Today, I am going to share with you a conversation I had with Kaitlyn Bristowe of the Off The Vine podcast. No matter what phase or stage of love you’re in or whether you find yourself in solitude, there is so much to take away from their discussion, from attracting the right person to putting a stop to unhealthy relationship patterns to defining what it actually means to be in love. The tangible tips and incredible insight from our dialogue is bound to alter your perception of love moving forward and maybe just change how you find, keep, and let go of love throughout your life.
You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon.
Key Takeaways:
- 00:00 Intro
- 02:27 Do we need to wait for a specific day to express love and then forget about it?
- 04:12 “We teach people about what to think about love but not how to think about love.”
- 06:16 Where does the culture around love with the fairytale ending and the perfect match come from?
- 08:31 How do you know that you are with the right person?
- 11:09 Why are we so worried about being alone and finding someone to love?
- 14:03 What can you do when you’re alone to attract the right person?
- 16:36 “Loneliness is the weakness of being alone while solitude is the strength of being alone.”
- 21:56 Giving yourself into the process and allowing it to learn more about yourself
- 24:13 The difference between “we need to get through this” and “we want to get through this”
- 26:51 How do we stop making the same mistake over and over again?
- 28:26 Why you shouldn’t avoid having fights and suppress your own feelings
- 31:16 The difference between expressing anger and pain versus explaining them
- 33:04 Avoid uncontrollable arguments and start having uncomfortable conversations
- 35:47 How do you keep the love burning and keep the relationship strong?
- 38:45 “You can have it all, just not all at the same time.”
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Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to on Purpose. Today, I want to share
an amazing conversation I had with Caitlin Bristow on her
podcast Off the Vine about what does it mean to love?
We go into this topic deeply, as well as how
to attract the right person, how to put a stop
to unhealthy relationship patterns and toxic traits and triggers in
(00:22):
our relationships, and define what it actually means to be
in love for ourselves. I love this conversation. I feel
like we went super deep and I can't wait to
share this with you. Hey everyone, I'm so excited because
we're going to be adding a really special offering onto
(00:43):
the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily
Jay is a daily series on Calm and It's meant
to inspire you while outlining tools and techniques to live
a more mindful, stress free life. We dive into a
range of topics and the best part is each episode
is only seven minutes long, so you can incorporate it
into your schedule no matter how busy you are. As
(01:05):
a dedicated part of the on Purpose community, I wanted
to do something special for you this year, so I'll
be playing a hand picked Daily Jay during each of
my Friday podcasts. This week, we're talking about your relationships
and how to create the most meaningful connections with the
people that matter to you. Of course, if you want
to listen to The Daily Jay every day, you can
(01:27):
go subscribe to Calm. So go to Calm dot com
forward slash j for forty percent off your membership. Today,
I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
We have a couple of meet all friends.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Do you know Penny Tho, Yes, of course, yeah, yeah,
of course I do. Yeah, so Penny.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I used to live with Penny in Vancouver no way, Yes,
like seventeen years ago and her sister. I was in
her sister's wedding party. I was just with Penny in
New York.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That's amazing, Yeah, because she was.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Saying that you were just at one of the.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Races yeah Austin, Yeah, Austin.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, absolutely, those so fun, those races.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
But she's so phenomenally talented as well. She's she's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
She That's where I've literally gotten all my life advice
and business from her and amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Now you and I have your book right here, I'm
talking to you about it. That's eight Rules of Love
I'm so excited because I'd love like a book that
you can also take action with, which is so incredible,
And after reading this book, I'm curious your thoughts on
Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
That's that's a great question to start, and no one's
asked me that yet. I think that a lot of
these days across the calendar are invented as great ways
to present love and perform love. But to me, I
think sometimes they create a belief that we have to
(02:51):
wait for that day to show love, or we show
love emphatically on that day, but then we forget the
rest of the days. And so I see them as
a wonderful room. I see them as a great way
of recognizing and celebrating something so special. But at the
same time, I think it puts so much pressure on people.
I think it makes people do things they would never
(03:11):
do for someone. I think people feel pressured to be
someone they're not or do something that doesn't feel right
or likely for them to do. And so I think
we all have to make of it what we want
to make of it ourselves and not feel like we
have to buy into the society's definition of what Valentine's
Day should be. Or what the movies say you should
do on Valentine's Day, And so I think sometimes it
(03:33):
plays into that Hollywood romance of what love is meant
to be, and it takes us away from what love
actually is.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
It's so true. Our perception is so skewed sometimes of
what love and what we think love is. And I mean,
whether that's social media or the movies, it's happened for
so long. I can think of all the Disney movies
or all the wrong coms I saw growing up, and
then you have this perception of what love is supposed
to be. But then you your parents love, and then
that's a different kind of love. And then you see
(04:04):
the love that you have and you're like, why does
this not feel like the magic that they show in
the movies. So you said that nobody really sits down
and teaches us how to love. The question that I
had is, I'm like, how would someone even do that?
Because we all feel loved so differently. Do you think
this is something we should be teaching as parents.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
No, that's a great question. I don't think that we
can teach it like how we learned in school. But
I think there needs to be an element of what
to look out for, what to understand. I think it's
a beautiful thing for anyone to try and teach and learn.
I think a lot of the time we teach people
what to think about love and not how to think
about love. And so you wouldn't say love is xyz
(04:46):
and that's what it looks like and that's what you
should be looking for. I think that's unhealthy because it
can mean different things to different people, as you rightly said.
But I think we should encourage people to say, well,
this is how love could make you feel, or this
this is what love could look like, and this is
what healthy love looks like, and this is what toxic
relationships look like. I think having some wisdom and insight
(05:09):
around healthy and unhealthy relationships probably is going to set
you up better than a random conversation about love with
so many different people in your family, as you were
rightly saying, right you look at your parents' relationship, you
see the relationship your friends have, you watch the movies
and TV shows, and then you kind of make your
own version up. But none of that is based on
(05:31):
cues that are healthy or insightful or thoughtful. And so
as much as I don't think we need like a
course on love. I do think we need a course
on emotions and how to understand your own emotions, how
to understand other people's emotions. And so I find that
love may be too big for that. But emotions and
(05:52):
emotional regulation and emotional awareness, these are skills and tools
that would actually help you have better relationships. And that's
why in the book, even though it's the Eight Rules
of Love, the eight rules are about communication. They're about
debate and fighting, they're about connecting. They're about the things
you can control.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, that's true. I guess that's a good point of
talking about the things you can control. Where do you
think the culture around love, with the fairy tale endings
and the perfect match come from. Do you think that
does stem from like movies in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I think it comes from a few places. I think
there's a deep part of us that wants to believe
and wants to yearn for this perfect love. And I
think that that's true and fair and good. I think
the challenge is that the image that's been created of
perfect love is what's unhealthy. So it's not the idea
(06:46):
of perfect love that's unhealthy. It's the idea of a
perfect love in this way that sends us on the
wrong path. I think that when you look at movies,
we all know that they show you everything up until
people move in together, or if they show you people
moving in together, they fight and then make up over
something fairly superficial. Or you look at couples who do
(07:08):
the same things on the date night in the movies,
or the anniversary parties and the events. And so I
do feel that media has played a massive role even today.
And I give this story in the book of my
own proposal, and when I proposed to my wife, I
did it. I mean, I'll cut the long story short.
Everyone can read the book for the full version. But
in the book I talk about how I did the
(07:31):
full a cappella song, singing Bruno Mars, will you marry Me?
I did, obviously, I got down on one knee. I
had a horse drawne carriage through London. And it's like
I got all those ideas from social media. I did
not get them from my wife. I did not get
them from my heart. I did not get them from
what I thought was love. I got them from social
(07:52):
media and TV. And so I think a lot of
the ideas we have do come from media, and I
think there has to be a filtering process to say,
wait a minute, is this what my partner wants? Is
this what I want? Is this what love looks like
to the person I love? Or is it just something
that I've adopted because I watched the show or a movie.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
That's why your book is going to be so incredible
for so many people. And I love that it's written
for all stages of love. So whether you're looking for
the right person or you found the right person and
you want to keep them. But love is really confusing,
and I'm sure it is because of you know, all
the things we see or we compare, we don't know.
But how do you know when it is the right person?
(08:34):
Do you really believe that there is that feeling where
you're like when you know you know, or like, how
do you do it's the right person? Because we all
seem to want to, you know, if there's a fight
or an argument, or they don't treat you right, and
you're like, I could easily give up, So how do
you know it's the right person?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah? I feel that the idea that you know when
you know, that's beautiful. If you've experienced that, and I
love that for you, But that can't be our best
advice on love because what that says to someone is
you might have to meet eight billion people to decide
whether you've met the one, Because what if you don't
know after twenty thirty two hundred, three hundred people that
(09:12):
you've dated or met. And so the way I like
to look at it is I break it down into
three simple things. You know you're in love when these
three things happen. You like their personality and they like yours.
You respect their values and they respect yours. And you're
committed to helping them towards their goals, and they're committed
(09:33):
to you helping you towards your goals. And I find
that that really simplifies it. I had someone the other
day who told me that they were about to get married,
and they said, Jay, what's your best advice? And I
asked them these questions. I said, do you know what
their values are? Tell me your partner's top three values
right now? And they said some really broad things like
kind and family, And I was like, okay, but what
(09:57):
do they really value inside of their family? And they
were struggling, and then I said, what are your partner's
top three goals over the next top three in the
next three years, And they didn't know. And I started
to realize that it's not about whether you know they're
the one. It's actually more about how much you know
about them. And I think that's what we need to
(10:17):
understand more, like, do you know how they respond to stress?
Do you know how they respond to fatigue? Do you
know when they're happy? Do you understand how they deal
with sadness and disappointment? If you know all those things
and you can still appreciate respect and love someone that's
love love. Isn't this idea of I just feel great
(10:39):
around them, but I actually don't know much about them.
Because that can feel good for six months to twelve months,
but when you start looking at a long term relationship,
that's what lets you down.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, because a lot of people, and I'll get to this,
a lot of people feel like they just don't want
to be alone. Feeling lonely is worse than you know,
being in a relationship. And you can get through it
after you know, six months, Oh it's fine, it's fine,
And then a year happens and you're like, oh wait,
I can't deal with this, but at the time you're like,
that's better than being lonely. You point out that will
(11:11):
I Ever Find Love is the most popular search engine
question that people ask. Why do you think that is?
