to

12:27

build my new business. It was coaching me

12:29

to think differently and to take action in

12:31

my life. And it looked like

12:34

relying on my sisters pretty heavily.

12:37

It looked like relying on my friends. So

12:39

you cannot do it alone. I really,

12:42

really strongly believe

12:44

in the power of mentorship. And

12:46

so whether that is in the

12:49

form of a therapist, I

12:54

relied also very heavily on my yoga practice,

12:57

my spiritual practice. So whether you

13:00

need, everyone needs teachers. I really believe that.

13:02

Like one of the greatest, the

13:05

movies that, one of the movies that have influenced

13:07

me the most is actually The

13:09

Karate Kid, because I was always very, very

13:12

enamored with

13:15

the relationship between Mr. Miyagi and

13:17

Daniel. That was

13:19

very important to me, how I

13:22

think people need a teacher in life.

13:24

And you might have many teachers, and

13:27

maybe that teacher, like I said, is a

13:29

therapist. Maybe it's a best friend, but we

13:31

need mentorship. We need people who are more

13:35

skilled than us and

13:37

more experienced and wiser than us

13:40

to talk to. And

13:44

objective. And so yeah,

13:46

that's sort of what it looked like. And

13:48

it looked like, honestly, it was really messy.

13:50

Like in the beginning, I have a dog.

13:52

So thank God for her, because I had

13:54

to walk her. And so,

13:56

otherwise I probably wouldn't have left

13:59

that. my bed for a very long

14:01

time, or even bathed, to be

14:03

honest. Like, it was that bad. So

14:06

I went for long

14:08

walks, and then I became, I

14:11

was listening to podcasts before anyone was listening

14:13

to podcasts. And so I would go on

14:15

these long walks and listen to podcasts. And

14:18

I love to learn, I'm an avid student.

14:20

So I talk about being a teacher, but

14:22

I think that's really born out of this,

14:25

out of really my studentship. And

14:28

I would just listen to podcasts over

14:30

and over again. So that helped me. I

14:33

mean, some days were just like, I ate

14:35

the same, like egg,

14:38

cheese, and avocado sandwich every single

14:40

day, because I couldn't make a

14:42

decision about what I wanted to eat. And

14:45

I lost too much weight. So I just ate

14:48

the same thing every day that was filled with

14:50

a lot of calories, and just

14:52

did that. And I,

14:54

and it was just like the

14:56

little creature comforts. It was like, I

14:59

loved my, at the time, my favorite

15:01

cup of coffee in the morning. So I would just try

15:03

to savor that. So it was really just the

15:05

little things. Yeah, beautiful,

15:08

beautiful. I'm like that now, by the way, with

15:10

food. I still eat the same

15:12

thing for lunch and breakfast every single day. I do

15:14

eat it every single day. That's so fine. I know

15:16

I'm pretty routinized when it comes to that as well, but

15:18

sometimes, you know, it gets a little boring. Yeah,

15:21

yeah. It's just a matter of like the

15:24

mental load. Like, I don't want to even have to think about it. I

15:26

just want to do it now. Anyway,

15:28

that's not the here nor there. So,

15:30

you know, beautiful story. And I'm

15:33

curious like how you began

15:35

to rewrite your

15:37

mental story of what was happening in

15:40

that moment. Because of course, someone that's

15:42

in that situation would have this feeling

15:44

of like, oh, this is what I'm

15:46

experiencing. Like, I don't see an end

15:48

to this. This is what life is. And, you

15:50

know, in that sort of traumatic space, slowly

15:53

becomes normalized and starts to feel familiar. And

15:55

you're like, this is what is now. How

15:58

did you begin to, you know, you had... a

16:00

lot of great help and teachers and various

16:02

things, but how did you begin

16:04

to rewrite that mental story for yourself where

16:06

you thought, okay, things are changing and there

16:09

is something different on the other side of

16:11

this? So

16:13

through my work with coaches

16:15

and through my training of

16:17

being certified as a relationship

16:20

coach through my mentor

16:22

and Tony Robbins, I

16:24

also read, so there's that and then

16:26

I read a book even

16:28

before that called Man's Search

16:30

for Meeting by Victor Frankel. And

16:34

so what I learned

16:37

was that

16:39

nothing means anything other than the meaning

16:41

that we give it and that we

16:43

actually always have the power to give

16:45

things a different meaning. And

16:50

I thought, well, I'm

16:53

going to make this mean some things. And

16:58

so that wasn't, it

17:00

wasn't so linear. It wasn't like, I'm going

17:02

to make this mean something, so I'm going

17:04

to then do this. It was, I

17:07

was learning things and getting inspired

17:09

by things and starting to, I

17:12

mean, look, at the end of

17:14

the day, what saved

17:16

me was having something to

17:18

really focus my

17:20

energy towards that

17:22

was uplifting and

17:24

interesting to me. And

17:27

as I started to do that, I

17:29

started to look at what was going,

17:31

I was able to then look at

17:33

my life, not so emotionally,

17:36

but more objectively from the outside looking

17:38

in. So rather being in the moment

17:40

of the pain, I was

17:42

able to see that like everything was

17:44

sort of orchestrating in my

17:47

life in a way that it's like,

17:49

oh, shit, rejection

17:51

really is redirection. Wow.