Why are we so worried about being alone and finding somebody?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah? Yeah, So if you google will I ever, Google
says the rest of the sentences find love, And if
you say will I ever, it will say get married.
So that's in the top three or top five as well.
And then the next one is will I am net worth?
Because people seem to be really fascinated by will I
AM's net worth? And his networth is seventy million according
(11:45):
to Google for anyone who's anyone who's googling it right now.
But going back to the topic and everyone can check
there will I ever? Afterwards. I think it's something that
scares us about the future. I think we're scared of
being alone now, but we're more scared of being alone
in the future. That's why the question is will I
ever Find love? Because I think we're scared about the
(12:08):
idea of growing old alone, of going through life alone,
of seeing everyone in our life with someone else, but
us not having that other person, and those are all
very valid emotions and very valid fears. But I think
at the same time we have to realize that when
you're feeling alone, when you're fearing being by yourself, you
(12:30):
don't make good decisions. Research shows that if you get
into a relationship because you feel alone, you're more likely
to settle for less than you deserve, You're more likely
to be dependent on that person, and you're less likely
going to be able to break up even if it's
not working out. And so when you get into a
(12:50):
relationship because you're scared of being alone, you actually choose
someone who's not even what you want from a relationship.
But you feel safer in a false way, and you
feel secure in a false way, and you know that
deep down, which scares you even more, and so your
fear actually becomes worse. But again, you know, Kate. Then
(13:11):
it comes from the idea that when we were young,
if you had lunch on your own, you were considered
the weirdo. If you went to exactly exactly exactly from
Super Bad.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Right, Yeah, I love that you brought.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Us exactly exactly. And if you had a birthday party
and no one showed up, or a few people showed up,
you were the loner. Hey. By the way, when you're
thirty years old and over, if you get five of
your best friends to show up, you're really happy about that.
You take pride in that. And then you know, when
you went to a wedding as a plus and you
didn't have a plus one, people would be like, oh,
(13:49):
poor you, like sad for you. So we've kind of
made it feel awkward to be alone, and so now
we carry that. But we'd rather be with anyone than
be alone. And that's the challenge.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, how can being alone actually help you attract the
right person?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So I think we all start alone, and that's part
of the puzzle that you know, we start alone, and
being alone in and of itself will not help you
attract the right person. Like just being single or just
being alone doesn't do the work. But I think your
question is what can you do when you're alone to
attract the right person. I think the first thing is
(14:28):
you need to do something hard and challenging by yourself.
You could take on a new workout class, you could
take on a new health habit, you could take on
I mean, what you're going off to do. You're going
off to do an incredible retreat over the next few days,
you're taking on something challenging. When you take on something
challenging when you're alone, or when you're single, or when
(14:51):
you're by yourself, you gain the strength and courage to
understand what you have inside of you. Now, when you
get into a relationship, you realize you're bringing so much
to the table. You realize that I'm a confident, complete,
whole individual. You stop thinking like, oh, I hope I
find my better half or I hope I find someone
(15:11):
that completes me, and you start recognizing, well, actually, I
have a lot to offer someone because I can do
hard things by myself. I have done challenging things by myself,
and so that would be the first thing I'd say
when you're alone. The second thing I'd say is you
actually at time to understand and learn about yourself. I
think when you don't do that alone, you just sign
(15:34):
up and subscribe to what everyone else likes. If your
partner likes a certain type of food, now you like it.
If they like a certain type of entertainment, you like it.
And then ten twenty years down the line, you realize
you've lost who you are because you just followed what
they wanted to do. And I think a lot of
people end up feeling like they lost themselves, but the
truth is they never found themselves in the first place.
(15:56):
So when you find yourself in solitude, you don't lose
yourself in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
That is such a good point. People are probably like, Caitlyn,
shut up about your ex relationship that we've heard about
thirty million times, But I always related back to certain
things where I completely lost myself in this relationship. But
when you say that, it's not even that you lost yourself,
it's you didn't find yourself in the first place. That
is so true. I completely found myself, you know, close
to the age of thirty, and I was in all
(16:23):
these relationships losing myself quote unquote to all these people
when really I just hadn't found out who I really
truly was. And I'm still figuring that out. But it's
it's just it's such an fascinating topic, and I wanted
to ask you the difference between loneliness and solitude for
those listening.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, So, I love this beautiful statement from Paul Tillich
where he talks about the fact that the English language
has two words for being alone, but we only use
one of them. We only use loneliness. And loneliness is
the weakness of being alone, but solitude is the strength
or as he he says, the glory of being alone.
(17:02):
And it's really interesting that in our language we always
say I'm alone, I'm single. We don't say I'm in solitude, right,
we don't actually use that word because we see it
as a weakness. And if you see being alone as
a weakness and you see a relationship as a strength,
that means you're weak by yourself and you're only strong
with this person. Now, if you're only strong with this person,
when that person leaves or something goes wrong or there's
(17:26):
a challenge, you go back to feeling weak again. And
so your strength can't be found only in a relationship.
Your strength is found by yourself, through yourself, and when
you're strong, when you're powerful, when you're courageous, then when
you get into a relationship you can build more strength together. Right.
If you've got a broken home and you only find
(17:46):
a complete home with someone else, you feel broken continuously.
And that's when we have these ideas of like, oh
they're out of my league, I'm not good enough for them,
or maybe I've got to do something to impress them
because you walked into the relationship feeling that they were
better than you, because they made you whole. And so
(18:06):
that never stops, like that continues even in the relationship
of I have to earn their respect, or I have
to impress them, or I have to keep them excited
and interested. And if that's done from a place of love,
that's beautiful. But if it's done from a place of
fear and insecurity, and that's the thing. Sometimes love and
fear can look like the same thing. You're trying to
(18:28):
make someone happy, you're trying to make someone feel good,
you're trying to help someone, But are you doing it
from a place of fear and insecurity because they might leave,
or are you doing it from a place of you
deeply respect and admire this person? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Wow, God, I wish I could have you for like
eight hours on this podcast. It's just so good. I mean,
this is just such It's like it probably feels very
simple to you, but it's so profound to me.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And no it doesn't. You're You're inspiring, Kaitlyn. I have
to tell you, like you've asked me some questions, then
it must me your energy because I've said things to
you today that have not said before. And yeah, and
whenever I do that, and I'm very aware of that
because A I try to be fully present and energetically
(19:15):
present whenever I'm doing anything, and often I find when
you're talking about a book or your you're meeting and
doing lots of podcasts or interviews or whatever it may be,
I try really hard to not repeat myself, but I
find that when the host, especially today, I'm feeling that
with you, I feel you're so present and these are
such real questions that I feel I'm being inspired energetically
(19:37):
to give answers that I've not given before. So i
just want to say share that because I'm honestly everything
that is coming out of my mouth, I'm like, I'm
going to tell my team, I'm like, guys, we need
to write that down because I haven't said that before.
So I really appreciate. Yeah, you're you're inspiring that, and
I want you to know that's that's your energy as
a host.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Wow, that is the most flattering thing anyone's ever said
to me. But it's it's, you know, funny, as I've
this is such a great job of mine to interview
people that inspire me. And I went to my energy
healer this morning and he even told me the same thing.
He was like, I'm really impressed by your energy and
I was like what. So then hearing you say it today,
I'm like, Okay, I feel like I'm on the right path.
(20:15):
I'm going to Hoffman tomorrow. Everything was lining up. This
is this is so great. So thank you for sharing
that with me also, because that's extremely flattering.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
No, well, I'm going to add also that I can
vouch for it for all your audience because you won't
tell them this. So I was extremely late today for
this interview because I was running late from other interviews
and my team was in touch with Kaitlin and I
was dming her as well, frantically going, Kaitlyn, I'm really sorry.
And I turned up today and Kaitlyn and her team
received me as if I turned up early, like that's
(20:44):
how much love I felt and how much kindness I felt.
And I was like, this is a human who's like
living in that space, so she wouldn't have told you that.
That's why I'm telling you all of that. And Kaitlyn,
I really appreciate that too, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh my gosh, that's amazing. I won't too much more
of your time. I do have some more questions please.
People are so excited by the way that you're on
this podcast today. I got so many DMS when I
said that I was talking to you, so.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Ask everything, ask away. I want to make sure I
answer all your questions.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
I'm going to and you know what, I have been
going through your book and I can't wait because I
have such a long flight tomorrow. And I mean, it's
just incredible. You're the way you speak, the way you
write everything. I mean, some people are born with it, maybe,
but you have obviously gone through phases in your life
or things in your life that have gotten you to
where you are today. And I know you what were
you three years? Three years as a monk?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yes, that's right, three years.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yes, well, I can't even like to me, I mean,
I did Bachelor. This is obviously not the same I'm
saying I did Bachelor. I did not have a phone,
is what I'm getting at. I didn't have a phone
or TV or anything. And I was like, I'm so isolated.
And then for Hoffmann, I'm actually excited to be alone,
not have a phone, get uncomfortable, and and I just
(21:56):
feel like I can't even imagine how three years you
probably at first maybe it was uncomfortable, and then did
you just surrender to the process or did you fall
in love with the silence? How was that for you?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah? Well, I think I went into it with the
mindset you're going into Huffman, which was I'm going to
apply myself fully to this process. I'm really excited about it,
and I'm going to follow it the way it's being taught,
because then I'll actually get the reward. Yeah. Right, If
I start cutting corners or if I start trying to
make it more comfortable, then I'm not getting anything. Now.
(22:33):
The first month, my mind was going crazy because when
you go silent externally, your internal dialogue eats you alive,
and so your mind is just frantic. It's stressed, it's
putting pressure on you, it's asking questions, it's demanding things
of you. And you find that as you tolerate that
(22:54):
and as you listen to that, it gets quieter. But
then what ends up happening is you start asking deeper questions,
and more thoughtful questions come up, and you start going
through some uncomfortable uncoverings and revelations where you're looking at
dark sides or mistakes or regrets and you start excavating
(23:15):
and that's tough, but it's glorious on the other side.
And then the third thing that happened after all of
that was a sense of comfort in discomfort, that the
idea that doing uncomfortable things became more natural. And I
realized that this applies to anything, whether you're going to
go and sit in a cold plunge, whether you're going
to meditate, whether you're going to huffman, whether you go
(23:37):
off and become a monk. The point is that we
have to get comfortable with uncomfortable situations because life is
full of uncertainty and discomfort. And so I think that's
really what I would say made all the difference. That
it's not that I found it easy. It's not that
it was natural for me. It's not that I'm this
(23:59):
special human being could make this. That was not it
was easy, it was naturally it was. It was tough.
It's difficult. It's still tough today. I don't think it
ever stopped, but I think you get more conscious and
more skilled at being able to take on the challenge.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Let's talk about discomfort for a minute. How do we
know when to break up from a tough relationship or
push through to make it special? Because I guess I
want to know, like, is fighting and arguing bad and
when do we know that that's when we should leave
or if it's like, well, we committed to each other
and we need to get through this, and that's what
(24:33):
makes a relationship special.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, I think there's a difference between we need to
get through this and we want to get through this.
So our relationship that lasts is that there's enthusiasm and
energy to say, look, it's a tough time, but we're
both going to figure it out. Right, We're both going
to grow, we're both going to change, we're both going
to learn, and there's this collective thing. And what I
find in relationships that often end or when one person
(24:58):
wants to work on the relationationship and the other person doesn't.
So it's never when both people are excited and enthused
and focused on building the relationship. I think another thing
I'd like to say is that when it comes to
arguments and fighting, if it's manipulative, toxic, abusive, emotionally manipulative.
(25:19):
That's not the kind of fighting or discussion or debate
that I encourage in the book. What I'm talking about
is that every couple argues to some degree, but knowing
how to argue better is a really healthy skill, and
some agreements are really good. Like so, for example, my
wife and I have some agreements. One is that we'll
never raise our voice at each other. We can be
(25:41):
angry and upset, but that doesn't mean we need to shout.
We can express it, but it doesn't need to be
really really loud. Second thing is we don't swear at
each other. We don't want to use that language with
each other. The third thing is we don't throw around
the word divorce or I'm going to leave you or
break up. It's not something that you get to you
every time things get tough or there's something challenging. And
(26:04):
so these are just some basic agreements. But I think
having healthy agreements of how do we deal with conflict,
how do we deal with when one of us is
going through a really tough time personally, I think having
those boundaries and agreements and rules is a really healthy
way to form a relationship and ultimately a relationship that's
(26:24):
going to last is because you both are willing to
put in the work. That's what it comes down to.
And if there's only one of you willing to put
in the work, that's you dragging the relationship forward. And
that's a decision you have to make personally whether you
want to be that person. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I feel like sometimes when we do that, we're all
just you know, if we cross a boundary or we
let the boundary go, and then it's like, how do
you come back from that? How do we how do
we stop ourselves from making the same mistakes over and
over again, which a lot of people do in relationships.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
I think the way you drop yourself from making mistakes
over and over again is you journal and write down
how you feel in the moment. See. The challenging thing
is that we forget when things get good, and we
remember when things go bad, and so your memory only
kicks in when everything's going wrong and you're like, oh
(27:19):
my gosh, I should have seen those three red flags.
But then when things got good, you went, oh, no,
they've changed. Everything's okay now. And that's why I always
say to people, make a mental and physical record, a
journal of exactly how you feel. When things are bad
and exactly how you feel when things are good, and
when you keep that record, now when it happens again,
(27:40):
you're like, oh, wait a minute, let me not be
fooled by the momentary happiness and joy, because really, what
I'm experiencing is this, And I think what we do
is we kind of have this yo yo pendulum oscillating
effect of like the good times are really good, but
the bad times are really bad. And I think that
that's the unhealthy part. That you don't want to swing
(28:01):
back and forth. It's actually better to be like, hey,
we have some tough terms that we deal with them,
and we have some great terms and they're awesome, but
you just don't want that to get so wide and
so extreme that you're literally swinging from one side to
the other.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Right, And we'll talk about arguments for a minute. I
know you say that people have different fight styles the vendor,
the hyder, the exploder, and none of them are technically bad,
But at what point do you think you should be
concerned about the way you're fighting with your partner? Like
maybe not the word fighting, but arguing is healthy. Like
at what point, again, you'd probably saying, like if it's manipulative,
(28:38):
that's probably yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I would say that two people in any relationship
are going to have challenges and problems, and you're going
to have to have uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes we avoid fights
by suppressing how we really feel, and so we say
to everyone we never fight, we never argue, and we
wear that as like an achieved like a badge of honor,
(29:01):
but really inside it's burning us because we're not talking
about what we really want to talk about. But on
the flip side, I'd say that if arguments are constantly
happening where both people are pointing the finger at the
other person, and both people are not willing to look
at their involvement and their responsibility in what's going on,
(29:26):
that's when you can't go further right. It requires that
ownership and responsibility where both people look back and say,
I know what I'm getting wrong. You know what you're
getting wrong. Okay, let's get this right, rather than no, no, no,
it's all about you. You're doing everything wrong, and then
you're like, no, you're doing everything wrong. And if it's
constantly a battle of you're the mistake, you're the problem,
(29:48):
You're the issue, that can get very exhausting, very very quickly.
And the challenge is, most of the time relationships don't
end because there's a big issue. They end because keep
arguing about little things. Right, we get exhausted from arguing
about the tiniest things. It doesn't have to be like
someone cheated, or it doesn't have to be like someone
(30:10):
stole money, or it doesn't have to be something as
extreme as that. Sometimes it's literally you keep arguing about
tiny things and you're exhausted, and now you have no
energy for love.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, I like that you say the journaling part. Historically
I have been the exploder in a relationship and journaling
and writing down I'll never forget what a therapist told
me one time. I said, sometimes it just comes out
and it's stronger than me, and these mean things come out,
And she goes, why don't you just try once writing
(30:42):
down just awful things that come into your head, of
what you would say to your partner, and then fold
it into a piece of paper and then put it
on the counter and say this is how it's feeling,
and it's not very nice, but if you'd like to
read it, you're more than welcome. And they're probably not
going to want to read it, and then you're probably
not going to even want to put it on the counter,
but because you'll realize by the time you wrote it
down that it's not something you should have said in
(31:04):
the first place. And I did that one time and
it really shifted my perspective and something in my brain
for that, and I was like, oh my gosh, Okay.
So then I have a question. So, if you are
one to avoid conflicts, or you are hiding it or
pushing it down out of fear, what should you do
to avoid.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
That avoid suppressing it? You mean, yes, So I think
there's a difference between expressing anger and pain and explaining
anger and pain. And so I think people think that
the opposite of expressing is suppressing. And you're not trying
to get to the opposite of expressing, You're trying to
(31:43):
explain how you feel. I'll show you the difference. Expressing
is you're an idiot, I hate you, You're ruining my life. Right.
That's expressing. You're just literally throwing it at someone. Explaining
is saying when you talk to me like this, this
is what I feel, this is what I experience when
we deal with our issues in this way. It makes
(32:07):
me feel upset, inadequate, whatever it may be. You're explaining
how you feel, and now you've shifted the energy because
now you can actually have a conversation about what you're
talking about, rather than someone just having to catch your
emotions and catch your energy. And so to me, explaining anger,
not expressing it allows you to actually not suppress it
(32:30):
because if you just go, Okay, I've got to deal
with this all in my head, I'm not going to
say anything to them that's unhealthy because that's just going
to keep burning inside of you. So what I recommend
is taking out time, taking a moment, and actually even
more than all of that, prepare before you end up
in that position. You know you're going to say something
(32:50):
you don't mean. You know you're going to say something
hurtful and potentially damaging. Set yourself up before and say,
when I'm about to hit that zone, explain how I feel.
Don't just express it.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Why do you think that's so hard for people to do?
It's when you say it and I hear you say it.
Why is it so hard for people to execute that?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Doing that because we haven't practiced, We've never practiced it.
All we've ever done, is let whatever we think come
straight out of our mouth. And maybe we didn't even
think about it. We felt it and we said it,
and so it's just because we haven't practiced it. And
so it's not something that you should know how to do.
It's not something that you must know how to do.
(33:32):
It's something we have to train ourselves into a habit
of doing it. Right. So if every time you're in
that moment, in that heated moment, you have to learn
to cool down, whether it's through prompts physically, you know
it's present. Like for example, like one of the things
that I often say to people is if you're about
to say something, you mean, hold their hands. Right, if
(33:53):
you're holding someone's hands, you're like less likely about to
say something hurtful and harmful because you think you can
say something harmful because you feel distant from them. But
if you feel a bit closer to them, you're going
to say it in a much more conscious, intentional way.
Another thing I'd add is usually when we argue it's
not schedule, And what I mean by that is, if
(34:14):
you have to have a difficult or uncomfortable conversation, don't
just have it when someone walks through the door, or
when someone's about to go through a really important interview.
Have it when you say, by the way, I really
need to talk to you about this, can we schedule time?
And I think that's what's so important, is that you're
not just having arguments because you're uncontrolled. You're actually setting
(34:34):
yourself up a success by saying, can we talk about
this when you're less stressed. I'm less stressed. Let's find
the right time to have this uncomfortable conversation. The third
thing I'm going to say is often when we fight
with people, we sit opposite them or stand opposite them,
and a lot of research shows that when you're sitting
on the same side, you actually feel like you're on
(34:55):
the same team. And that's why a lot of leaders
inside companies, when they have to give feedback or have
tough conversations, they walk with people because now you're walking
in the same direction and that's psychologically impacting you. Rather
than sitting across the table from each other against each other,
you're walking in the same direction with each other.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I love that. That's actually really incredible advice for me
to take away. And also I feel like that's why
people find therapy so beneficial. It almost is a scheduled
time to talk about feelings that have built up. You
don't immediately say it when they walk through the door.
You go, oh, I'm going to save this for therapy.