17:56

Talk about being on one path

17:59

and then being on the other. plucked and put on another

18:01

path. And then that

18:04

motivated me even more

18:07

to invest

18:11

in what it is that I was doing because

18:14

I wanted to actually create

18:16

something. I wanted to create

18:18

a masterpiece out of the mess.

18:24

And so I would say that as I

18:26

was doing that, then I started to see

18:28

things differently. So my story, I think I'm

18:30

answering your question, I'm not sure. But instead

18:32

of saying, oh, I was constantly telling the story.

18:39

My husband broke up with me over the phone. It

18:42

was actually the morning I had a miscarriage and

18:44

my mom was dying of cancer and

18:46

like that. And I had to tell that story

18:48

in the beginning. But after a

18:50

while, that became sort of like my

18:52

mantra. And it

18:54

was like I was re-traumatizing myself every time

18:57

I told the story. And the new story

18:59

slowly became like, yeah, this

19:02

happened. But

19:04

as a result, I'm now a

19:06

relationship coach. Beautiful. So

19:09

I think that it's not, you know,

19:12

I do

19:17

think that we always have

19:19

an opportunity to change

19:24

the meaning of something. But

19:28

that's what freed me up

19:30

mentally. Wonderful. Wonderful. Yeah,

19:32

that's so true. So true. You know, that

19:35

was a big breakthrough for me just

19:37

kind of conceptually and how I thought

19:39

about things whenever I realized that, you

19:41

know, there's no meaning in life. Life

19:44

is a meaning, you know, you have to

19:46

create it for yourself. The meaning of life

19:48

is just to live, right? It's very easy.

19:51

But meaning in life is actually the path to

19:53

happiness, you know, it's like because I think

19:56

we have a weird definition of happiness and we think

19:58

it's something that you're supposed to go up. But

20:01

really, it's like, I call it like

20:03

the afterglow, like the happiness afterglow. It

20:05

comes from putting effort

20:07

into something which creates meaning,

20:10

and therefore by following that over a period

20:12

of time, you then create, you

20:14

know, fulfillment. And through that

20:16

cycle that it starts to build, you

20:18

then start to feel that

20:20

happiness afterglow. Yeah, it's beautiful to hear

20:23

also how you just really

20:25

stayed open during that period

20:27

and allowed yourself to

20:29

be curious and explore. And then

20:32

finally listening to

20:34

your instincts, your intuition, and moving

20:36

into what was kind of calling

20:39

you and creating that

20:41

momentum to then move forward and

20:43

continue on your path.

20:47

It's really beautiful. I'm

20:49

curious, like you mentioned the importance

20:51

of guides and teachers. There

20:55

are so many people out there that kind

20:58

of put up a

21:00

wall externally, internally, and they

21:03

don't want help. They don't want to be bothered

21:05

for a variety of reasons. You know, it could

21:07

be that maybe they think that they know best,

21:09

or maybe it's a vulnerability issue where they don't

21:11

want to let someone in. Maybe

21:14

it's a control issue where they

21:16

don't want someone else to be able to

21:18

be in, you know, to hold the seat,

21:20

as it were, of where the information is

21:22

coming from. How

21:25

would you, you know, speak to someone

21:27

that might be a little bit like

21:29

that, that would then open them to

21:32

guidance in their life from someone else?

21:35

Can I be really honest? Please.

21:38

I would say my message is stop being such

21:40

an idiot. Yeah.

21:45

Honestly, it's stop

21:47

being so foolish. It's

21:50

very, very foolish to think that

21:53

you can do it all on your own. It's

21:57

just at the end of the day, I mean, that's not

21:59

a political thing. typically correct thing to say but it's

22:01

very true. It's very foolish

22:04

to think that you don't need anyone and

22:06

you better figure out a way to I

22:09

don't even care if your teacher is

22:12

an author of a book and you

22:14

never meet that person or

22:17

someone that you listen to

22:19

on YouTube constantly. I

22:22

do care a little bit. I think actually being

22:24

able to speak to someone whether it's

22:26

a coach or a therapist is very

22:28

very very important or a spiritual teacher

22:30

of some sort. I really think that's

22:32

very important. Start slow.