We could talk about it with a professional and then
(35:36):
by that time you're able to deliver it. So I
love all that advice. That's incredible, and I wanted to
turn the beat around here for a minute and talk
about people in happy, healthy relationships I believe, such as yourself.
How can we keep that spark alive in the relationship
and grow with our partner instead of growing apart.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, I think the way I talk about in the
book Four Levels of Intimacy and what I've read when
I was sitting with couples, and it's not surprising or
when I was looking at the research, the number one
activity couples do together is watch television. Now, I'm not
against TV. I'm not against watching TV together. I watch
TV and movies with my wife all the time. But
(36:15):
the problem is when that's the only thing you do together,
which means seven to fourteen hours a week, I spent
both of you not connecting, not sharing an experience, not
directing your energy towards each other, but at the screen.
And so that's one form of connection, but it's quite
a low form. Higher than that is experiences and experiments.
(36:37):
What I mean by that is do new things together.
If you only ever see your partner do the same things.
They do their job, they wash the dishes, they do
the laundry. You see your partner do the same daily tasks,
it's hard to learn something new about them. Whereas if
you go to a painting class, a pottery class, maybe
you go for a walk in a place you've never
(36:58):
been to before, you take a weekend break that you've
never visited before. When you do new things together, you
learn new things about each other. That's what keeps the
spark alive. I find that we want to find the spark.
But we felt the spark because it was new. But
now all we do is old things together. Right, We
don't do anything new together, and so how can there
be a spark. A higher level than that is to
(37:22):
learn together, grow together. You may not like listening to
the same podcast or reading the same books, but if
you're both doing your own learning, I promise you you'll
have more to share with each other and more to
learn about each other. I think that we've lost curiosity, Caitlin.
I think we feel we know everything about our partners.
I would honestly say to you, I've been with my
wife for ten years, and I learned something new about
(37:45):
her all the time, like it's ever fresh. And it's
not that because I'm amazing at spotting new things. It's
because we constantly do new, exciting and thralling things. And
the key to that is do things where neither view
at the expert. Do things where it's not either of
your passions. Do truly new things to discover new things
(38:07):
about each other.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I'm going to take that and run with it because
I feel like Jason and I get caught up in
this cycle of talking business because we both are super
driven and motivated, and we are so passionate about what
we do that at the end of the night, we're
not doing something like you said, like that isn't that
you're not the best at We're not taking that time
(38:29):
to We literally are like we're tired, Let's throw on
a show or let's talk about business, because that's something
we both enjoy talking about. So I really appreciate that
feedback because I think that's really helpful. And lastly, you
talk about balancing work, love and life without losing yourself.
How do you continue to give love to your partner yourself.
Some people have kids and your bucket might feel a
(38:51):
little bit empty while you still have so much going on, Like,
how do you figure out how to keep everybody's buckets
a little full?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I think is that we try and balance everything perfectly
all the time. And you know, Arianna Huffington once said,
you can have it all, just not all at the
same time. And I love that idea because there are
different phases and stages to life. That's why when you're single,
you're meant to fill yourself up so that when you
get into a relationship you can fill each other up.
(39:21):
And then when you have kids, you fill the kids up,
and then you refill yourselves again. And so the way
I break it down is there's a different priority at
different stages. That doesn't mean you're not filling yourself up
and filling other people up at the same time, but
you recognize that in this season, I need to focus
more on the kids. In this season, I need to
(39:42):
focus more on myself. And the only way you do
it is by not putting pressure on yourself to do
it all. You give yourself brace, you allow yourself to
make mistakes, You recognize you're a flawed, normal, fallible human
who doesn't get everything right all the time, and that
you try your best. As simple as that sounds, I
find that people know when you're trying your best. People
(40:06):
know when you're consciously thinking of them. To be honest,
sometimes I'll say to my wife, Hey, I know you've
been struggling with this. How can I help you? And
her response is, actually, I've got it covered, but I'm
just thankfully thought of. Half the time, our partners just
want to feel seen, heard and understood. They don't need
you to do anything drastic. They don't need you to
(40:28):
take them on the vacation or take them on the
date night. They just want to feel seen, heard and understood.
And when they don't feel seen, heard and understood, that's
when they want the vacation, and that's when they want
the anniversary party, and that's when they want the birthday party,
because those are all ways of patching up all of
the other issues that they feel.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, so true. I mean everybody say I'm like, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I'm glad. It's resonating. I really hope it resonates with
your amazing audience and your community, because I'm just trying
to speak in real terms and try and speak as
true fully and openly as I can.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
No it will. I mean, you can think about that
book is there's some parts I definitely disagree with, but
the women men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Like,
it's just it's gone back so many years where it's
people are wired a certain way and it's just not
the same as it was. However long ago that was,
you know what I mean. So it's it's we're all
trying to evolve and grow and change and stay with
(41:24):
the times, and I feel like everything right now is
it's not the same as it was in the cavemen
days where men are from Mars and women are from Venus.
It's still maybe a little bit wired that way, but
we have to grow as.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
We have to so, and our lives have changed, right, Work,
work schedules have changed, work responsibilities have changed, so we
can't keep applying that advice to these modern lives that
we live.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yeah, I completely agree. I just I am so grateful
for you and I loved having you on my podcast,
and I know you are just so busy, and I
just can't tell you how grateful I am that you
spent some time with today. And I just know how
much this will mean, how much of it into me personally,
and how much it will mean to my listeners as well.
And I want to like shout this book from the
(42:07):
rooftops and have everybody get it because I love the
dits for everybody, and I love what you say and
you've helped me more than you know. So thank you,
thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Well, Kaitlyn. I want to say thank you to you.
I also want to say thank you to everyone who's
been listening and watching and everyone who orders the book.
Thank you so much. It means the world to me.
I poured my heart into this book for two years
and so I deeply value anyone who takes a moment
to read it. And I also want to send you
away with a little intention, a little meditation, just to
thank you, just to wish you well on this journey
(42:40):
you're off too, for the next six days, and I
really hope that it's a transformative, deeply moving and impactful
process for you. And I hope that when you come
out of it, you have new lessons, new wisdom, new
insight that you're able to line your life and share love,
(43:02):
share joy, and share your spirit with everyone in your life.
So I just wanted to put that intention out there
for you and sending you so much love and positive
energy through this journey.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Thank you so much. I know you're going on a
whole live tour when I get back, so I'm sure
we will cross paths, and even if it's DMS, because
I want to.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
I hope you will come and see me. Well, yeah,
I hope you will come and see the show. That'd
be awesome.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I would love to. Is there a place where people
can find your book, the dates you're going on to tour,
everywhere that everyone can find you.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, the book can be ordered from eight Rules of
Love dot com, same as the title Eight Rules of
Love dot com, and the tour is at Jshetty tour
dot com and all the dates there, whether you're in
the US or international, And so Jshetty tour dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Good luck with your full tour.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Er so much.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
You're just helping so many people and opening people's eyes
and minds, and it's it's really incredible, and I just again,
thank you for that, and thank you for chatting with
me today, Caitlin.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
It was so fun talking to you and we will
keep in touch. And again, thank you so much. I'm
so grateful and all the best. I have a great
six days. Thank you so much for listening to on Purpose.
It means the world to me. I am so excited
to be sharing these episodes with you. I am pumped
and I cannot wait for the next one. We're often
(44:28):
told that we've got to focus on ourselves and that
we can't look to others to make us happy. While
that's in many ways true, there is a path to
contentment that involves others without relying on them. Don't worry,
I'll explain. The next seven minutes are about happiness and
how you can find yours by helping others find theirs.
(44:52):
I'm Jay Sheddy. Welcome to the Daily Jay. Now, I'd
like to pause here as always and get entered with
three conscious breaths, deep breath in and a slow breath out,
(45:12):
connecting with your body and releasing tension, connecting with your
mind and tapping in. There's a brilliant story about a
teacher who hands each of her students a balloon and
(45:36):
has them write their name on it with a marker.
The teacher holds up a timer and tells the students,
on the account of three, I'm going to have you all
throw your balloons up in the air, and you'll have
two minutes to find the one with your name. The
teacher counts to three, and the students are off racing
(45:57):
around the room. They're tripping over one another, wildly batting
the balloons in their frantic search. It's mayhem. At the
end of the two minutes, the teacher instructs everyone to freeze.
She asks who found their balloon. Only a few hands
go up. Okay, The teacher says, we're going to do
(46:18):
it again, but now I want you to pick up
whichever balloon is closest to you and return it to
its owner. This time, as the clock runs out, everyone
has their balloon back and something else is different too.
Instead of looking harried and stressed, the students are smiling
(46:38):
and laughing. The teacher explains that happiness is like those balloons.
If we're only focused on our own happiness, we have
a worse chance of actually locating it. But if we
all share happiness wherever we can, we'll find our own
as well. Now, there's nothing wrong with looking for your
own happiness. That's normal, it's healthy, and after all, we
(47:02):
don't want to let others and what they do or
don't do, dictate the quality of our lives. But we
can become so fixated on our search for contentment that
we get anxious and stressed. We feel like trying to
find joy is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
In reality, happiness is all around us. It just might
(47:25):
not be ours. Sometimes it's better to simply pick up
someone else's balloon and hand it to them. The reality
is that we are inter dependent, and while we shouldn't
expect others to give us our balloons, we can trust
that at some point our goodwill might come back around.
(47:45):
We can also focus on the joy that giving joy
gives you. In the words of father Richard Raw, the
only way to hang on to joy is to share it.
So what does it look like to hand someone there happiness?
You've probably already done it without realizing. It can be
as easy as telling someone how much you appreciate them
(48:09):
or thanking them for a job well done. Simple gestures
like these don't just brighten a person's day, they also
generate shared joy. I know you know that it feels
good to make someone smile, and if you remain present
in that shared joy, it's a surefire way to boost
your own happiness too. When it comes down to it,
(48:31):
we do need to care for ourselves. But at the
same time, we're all in it together figuring out this
thing called life, and we should all hand out happiness
when we can. And now, as our time today winds down,
we can start to spread the love in our meditation.
(48:52):
So get comfortable wherever you are, relaxing your body, easing tension.
If you'd like, you can put one hand on your
stomach to feel the rise and fall of your breath,
(49:14):
the other hand on your chest to connect with your
source of love and kindness. See if you can access
any feelings of warmth, generosity, compassion, and let those feelings
(49:47):
flow out of you and into the world. You can
even bring to mind a loved one or a friend,
someone who could use a little support or a pick
(50:07):
me up, and send them your well wishes. May you
be happy. And now let's open this up. Think about
(50:32):
what you can do today to give someone else their balloon.
How a might to uplift you as well. Big picture,
can you consider other people's happiness alongside the search for
(50:54):
your own. I wish you a beautiful day full of
joy and light, and I can't wait to see you
tomorrow
Welcome back to on Purpose. Today, I want to share
an amazing conversation I had with Caitlin Bristow on her
podcast Off the Vine about what does it mean to love?
We go into this topic deeply, as well as how
to attract the right person, how to put a stop
to unhealthy relationship patterns and toxic traits and triggers in
(00:22):
our relationships, and define what it actually means to be
in love for ourselves. I love this conversation. I feel
like we went super deep and I can't wait to
share this with you. Hey everyone, I'm so excited because
we're going to be adding a really special offering onto
(00:43):
the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily
Jay is a daily series on Calm and It's meant
to inspire you while outlining tools and techniques to live
a more mindful, stress free life. We dive into a
range of topics and the best part is each episode
is only seven minutes long, so you can incorporate it
into your schedule no matter how busy you are. As
(01:05):
a dedicated part of the on Purpose community, I wanted
to do something special for you this year, so I'll
be playing a hand picked Daily Jay during each of
my Friday podcasts. This week, we're talking about your relationships
and how to create the most meaningful connections with the
people that matter to you. Of course, if you want
to listen to The Daily Jay every day, you can
(01:27):
go subscribe to Calm. So go to Calm dot com
forward slash j for forty percent off your membership. Today,
I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
We have a couple of meet all friends.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Do you know Penny Tho, Yes, of course, yeah, yeah,
of course I do. Yeah, so Penny.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
I used to live with Penny in Vancouver no way, Yes,
like seventeen years ago and her sister. I was in
her sister's wedding party. I was just with Penny in
New York.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That's amazing, Yeah, because she was.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Saying that you were just at one of the.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Races yeah Austin, Yeah, Austin.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yeah, absolutely, those so fun, those races.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
But she's so phenomenally talented as well. She's she's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
She That's where I've literally gotten all my life advice
and business from her and amazing.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Now you and I have your book right here, I'm
talking to you about it. That's eight Rules of Love
I'm so excited because I'd love like a book that
you can also take action with, which is so incredible,
And after reading this book, I'm curious your thoughts on
Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
That's that's a great question to start, and no one's
asked me that yet. I think that a lot of
these days across the calendar are invented as great ways
to present love and perform love. But to me, I
think sometimes they create a belief that we have to
(02:51):
wait for that day to show love, or we show
love emphatically on that day, but then we forget the
rest of the days. And so I see them as
a wonderful room. I see them as a great way
of recognizing and celebrating something so special. But at the
same time, I think it puts so much pressure on people.
I think it makes people do things they would never
(03:11):
do for someone. I think people feel pressured to be
someone they're not or do something that doesn't feel right
or likely for them to do. And so I think
we all have to make of it what we want
to make of it ourselves and not feel like we
have to buy into the society's definition of what Valentine's
Day should be. Or what the movies say you should
do on Valentine's Day, And so I think sometimes it
(03:33):
plays into that Hollywood romance of what love is meant
to be, and it takes us away from what love
actually is.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
It's so true. Our perception is so skewed sometimes of
what love and what we think love is. And I mean,
whether that's social media or the movies, it's happened for
so long. I can think of all the Disney movies
or all the wrong coms I saw growing up, and
then you have this perception of what love is supposed
to be. But then you your parents love, and then
that's a different kind of love. And then you see
(04:04):
the love that you have and you're like, why does
this not feel like the magic that they show in
the movies. So you said that nobody really sits down
and teaches us how to love. The question that I
had is, I'm like, how would someone even do that?
Because we all feel loved so differently. Do you think
this is something we should be teaching as parents.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
No, that's a great question. I don't think that we
can teach it like how we learned in school. But
I think there needs to be an element of what
to look out for, what to understand. I think it's
a beautiful thing for anyone to try and teach and learn.
I think a lot of the time we teach people
what to think about love and not how to think
about love. And so you wouldn't say love is xyz
(04:46):
and that's what it looks like and that's what you
should be looking for. I think that's unhealthy because it
can mean different things to different people, as you rightly said.
But I think we should encourage people to say, well,
this is how love could make you feel, or this
this is what love could look like, and this is
what healthy love looks like, and this is what toxic
relationships look like. I think having some wisdom and insight
(05:09):
around healthy and unhealthy relationships probably is going to set
you up better than a random conversation about love with
so many different people in your family, as you were
rightly saying, right you look at your parents' relationship, you
see the relationship your friends have, you watch the movies
and TV shows, and then you kind of make your
own version up. But none of that is based on
(05:31):
cues that are healthy or insightful or thoughtful. And so
as much as I don't think we need like a
course on love. I do think we need a course
on emotions and how to understand your own emotions, how
to understand other people's emotions. And so I find that
love may be too big for that. But emotions and
(05:52):
emotional regulation and emotional awareness, these are skills and tools
that would actually help you have better relationships. And that's
why in the book, even though it's the Eight Rules
of Love, the eight rules are about communication. They're about
debate and fighting, they're about connecting. They're about the things
you can control.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Yeah, that's true. I guess that's a good point of
talking about the things you can control. Where do you
think the culture around love, with the fairy tale endings
and the perfect match come from. Do you think that
does stem from like movies in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
I think it comes from a few places. I think
there's a deep part of us that wants to believe
and wants to yearn for this perfect love. And I
think that that's true and fair and good. I think
the challenge is that the image that's been created of
perfect love is what's unhealthy. So it's not the idea
(06:46):
of perfect love that's unhealthy. It's the idea of a
perfect love in this way that sends us on the
wrong path. I think that when you look at movies,
we all know that they show you everything up until
people move in together, or if they show you people
moving in together, they fight and then make up over
something fairly superficial. Or you look at couples who do
(07:08):
the same things on the date night in the movies,
or the anniversary parties and the events. And so I
do feel that media has played a massive role even today.
And I give this story in the book of my
own proposal, and when I proposed to my wife, I
did it. I mean, I'll cut the long story short.
Everyone can read the book for the full version. But
in the book I talk about how I did the
(07:31):
full a cappella song, singing Bruno Mars, will you marry Me?
I did, obviously, I got down on one knee. I
had a horse drawne carriage through London. And it's like
I got all those ideas from social media. I did
not get them from my wife. I did not get
them from my heart. I did not get them from
what I thought was love. I got them from social
(07:52):
media and TV. And so I think a lot of
the ideas we have do come from media, and I
think there has to be a filtering process to say,
wait a minute, is this what my partner wants? Is
this what I want? Is this what love looks like
to the person I love? Or is it just something
that I've adopted because I watched the show or a movie.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
That's why your book is going to be so incredible
for so many people. And I love that it's written
for all stages of love. So whether you're looking for
the right person or you found the right person and
you want to keep them. But love is really confusing,
and I'm sure it is because of you know, all
the things we see or we compare, we don't know.
But how do you know when it is the right person?
(08:34):
Do you really believe that there is that feeling where
you're like when you know you know, or like, how
do you do it's the right person? Because we all
seem to want to, you know, if there's a fight
or an argument, or they don't treat you right, and
you're like, I could easily give up, So how do
you know it's the right person?
Speaker 1 (08:49):
Yeah? I feel that the idea that you know when
you know, that's beautiful. If you've experienced that, and I
love that for you, But that can't be our best
advice on love because what that says to someone is
you might have to meet eight billion people to decide
whether you've met the one, Because what if you don't
know after twenty thirty two hundred, three hundred people that
(09:12):
you've dated or met. And so the way I like
to look at it is I break it down into
three simple things. You know you're in love when these
three things happen. You like their personality and they like yours.
You respect their values and they respect yours. And you're
committed to helping them towards their goals, and they're committed
(09:33):
to you helping you towards your goals. And I find
that that really simplifies it. I had someone the other
day who told me that they were about to get married,
and they said, Jay, what's your best advice? And I
asked them these questions. I said, do you know what
their values are? Tell me your partner's top three values
right now? And they said some really broad things like
kind and family, And I was like, okay, but what
(09:57):
do they really value inside of their family? And they
were struggling, and then I said, what are your partner's
top three goals over the next top three in the
next three years, And they didn't know. And I started
to realize that it's not about whether you know they're
the one. It's actually more about how much you know
about them. And I think that's what we need to
(10:17):
understand more, like, do you know how they respond to stress?
Do you know how they respond to fatigue? Do you
know when they're happy? Do you understand how they deal
with sadness and disappointment? If you know all those things
and you can still appreciate respect and love someone that's
love love. Isn't this idea of I just feel great
(10:39):
around them, but I actually don't know much about them.
Because that can feel good for six months to twelve months,
but when you start looking at a long term relationship,
that's what lets you down.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, because a lot of people, and I'll get to this,
a lot of people feel like they just don't want
to be alone. Feeling lonely is worse than you know,
being in a relationship. And you can get through it
after you know, six months, Oh it's fine, it's fine,
And then a year happens and you're like, oh wait,
I can't deal with this, but at the time you're like,
that's better than being lonely. You point out that will
(11:11):
I Ever Find Love is the most popular search engine
question that people ask. Why do you think that is?
Why are we so worried about being alone and finding somebody?
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah? Yeah, So if you google will I ever, Google
says the rest of the sentences find love, And if
you say will I ever, it will say get married.
So that's in the top three or top five as well.
And then the next one is will I am net worth?
Because people seem to be really fascinated by will I
AM's net worth? And his networth is seventy million according
(11:45):
to Google for anyone who's anyone who's googling it right now.