22:35

This is you and you know you have

22:37

a hard time opening up or you have

22:39

that wall as you said internally or externally.

22:41

Start slow and do it and

22:43

find someone who you learn from through

22:46

media of some

22:49

sort and find your teacher

22:51

that way but you cannot

22:54

do it alone. You're

22:56

never you just can't. It's very very

22:59

foolish, immature

23:02

and ignorant to

23:04

believe that you can. Yes

23:07

very true very true you

23:09

know and it's even

23:14

just considering the fact that like we all

23:17

have blind spots. Everyone.

23:19

We all have blind spots. And

23:22

you want to grow like be like

23:24

grow. You can't grow by you

23:26

need someone's going to challenge you

23:29

to think differently. Don't

23:31

be the person who's going to stay the same

23:33

all the time. Don't be that person. No

23:35

one wants to date you if you're

23:38

that person. That's right yeah 100%.

23:40

Yeah it's like I think about like this. I'm not

23:42

sure if I came up with this term but it

23:44

just came to my mind and I use it all

23:46

the time is like trying to

23:48

become a full spectrum human. You

23:51

know where you may

23:53

have some areas of life that you're thriving and doing

23:55

well and but it doesn't mean that there aren't other

23:57

areas that are a bit atrophied that could really And

24:02

often those are the uncomfortable ones that you don't want to

24:04

move in because if you're really good at other parts of

24:06

your life, you're like, well, I don't want to go back

24:08

to feeling like a novice again. I don't

24:10

want to go back to this stage one, but

24:13

only through doing that is that the way that

24:15

you really can become that

24:17

full spectrum human. And then, you

24:20

know, it's it is how

24:22

you experience the totality of life. Like

24:25

everything that life has to offer as a human being

24:27

is being able to, you know,

24:30

not only intellectually, but also emotionally process

24:32

the world, you know, not only be

24:34

good at something, but also be in a constant

24:36

state of discovery. You know, all those things, that's

24:38

that's how you can get all the juice out

24:40

of life. And you just can't do it otherwise.

24:43

It's very true. And there's a funny thing in the

24:45

yoga world that like the student

24:48

that's always doing the yoga

24:50

poses or the yoga classes

24:53

that they are

24:55

good at, that they've mastered, keep

24:57

on doing the poses that they've already that

24:59

they're already good and mastered because it's because it

25:01

fills their ego and it makes them feel good.

25:04

But really, the true test of a yogi

25:06

is someone who's willing to go to the

25:08

poses that actually they don't have a natural

25:10

proclivity towards and to really penetrate

25:13

that. Yeah,

25:15

I love that. I love that. That's

25:17

great. That's great for advice for meditation

25:19

as well. Yes. Yeah. Actually,

25:21

are you are you a meditator? I am. Oh,

25:25

cool. Yeah. I don't know where I talked

25:27

about that before. But yeah, no, it's like

25:29

it's you just get into your little grooves.

25:31

And yeah, it's so it's so powerful to

25:33

just kind of always keep looking for the

25:35

new that's like, I'm like addicted to that.

25:37

I feel like because it's it's so fascinating

25:39

to just like, okay, you know, now let's

25:41

go and find just continue adding little pieces

25:43

to the map. It's

25:45

like, you know, you have let's let's go

25:48

discover more territory and then draw on the

25:50

map, you know? Yeah, it's a

25:52

good thing to be addicted to because

25:54

then you grow. Yeah, 100%. 100%. So

25:59

whenever you. Like where have you started

26:01

working with people about the relationships?

26:05

What did that do to the way that

26:07

you think about your own relationships? Um,

26:14

I think that it

26:17

was more, I

26:24

think when you're working with people one on

26:27

one, there's

26:30

two things that happen. One is you start to see yourself

26:33

in them and some

26:36

of them, and you

26:39

start to recognize some of

26:41

them dealing with, hey,

26:44

you're helping them overcome by helping

26:46

them overcome certain issues that they're

26:51

facing. You're actually helping yourself

26:53

in the process. Like you're giving sometimes

26:55

you, what you, what happens is you

26:58

find yourself giving advice that

27:00

you need to hear. And

27:03

so there's like this really interesting symbiosis

27:06

between, you know,

27:08

coach and client or, you know,

27:10

therapists and pages, psychiatrists and patient,

27:12

whatever, um, where

27:15

that's happening. Um,

27:17

I think that you

27:20

also learn through your clients,

27:22

um, what doesn't

27:25

work, you

27:27

know, and what does work. Um,

27:30

sometimes, sometimes,

27:34

so you're always working

27:38

with people, you're always sort of reflecting on

27:41

your, on yourself at the same time, not,

27:43

not literally as you're speaking to them, but

27:45

there's always like a self-reflective

27:47

process. I mean, I,

27:49

um, I think working

27:51

with people really helped

27:53

me learn more about people and how what

27:59

people struggle with. with and

28:01

why they struggle. And

28:03

you start to notice that there's like, there's

28:07

some common themes in

28:09

how people struggle and their

28:12

patterns. And yeah, that's what I would say

28:14

about that. Yeah,

28:21

yeah, very cool. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

28:24

In terms of, you know, talking

28:26

about people's relationships with them,

28:29

I'm curious, like, what's the, like

28:32

a very common thing that

28:35

you observe people experience

28:38

that is always like really unexpected

28:40

for them, but it's something that you've noticed.

28:42

I don't know if I made that clear,

28:44

like something that just time and

28:46

time again, people like

28:49

it's the last thing they would have thought they needed to

28:51

do or address that was really helpful

28:53

for their relationship, but you just keep

28:55

seeing people have that same experience over

28:57

and over. And so it turns into

28:59

like, here's this kind of hidden or

29:02

there's this thing that's hard for people to see, but

29:04

it seems to be a theme. I

29:07

hope that question makes sense. Yeah, I think

29:09

I understand. Let's see if my, with

29:11

my answer that I'm

29:14

following. Well,

29:16

I think it's very hard for people to

29:18

see their role in

29:20

whatever's not working in their, let's

29:22

say love lives, relationship

29:24

lives, and that's

29:26

what I primarily focus on. And I think that,

29:29

you know, it's just the

29:31

big blind spot is how

29:33

am I contributing to whatever

29:35

is not working? So

29:37

that's something that people

29:39

are, that I see over and over and

29:42

over again, that people are not aware of.

29:44

I think also people are not aware of

29:46

how much their

29:49

personal stress impacts

29:52

their relationships. And I, you know, I

29:54

always say your relationship's not going to

29:56

get better when the show is over.

30:00

It's how you change your reaction

30:02

to stress that's going to ultimately

30:05

improve your relationship. And

30:08

so one thing that people that I see time

30:10

and time again that people don't realize is their

30:13

stress. And

30:15

the last thing that I would say is I

30:28

think a lot of people struggle with loving

30:32

someone. I

30:34

think that everyone wants to be seen and everyone

30:37

wants to be understood. I think that's really

30:40

the most important thing for people in relationships

30:42

because if we feel seen and

30:44

we feel understood, then we feel safe. But

30:48

I think that we struggle

30:51

to feel to see and

30:53

to understand others. And so a

30:56

lot of us are feeling sort of

30:58

chronically misunderstood and unseen in our relationships.

31:02

And we

31:05

have to be

31:11

willing to not only focus on

31:13

how much we want to feel

31:16

seen and understood, but

31:18

work equally as hard

31:21

to be a better lover. And

31:27

I don't mean sexually, just being better at

31:30

loving. And I think

31:32

that a lot of people struggle

31:35

to really love

31:38

others. I think they get attached. I

31:40

think that they will give

31:42

and give and give because they're conditioned to

31:44

believe that if they keep giving, that that's

31:46

what gets them more love. But

31:49

I think that truly loving from

31:51

a selfless place is

31:55

very difficult for people. And

31:57

then what's also difficult for some

31:59

people is loving

32:02

people who treat them badly

32:04

and being helpless in

32:07

relationships with bad people.

32:10

I don't know if I answered your question, but

32:12

those are like the main themes that I've seen

32:14

that is not so obvious for people.

32:17

Yeah, no, that's great. That's great.

32:20

How do you define love in the

32:22

way that you talk about it? And

32:24

I know that's a

32:26

big open multi-dimensional question, but I'm

32:29

just curious how you think about

32:31

it. So I

32:33

think that love is

32:35

both a feeling and an action. I think

32:37

that we all are familiar with love as

32:39

a feeling, but I

32:41

don't think that most

32:44

people are familiar with love as a verb and

32:47

what it means to actually love

32:49

someone when we're

32:54

feeling selfish, when we just

32:56

want to focus on ourselves, when

32:58

we don't want to

33:03

speak their love language. We want them to speak

33:05

our fucking love language, damn it. And

33:09

I think that to really love

33:11

someone is to, number

33:14

one, appreciate them for who they are and

33:16

not try to change them. And

33:19

number two,

33:24

to love them with

33:26

very limited conditions. It

33:30

can't be unconditional to the point where you...