But going back to the topic and everyone can check
there will I ever? Afterwards. I think it's something that
scares us about the future. I think we're scared of
being alone now, but we're more scared of being alone
in the future. That's why the question is will I
ever Find love? Because I think we're scared about the
(12:08):
idea of growing old alone, of going through life alone,
of seeing everyone in our life with someone else, but
us not having that other person, and those are all
very valid emotions and very valid fears. But I think
at the same time we have to realize that when
you're feeling alone, when you're fearing being by yourself, you
(12:30):
don't make good decisions. Research shows that if you get
into a relationship because you feel alone, you're more likely
to settle for less than you deserve, You're more likely
to be dependent on that person, and you're less likely
going to be able to break up even if it's
not working out. And so when you get into a
(12:50):
relationship because you're scared of being alone, you actually choose
someone who's not even what you want from a relationship.
But you feel safer in a false way, and you
feel secure in a false way, and you know that
deep down, which scares you even more, and so your
fear actually becomes worse. But again, you know, Kate. Then
(13:11):
it comes from the idea that when we were young,
if you had lunch on your own, you were considered
the weirdo. If you went to exactly exactly exactly from
Super Bad.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
Right, Yeah, I love that you brought.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Us exactly exactly. And if you had a birthday party
and no one showed up, or a few people showed up,
you were the loner. Hey. By the way, when you're
thirty years old and over, if you get five of
your best friends to show up, you're really happy about that.
You take pride in that. And then you know, when
you went to a wedding as a plus and you
didn't have a plus one, people would be like, oh,
(13:49):
poor you, like sad for you. So we've kind of
made it feel awkward to be alone, and so now
we carry that. But we'd rather be with anyone than
be alone. And that's the challenge.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Yeah, how can being alone actually help you attract the
right person?
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So I think we all start alone, and that's part
of the puzzle that you know, we start alone, and
being alone in and of itself will not help you
attract the right person. Like just being single or just
being alone doesn't do the work. But I think your
question is what can you do when you're alone to
attract the right person. I think the first thing is
(14:28):
you need to do something hard and challenging by yourself.
You could take on a new workout class, you could
take on a new health habit, you could take on
I mean, what you're going off to do. You're going
off to do an incredible retreat over the next few days,
you're taking on something challenging. When you take on something
challenging when you're alone, or when you're single, or when
(14:51):
you're by yourself, you gain the strength and courage to
understand what you have inside of you. Now, when you
get into a relationship, you realize you're bringing so much
to the table. You realize that I'm a confident, complete,
whole individual. You stop thinking like, oh, I hope I
find my better half or I hope I find someone
(15:11):
that completes me, and you start recognizing, well, actually, I
have a lot to offer someone because I can do
hard things by myself. I have done challenging things by myself,
and so that would be the first thing I'd say
when you're alone. The second thing I'd say is you
actually at time to understand and learn about yourself. I
think when you don't do that alone, you just sign
(15:34):
up and subscribe to what everyone else likes. If your
partner likes a certain type of food, now you like it.
If they like a certain type of entertainment, you like it.
And then ten twenty years down the line, you realize
you've lost who you are because you just followed what
they wanted to do. And I think a lot of
people end up feeling like they lost themselves, but the
truth is they never found themselves in the first place.
(15:56):
So when you find yourself in solitude, you don't lose
yourself in a relationship.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
That is such a good point. People are probably like, Caitlyn,
shut up about your ex relationship that we've heard about
thirty million times, But I always related back to certain
things where I completely lost myself in this relationship. But
when you say that, it's not even that you lost yourself,
it's you didn't find yourself in the first place. That
is so true. I completely found myself, you know, close
to the age of thirty, and I was in all
(16:23):
these relationships losing myself quote unquote to all these people
when really I just hadn't found out who I really
truly was. And I'm still figuring that out. But it's
it's just it's such an fascinating topic, and I wanted
to ask you the difference between loneliness and solitude for
those listening.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah, So, I love this beautiful statement from Paul Tillich
where he talks about the fact that the English language
has two words for being alone, but we only use
one of them. We only use loneliness. And loneliness is
the weakness of being alone, but solitude is the strength
or as he he says, the glory of being alone.
(17:02):
And it's really interesting that in our language we always
say I'm alone, I'm single. We don't say I'm in solitude, right,
we don't actually use that word because we see it
as a weakness. And if you see being alone as
a weakness and you see a relationship as a strength,
that means you're weak by yourself and you're only strong
with this person. Now, if you're only strong with this person,
when that person leaves or something goes wrong or there's
(17:26):
a challenge, you go back to feeling weak again. And
so your strength can't be found only in a relationship.
Your strength is found by yourself, through yourself, and when
you're strong, when you're powerful, when you're courageous, then when
you get into a relationship you can build more strength together. Right.
If you've got a broken home and you only find
(17:46):
a complete home with someone else, you feel broken continuously.
And that's when we have these ideas of like, oh
they're out of my league, I'm not good enough for them,
or maybe I've got to do something to impress them
because you walked into the relationship feeling that they were
better than you, because they made you whole. And so
(18:06):
that never stops, like that continues even in the relationship
of I have to earn their respect, or I have
to impress them, or I have to keep them excited
and interested. And if that's done from a place of love,
that's beautiful. But if it's done from a place of
fear and insecurity, and that's the thing. Sometimes love and
fear can look like the same thing. You're trying to
(18:28):
make someone happy, you're trying to make someone feel good,
you're trying to help someone, But are you doing it
from a place of fear and insecurity because they might leave,
or are you doing it from a place of you
deeply respect and admire this person? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Wow, God, I wish I could have you for like
eight hours on this podcast. It's just so good. I mean,
this is just such It's like it probably feels very
simple to you, but it's so profound to me.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
And no it doesn't. You're You're inspiring, Kaitlyn. I have
to tell you, like you've asked me some questions, then
it must me your energy because I've said things to
you today that have not said before. And yeah, and
whenever I do that, and I'm very aware of that
because A I try to be fully present and energetically
(19:15):
present whenever I'm doing anything, and often I find when
you're talking about a book or your you're meeting and
doing lots of podcasts or interviews or whatever it may be,
I try really hard to not repeat myself, but I
find that when the host, especially today, I'm feeling that
with you, I feel you're so present and these are
such real questions that I feel I'm being inspired energetically
(19:37):
to give answers that I've not given before. So i
just want to say share that because I'm honestly everything
that is coming out of my mouth, I'm like, I'm
going to tell my team, I'm like, guys, we need
to write that down because I haven't said that before.
So I really appreciate. Yeah, you're you're inspiring that, and
I want you to know that's that's your energy as
a host.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Wow, that is the most flattering thing anyone's ever said
to me. But it's it's, you know, funny, as I've
this is such a great job of mine to interview
people that inspire me. And I went to my energy
healer this morning and he even told me the same thing.
He was like, I'm really impressed by your energy and
I was like what. So then hearing you say it today,
I'm like, Okay, I feel like I'm on the right path.
(20:15):
I'm going to Hoffman tomorrow. Everything was lining up. This
is this is so great. So thank you for sharing
that with me also, because that's extremely flattering.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
No, well, I'm going to add also that I can
vouch for it for all your audience because you won't
tell them this. So I was extremely late today for
this interview because I was running late from other interviews
and my team was in touch with Kaitlin and I
was dming her as well, frantically going, Kaitlyn, I'm really sorry.
And I turned up today and Kaitlyn and her team
received me as if I turned up early, like that's
(20:44):
how much love I felt and how much kindness I felt.
And I was like, this is a human who's like
living in that space, so she wouldn't have told you that.
That's why I'm telling you all of that. And Kaitlyn,
I really appreciate that too, so thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Oh my gosh, that's amazing. I won't too much more
of your time. I do have some more questions please.
People are so excited by the way that you're on
this podcast today. I got so many DMS when I
said that I was talking to you, so.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Ask everything, ask away. I want to make sure I
answer all your questions.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
I'm going to and you know what, I have been
going through your book and I can't wait because I
have such a long flight tomorrow. And I mean, it's
just incredible. You're the way you speak, the way you
write everything. I mean, some people are born with it, maybe,
but you have obviously gone through phases in your life
or things in your life that have gotten you to
where you are today. And I know you what were
you three years? Three years as a monk?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yes, that's right, three years.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Yes, well, I can't even like to me, I mean,
I did Bachelor. This is obviously not the same I'm
saying I did Bachelor. I did not have a phone,
is what I'm getting at. I didn't have a phone
or TV or anything. And I was like, I'm so isolated.
And then for Hoffmann, I'm actually excited to be alone,
not have a phone, get uncomfortable, and and I just
(21:56):
feel like I can't even imagine how three years you
probably at first maybe it was uncomfortable, and then did
you just surrender to the process or did you fall
in love with the silence? How was that for you?
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah? Well, I think I went into it with the
mindset you're going into Huffman, which was I'm going to
apply myself fully to this process. I'm really excited about it,
and I'm going to follow it the way it's being taught,
because then I'll actually get the reward. Yeah. Right, If
I start cutting corners or if I start trying to
make it more comfortable, then I'm not getting anything. Now.
(22:33):
The first month, my mind was going crazy because when
you go silent externally, your internal dialogue eats you alive,
and so your mind is just frantic. It's stressed, it's
putting pressure on you, it's asking questions, it's demanding things
of you. And you find that as you tolerate that
(22:54):
and as you listen to that, it gets quieter. But
then what ends up happening is you start asking deeper questions,
and more thoughtful questions come up, and you start going
through some uncomfortable uncoverings and revelations where you're looking at
dark sides or mistakes or regrets and you start excavating
(23:15):
and that's tough, but it's glorious on the other side.
And then the third thing that happened after all of
that was a sense of comfort in discomfort, that the
idea that doing uncomfortable things became more natural. And I
realized that this applies to anything, whether you're going to
go and sit in a cold plunge, whether you're going
to meditate, whether you're going to huffman, whether you go
(23:37):
off and become a monk. The point is that we
have to get comfortable with uncomfortable situations because life is
full of uncertainty and discomfort. And so I think that's
really what I would say made all the difference. That
it's not that I found it easy. It's not that
it was natural for me. It's not that I'm this
(23:59):
special human being could make this. That was not it
was easy, it was naturally it was. It was tough.