33:33

Because I work with a lot of women

33:35

who have tolerated

33:37

abuse or

33:41

forget about abuse or just like chase the

33:44

unavailable person and tolerate breadcrumbs

33:46

and stuff like that. So

33:48

I'm not... You

33:51

don't love unconditionally because if I

33:53

give the message love unconditionally, then

33:56

someone will say, well, even though

33:58

they're drinking themselves to a place where they're to

34:00

oblivion and getting hot and like doing blow

34:02

all night and then beating me up, they

34:05

had a really rough childhood. So I gotta love

34:07

them unconditionally, no. But

34:10

if we're honest with ourselves, I think many of

34:12

us love with too many conditions, too many rules,

34:14

too many, they have to do this, they have

34:16

to do that. And I

34:19

think that to love someone is to

34:21

really want the best for them. It's

34:23

to want them to be happy. It's

34:25

to want them to feel free. And

34:29

it's to want them to feel, yeah,

34:32

it's to really want the best for

34:34

someone. And

34:37

I think

34:40

people struggle with that. Yeah,

34:43

yeah, you mentioned earlier things

34:46

that people look for or

34:48

desire in a relationship in

34:50

terms of feeling safe

34:52

in a relationship, feeling seen. And

34:54

I love the term chronically misunderstood

34:57

that's so great. How

35:01

can someone give more of that to

35:03

their partner? Well,

35:06

I think it starts with being

35:08

very curious. One thing that a

35:10

contemplation that I've been mulling

35:12

over recently is

35:14

this idea that we, most

35:20

people struggle with vulnerability and

35:23

you combine that with the

35:25

fact that like, we don't, we

35:29

can very, the law of

35:31

familiarity makes it so that we take

35:33

things and people for

35:35

granted, so we start being curious. And

35:39

so I think that it's about

35:41

curiosity and

35:43

about asking really meaningful questions.

35:45

And a lot

35:47

of people are strangers to each other, even though

35:49

they know each other very well. They're

35:52

strangers to each other, even though they live under the

35:54

same roof. And

35:56

I think that, What's

36:01

a very valuable lesson

36:03

for people to understand and to learn is,

36:05

you know, what

36:07

if I were to tell you that the person

36:10

you've been married to for 20 years, you know,

36:12

let's just use that as an example, is

36:15

actually in many ways a

36:17

stranger to you and sometimes feels

36:19

like a stranger to you and you

36:22

feel like a stranger to them. So

36:24

what would you do differently to make

36:27

it so that you weren't strangers

36:29

anymore? You would

36:31

ask certain

36:33

questions like, not

36:36

lazy questions like, tell me about yourself.

36:38

Like that's it. Like, for example, like

36:41

that first date question, when

36:44

someone when someone says, tell me about

36:46

yourself, whether it's like an interview

36:48

or first date or whatever

36:50

it is, I think is one of

36:53

the laziest questions you can ask someone because

36:56

I don't know if you've ever been

36:58

asked that but then I'm just like, well, what do you

37:01

want to know? And why should

37:03

I just tell you about myself? I barely know

37:05

you. We

37:07

replace that with a

37:09

more specific curious question

37:12

like such as, tell me about the

37:14

last time you stayed up all night.

37:18

What was going on? And

37:20

what you do is that you then

37:22

prompt the other person to share a

37:24

story. And

37:26

then if you are listening to the

37:28

story, then what you're doing is

37:30

you're hearing a lot about

37:33

this person. And

37:35

then hopefully you carry the conversation. Maybe

37:37

you share a little bit of your story and then the two

37:39

of you kind of create this what's referred

37:42

to as a good conversation. And

37:45

then there's vulnerability there. There's

37:47

curiosity. So I don't

37:49

even remember the original question you asked me but

37:51

because I just went on again. No,

37:55

that's fantastic. Yeah, I think

37:57

that this is this idea

37:59

of being seen and

38:01

understood, it starts with that.

38:04

Yeah, wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Julian,

38:07

I could talk to you for

38:09

hours, but I want to

38:11

be respectful of your time. Thank

38:14

you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm so

38:16

glad we finally got to make it happen. You're

38:19

amazing and if people of course

38:21

want to hear more of what

38:23

you have to offer, they should check out your

38:25

podcast, Chilling On Love, which is a great podcast,

38:27

which I was on. Thank you.

38:30

Yeah, yeah. So anyway, yeah, thank

38:33

you for taking the time to hang out and to

38:35

talk and I really, really

38:37

appreciate it. Oh, I

38:39

appreciate it as well. Thank you.