It's difficult. It's still tough today. I don't think it
ever stopped, but I think you get more conscious and
more skilled at being able to take on the challenge.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Let's talk about discomfort for a minute. How do we
know when to break up from a tough relationship or
push through to make it special? Because I guess I
want to know, like, is fighting and arguing bad and
when do we know that that's when we should leave
or if it's like, well, we committed to each other
and we need to get through this, and that's what
(24:33):
makes a relationship special.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
Yeah, I think there's a difference between we need to
get through this and we want to get through this.
So our relationship that lasts is that there's enthusiasm and
energy to say, look, it's a tough time, but we're
both going to figure it out. Right, We're both going
to grow, we're both going to change, we're both going
to learn, and there's this collective thing. And what I
find in relationships that often end or when one person
(24:58):
wants to work on the relationationship and the other person doesn't.
So it's never when both people are excited and enthused
and focused on building the relationship. I think another thing
I'd like to say is that when it comes to
arguments and fighting, if it's manipulative, toxic, abusive, emotionally manipulative.
(25:19):
That's not the kind of fighting or discussion or debate
that I encourage in the book. What I'm talking about
is that every couple argues to some degree, but knowing
how to argue better is a really healthy skill, and
some agreements are really good. Like so, for example, my
wife and I have some agreements. One is that we'll
never raise our voice at each other. We can be
(25:41):
angry and upset, but that doesn't mean we need to shout.
We can express it, but it doesn't need to be
really really loud. Second thing is we don't swear at
each other. We don't want to use that language with
each other. The third thing is we don't throw around
the word divorce or I'm going to leave you or
break up. It's not something that you get to you
every time things get tough or there's something challenging. And
(26:04):
so these are just some basic agreements. But I think
having healthy agreements of how do we deal with conflict,
how do we deal with when one of us is
going through a really tough time personally, I think having
those boundaries and agreements and rules is a really healthy
way to form a relationship and ultimately a relationship that's
(26:24):
going to last is because you both are willing to
put in the work. That's what it comes down to.
And if there's only one of you willing to put
in the work, that's you dragging the relationship forward. And
that's a decision you have to make personally whether you
want to be that person. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I feel like sometimes when we do that, we're all
just you know, if we cross a boundary or we
let the boundary go, and then it's like, how do
you come back from that? How do we how do
we stop ourselves from making the same mistakes over and
over again, which a lot of people do in relationships.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
I think the way you drop yourself from making mistakes
over and over again is you journal and write down
how you feel in the moment. See. The challenging thing
is that we forget when things get good, and we
remember when things go bad, and so your memory only
kicks in when everything's going wrong and you're like, oh
(27:19):
my gosh, I should have seen those three red flags.
But then when things got good, you went, oh, no,
they've changed. Everything's okay now. And that's why I always
say to people, make a mental and physical record, a
journal of exactly how you feel. When things are bad
and exactly how you feel when things are good, and
when you keep that record, now when it happens again,
(27:40):
you're like, oh, wait a minute, let me not be
fooled by the momentary happiness and joy, because really, what
I'm experiencing is this, And I think what we do
is we kind of have this yo yo pendulum oscillating
effect of like the good times are really good, but
the bad times are really bad. And I think that
that's the unhealthy part. That you don't want to swing
(28:01):
back and forth. It's actually better to be like, hey,
we have some tough terms that we deal with them,
and we have some great terms and they're awesome, but
you just don't want that to get so wide and
so extreme that you're literally swinging from one side to
the other.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Right, And we'll talk about arguments for a minute. I
know you say that people have different fight styles the vendor,
the hyder, the exploder, and none of them are technically bad,
But at what point do you think you should be
concerned about the way you're fighting with your partner? Like
maybe not the word fighting, but arguing is healthy. Like
at what point, again, you'd probably saying, like if it's manipulative,
(28:38):
that's probably yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
So I would say that two people in any relationship
are going to have challenges and problems, and you're going
to have to have uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes we avoid fights
by suppressing how we really feel, and so we say
to everyone we never fight, we never argue, and we
wear that as like an achieved like a badge of honor,
(29:01):
but really inside it's burning us because we're not talking
about what we really want to talk about. But on
the flip side, I'd say that if arguments are constantly
happening where both people are pointing the finger at the
other person, and both people are not willing to look
at their involvement and their responsibility in what's going on,
(29:26):
that's when you can't go further right. It requires that
ownership and responsibility where both people look back and say,
I know what I'm getting wrong. You know what you're
getting wrong. Okay, let's get this right, rather than no, no, no,
it's all about you. You're doing everything wrong, and then
you're like, no, you're doing everything wrong. And if it's
constantly a battle of you're the mistake, you're the problem,
(29:48):
You're the issue, that can get very exhausting, very very quickly.
And the challenge is, most of the time relationships don't
end because there's a big issue. They end because keep
arguing about little things. Right, we get exhausted from arguing
about the tiniest things. It doesn't have to be like
someone cheated, or it doesn't have to be like someone
(30:10):
stole money, or it doesn't have to be something as
extreme as that. Sometimes it's literally you keep arguing about
tiny things and you're exhausted, and now you have no
energy for love.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Well, I like that you say the journaling part. Historically
I have been the exploder in a relationship and journaling
and writing down I'll never forget what a therapist told
me one time. I said, sometimes it just comes out
and it's stronger than me, and these mean things come out,
And she goes, why don't you just try once writing
(30:42):
down just awful things that come into your head, of
what you would say to your partner, and then fold
it into a piece of paper and then put it
on the counter and say this is how it's feeling,
and it's not very nice, but if you'd like to
read it, you're more than welcome. And they're probably not
going to want to read it, and then you're probably
not going to even want to put it on the counter,
but because you'll realize by the time you wrote it
down that it's not something you should have said in
(31:04):
the first place. And I did that one time and
it really shifted my perspective and something in my brain
for that, and I was like, oh my gosh, Okay.
So then I have a question. So, if you are
one to avoid conflicts, or you are hiding it or
pushing it down out of fear, what should you do
to avoid.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
That avoid suppressing it? You mean, yes, So I think
there's a difference between expressing anger and pain and explaining
anger and pain. And so I think people think that
the opposite of expressing is suppressing. And you're not trying
to get to the opposite of expressing, You're trying to
(31:43):
explain how you feel. I'll show you the difference. Expressing
is you're an idiot, I hate you, You're ruining my life. Right.
That's expressing. You're just literally throwing it at someone. Explaining
is saying when you talk to me like this, this
is what I feel, this is what I experience when
we deal with our issues in this way. It makes
(32:07):
me feel upset, inadequate, whatever it may be. You're explaining
how you feel, and now you've shifted the energy because
now you can actually have a conversation about what you're
talking about, rather than someone just having to catch your
emotions and catch your energy. And so to me, explaining anger,
not expressing it allows you to actually not suppress it
(32:30):
because if you just go, Okay, I've got to deal
with this all in my head, I'm not going to
say anything to them that's unhealthy because that's just going
to keep burning inside of you. So what I recommend
is taking out time, taking a moment, and actually even
more than all of that, prepare before you end up
in that position. You know you're going to say something
(32:50):
you don't mean. You know you're going to say something
hurtful and potentially damaging. Set yourself up before and say,
when I'm about to hit that zone, explain how I feel.
Don't just express it.
Speaker 2 (33:04):
Why do you think that's so hard for people to do?
It's when you say it and I hear you say it.
Why is it so hard for people to execute that?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Doing that because we haven't practiced, We've never practiced it.
All we've ever done, is let whatever we think come
straight out of our mouth. And maybe we didn't even
think about it. We felt it and we said it,
and so it's just because we haven't practiced it. And
so it's not something that you should know how to do.
It's not something that you must know how to do.
(33:32):
It's something we have to train ourselves into a habit
of doing it. Right. So if every time you're in
that moment, in that heated moment, you have to learn
to cool down, whether it's through prompts physically, you know
it's present. Like for example, like one of the things
that I often say to people is if you're about
to say something, you mean, hold their hands. Right, if
(33:53):
you're holding someone's hands, you're like less likely about to
say something hurtful and harmful because you think you can
say something harmful because you feel distant from them. But
if you feel a bit closer to them, you're going
to say it in a much more conscious, intentional way.
Another thing I'd add is usually when we argue it's
not schedule, And what I mean by that is, if
(34:14):
you have to have a difficult or uncomfortable conversation, don't
just have it when someone walks through the door, or
when someone's about to go through a really important interview.
Have it when you say, by the way, I really
need to talk to you about this, can we schedule time?
And I think that's what's so important, is that you're
not just having arguments because you're uncontrolled. You're actually setting
(34:34):
yourself up a success by saying, can we talk about
this when you're less stressed. I'm less stressed. Let's find
the right time to have this uncomfortable conversation. The third
thing I'm going to say is often when we fight
with people, we sit opposite them or stand opposite them,
and a lot of research shows that when you're sitting
on the same side, you actually feel like you're on
(34:55):
the same team. And that's why a lot of leaders
inside companies, when they have to give feedback or have
tough conversations, they walk with people because now you're walking
in the same direction and that's psychologically impacting you. Rather
than sitting across the table from each other against each other,
you're walking in the same direction with each other.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
I love that. That's actually really incredible advice for me
to take away. And also I feel like that's why
people find therapy so beneficial. It almost is a scheduled
time to talk about feelings that have built up. You
don't immediately say it when they walk through the door.
You go, oh, I'm going to save this for therapy.
We could talk about it with a professional and then
(35:36):
by that time you're able to deliver it. So I
love all that advice. That's incredible, and I wanted to
turn the beat around here for a minute and talk
about people in happy, healthy relationships I believe, such as yourself.
How can we keep that spark alive in the relationship
and grow with our partner instead of growing apart.
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, I think the way I talk about in the
book Four Levels of Intimacy and what I've read when
I was sitting with couples, and it's not surprising or
when I was looking at the research, the number one
activity couples do together is watch television. Now, I'm not
against TV. I'm not against watching TV together. I watch
TV and movies with my wife all the time. But
(36:15):
the problem is when that's the only thing you do together,
which means seven to fourteen hours a week, I spent
both of you not connecting, not sharing an experience, not
directing your energy towards each other, but at the screen.
And so that's one form of connection, but it's quite
a low form. Higher than that is experiences and experiments.
(36:37):
What I mean by that is do new things together.
If you only ever see your partner do the same things.
They do their job, they wash the dishes, they do
the laundry. You see your partner do the same daily tasks,
it's hard to learn something new about them. Whereas if
you go to a painting class, a pottery class, maybe
you go for a walk in a place you've never
(36:58):
been to before, you take a weekend break that you've
never visited before. When you do new things together, you
learn new things about each other. That's what keeps the
spark alive. I find that we want to find the spark.
But we felt the spark because it was new. But
now all we do is old things together. Right, We
don't do anything new together, and so how can there
be a spark. A higher level than that is to
(37:22):
learn together, grow together. You may not like listening to
the same podcast or reading the same books, but if
you're both doing your own learning, I promise you you'll
have more to share with each other and more to
learn about each other. I think that we've lost curiosity, Caitlin.
I think we feel we know everything about our partners.
I would honestly say to you, I've been with my
wife for ten years, and I learned something new about
(37:45):
her all the time, like it's ever fresh. And it's
not that because I'm amazing at spotting new things. It's
because we constantly do new, exciting and thralling things. And
the key to that is do things where neither view
at the expert. Do things where it's not either of
your passions. Do truly new things to discover new things
(38:07):
about each other.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
I'm going to take that and run with it because
I feel like Jason and I get caught up in
this cycle of talking business because we both are super
driven and motivated, and we are so passionate about what
we do that at the end of the night, we're
not doing something like you said, like that isn't that
you're not the best at We're not taking that time
(38:29):
to We literally are like we're tired, Let's throw on
a show or let's talk about business, because that's something
we both enjoy talking about. So I really appreciate that
feedback because I think that's really helpful. And lastly, you
talk about balancing work, love and life without losing yourself.
How do you continue to give love to your partner yourself.
Some people have kids and your bucket might feel a
(38:51):
little bit empty while you still have so much going on, Like,
how do you figure out how to keep everybody's buckets
a little full?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
I think is that we try and balance everything perfectly
all the time. And you know, Arianna Huffington once said,
you can have it all, just not all at the
same time. And I love that idea because there are
different phases and stages to life. That's why when you're single,
you're meant to fill yourself up so that when you
get into a relationship you can fill each other up.
(39:21):
And then when you have kids, you fill the kids up,
and then you refill yourselves again. And so the way
I break it down is there's a different priority at
different stages. That doesn't mean you're not filling yourself up
and filling other people up at the same time, but
you recognize that in this season, I need to focus
more on the kids. In this season, I need to
(39:42):
focus more on myself. And the only way you do
it is by not putting pressure on yourself to do
it all. You give yourself brace, you allow yourself to
make mistakes, You recognize you're a flawed, normal, fallible human
who doesn't get everything right all the time, and that
you try your best. As simple as that sounds, I
find that people know when you're trying your best. People
(40:06):
know when you're consciously thinking of them. To be honest,
sometimes I'll say to my wife, Hey, I know you've
been struggling with this. How can I help you? And
her response is, actually, I've got it covered, but I'm
just thankfully thought of. Half the time, our partners just
want to feel seen, heard and understood. They don't need
you to do anything drastic. They don't need you to
(40:28):
take them on the vacation or take them on the
date night. They just want to feel seen, heard and understood.
And when they don't feel seen, heard and understood, that's
when they want the vacation, and that's when they want
the anniversary party, and that's when they want the birthday party,
because those are all ways of patching up all of
the other issues that they feel.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah, so true. I mean everybody say I'm like, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I'm glad. It's resonating. I really hope it resonates with
your amazing audience and your community, because I'm just trying
to speak in real terms and try and speak as
true fully and openly as I can.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
No it will. I mean, you can think about that
book is there's some parts I definitely disagree with, but
the women men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Like,
it's just it's gone back so many years where it's
people are wired a certain way and it's just not
the same as it was. However long ago that was,
you know what I mean. So it's it's we're all
trying to evolve and grow and change and stay with
(41:24):
the times, and I feel like everything right now is
it's not the same as it was in the cavemen
days where men are from Mars and women are from Venus.
It's still maybe a little bit wired that way, but
we have to grow as.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
We have to so, and our lives have changed, right, Work,
work schedules have changed, work responsibilities have changed, so we
can't keep applying that advice to these modern lives that
we live.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
Yeah, I completely agree. I just I am so grateful
for you and I loved having you on my podcast,
and I know you are just so busy, and I
just can't tell you how grateful I am that you
spent some time with today. And I just know how
much this will mean, how much of it into me personally,
and how much it will mean to my listeners as well.
And I want to like shout this book from the
(42:07):
rooftops and have everybody get it because I love the
dits for everybody, and I love what you say and
you've helped me more than you know. So thank you,
thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
Well, Kaitlyn. I want to say thank you to you.
I also want to say thank you to everyone who's
been listening and watching and everyone who orders the book.
Thank you so much. It means the world to me.
I poured my heart into this book for two years
and so I deeply value anyone who takes a moment
to read it. And I also want to send you
away with a little intention, a little meditation, just to
thank you, just to wish you well on this journey
(42:40):
you're off too, for the next six days, and I
really hope that it's a transformative, deeply moving and impactful
process for you. And I hope that when you come
out of it, you have new lessons, new wisdom, new
insight that you're able to line your life and share love,
(43:02):
share joy, and share your spirit with everyone in your life.
So I just wanted to put that intention out there
for you and sending you so much love and positive
energy through this journey.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
Thank you so much. I know you're going on a
whole live tour when I get back, so I'm sure
we will cross paths, and even if it's DMS, because
I want to.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
I hope you will come and see me. Well, yeah,
I hope you will come and see the show. That'd
be awesome.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
I would love to. Is there a place where people
can find your book, the dates you're going on to tour,
everywhere that everyone can find you.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
Yeah, the book can be ordered from eight Rules of
Love dot com, same as the title Eight Rules of
Love dot com, and the tour is at Jshetty tour
dot com and all the dates there, whether you're in
the US or international, And so Jshetty tour dot com.
Speaker 2 (43:51):
Good luck with your full tour.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Er so much.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
You're just helping so many people and opening people's eyes
and minds, and it's it's really incredible, and I just again,
thank you for that, and thank you for chatting with
me today, Caitlin.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
It was so fun talking to you and we will
keep in touch. And again, thank you so much. I'm
so grateful and all the best. I have a great
six days. Thank you so much for listening to on Purpose.
It means the world to me. I am so excited
to be sharing these episodes with you. I am pumped
and I cannot wait for the next one. We're often
(44:28):
told that we've got to focus on ourselves and that
we can't look to others to make us happy. While
that's in many ways true, there is a path to
contentment that involves others without relying on them. Don't worry,
I'll explain. The next seven minutes are about happiness and
how you can find yours by helping others find theirs.
(44:52):
I'm Jay Sheddy. Welcome to the Daily Jay. Now, I'd
like to pause here as always and get entered with
three conscious breaths, deep breath in and a slow breath out,
(45:12):
connecting with your body and releasing tension, connecting with your
mind and tapping in. There's a brilliant story about a
teacher who hands each of her students a balloon and
(45:36):
has them write their name on it with a marker.
The teacher holds up a timer and tells the students,
on the account of three, I'm going to have you all
throw your balloons up in the air, and you'll have
two minutes to find the one with your name. The
teacher counts to three, and the students are off racing
(45:57):
around the room. They're tripping over one another, wildly batting
the balloons in their frantic search. It's mayhem. At the
end of the two minutes, the teacher instructs everyone to freeze.
She asks who found their balloon. Only a few hands
go up. Okay, The teacher says, we're going to do
(46:18):
it again, but now I want you to pick up
whichever balloon is closest to you and return it to
its owner. This time, as the clock runs out, everyone
has their balloon back and something else is different too.
Instead of looking harried and stressed, the students are smiling
(46:38):
and laughing. The teacher explains that happiness is like those balloons.
If we're only focused on our own happiness, we have
a worse chance of actually locating it. But if we
all share happiness wherever we can, we'll find our own
as well. Now, there's nothing wrong with looking for your
own happiness. That's normal, it's healthy, and after all, we
(47:02):
don't want to let others and what they do or
don't do, dictate the quality of our lives. But we
can become so fixated on our search for contentment that
we get anxious and stressed. We feel like trying to
find joy is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
In reality, happiness is all around us. It just might
(47:25):
not be ours. Sometimes it's better to simply pick up
someone else's balloon and hand it to them. The reality
is that we are inter dependent, and while we shouldn't
expect others to give us our balloons, we can trust
that at some point our goodwill might come back around.
(47:45):
We can also focus on the joy that giving joy
gives you. In the words of father Richard Raw, the
only way to hang on to joy is to share it.
So what does it look like to hand someone there happiness?
You've probably already done it without realizing. It can be
as easy as telling someone how much you appreciate them
(48:09):
or thanking them for a job well done. Simple gestures
like these don't just brighten a person's day, they also
generate shared joy. I know you know that it feels
good to make someone smile, and if you remain present
in that shared joy, it's a surefire way to boost
your own happiness too. When it comes down to it,
(48:31):
we do need to care for ourselves. But at the
same time, we're all in it together figuring out this
thing called life, and we should all hand out happiness
when we can. And now, as our time today winds down,
we can start to spread the love in our meditation.
(48:52):
So get comfortable wherever you are, relaxing your body, easing tension.
If you'd like, you can put one hand on your
stomach to feel the rise and fall of your breath,
(49:14):
the other hand on your chest to connect with your
source of love and kindness. See if you can access
any feelings of warmth, generosity, compassion, and let those feelings
(49:47):
flow out of you and into the world. You can
even bring to mind a loved one or a friend,
someone who could use a little support or a pick
(50:07):
me up, and send them your well wishes. May you
be happy. And now let's open this up. Think about
(50:32):
what you can do today to give someone else their balloon.
How a might to uplift you as well. Big picture,
can you consider other people's happiness alongside the search for
(50:54):
your own. I wish you a beautiful day full of
joy and light, and I can't wait to see you
tomorrow
Host
Jay Shetty
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