Sick of Feeling Bad About Being Single? Watch This [Video]

Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

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cause when we talk about single shaming shaming is a is an interesting word right there’s fear-mongering
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that has is its own thing that’s like someone taking your fear of being alone and amplifying
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it shaming suggests there’s something inherently
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wrong in what you’re doing [Music]
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now stephen we have a special guest today it’s normally you and me
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is so the guest isn’t me you are a guest and you are special but
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you’re not today’s special guest okay all right lay on me well we have audrey lestrade here with us
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who is not only one of the most empathetic
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emotionally intelligent human beings i’ve ever met
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i also proposed to her what yeah do you not you didn’t know this do
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you know oh audrey got it yeah yeah yeah i remember now do you not follow me on instagram uh
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drift in and out but i’ve seen a couple of posts right yeah well this one was a pretty important post when i when i said
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when i was announcing this right right yeah yeah so for everyone else remind me
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what it was about right well this audrey i proposed to her
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great thank you [Laughter] and we we have been meaning to do this for a
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while because this audrey is someone that is behind
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the scenes with us in the organization now and we brought on because
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her ability to craft amazing content and add to the conversation
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has been extraordinary and so what people don’t know is that when we’re planning podcasts and when we
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are planning videos audrey is a fundamental part of that process with me jameson and you stephen
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and we have been wanting to kind of involve her as a voice yeah
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even as a one-off but she gets nervous
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and she’s very humble and and sweet and kind of prefers to stay
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behind the scenes but we actually managed to rope her into this today didn’t we we did i don’t know how you did it i
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don’t know what you put in her coffee but she’s here with us today welcome audrey hi guys first of all you made it
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sound like you proposed to me and i you didn’t sort of specify whether i said yes or not
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well if you want to know whether she said yes follow me on instagram
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and go and go back a couple of weeks and you’ll see we thought this episode it would be
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really nice to have a female voice given the subject and
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the subject is the insecurity that so many of us can feel when
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we find ourselves single the judgment we can feel and even
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the shame that we can be made to feel by other people the term single shaming is one that
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you brought up stephen when we were preparing this episode and you have an article that you’re going to be
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bringing us today as a kind of launch pad for a conversation
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about how we can feel better and more at peace
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during the periods of our life where we are single all right let’s get to it steve you had
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an article that you wanted to talk about today in relation to the the theme of
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single shaming so can you kind of break down this article for us yeah this article by the bbc basically
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asked a question it said the number of singletons is increasing there are more and more people reporting every year
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many of them report being contented with being single as well so more people are choosing actively to not be partnered
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yet people still insist on telling them you’ll find a partner soon
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and the article says what’s with all the pity why is it seen that there’s some kind of
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pity party for people who are single and i almost look at it as the article kind
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of alludes to this but i look at it as the three s’s people either assume
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you’re selfish sad or striving you’re too self-centered for a
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relationship uh you must be really sad or there must be something wrong with you or striving you must be looking for
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a relationship right now surely you must really want one and i think it’s just interesting to
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bring to the table where are the unfair stereotypes is there a problem with us just seeing
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things as a stage of your life you have to evolve through in a linear fashion
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from single to marriage to something else to buying a house to doing whatever
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the way we see our lives or people see lives as a kind of marching through tick boxes and i think
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single is is given this weird status as one gets older as kind of
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don’t worry you’ll transition out of that soon into the next phase of your
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life do you you know i wonder
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to what extent that’s because people
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instinctively think or feel like being in a relationship
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is one of the kind of pinnacle experiences of life
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and if you believe either because societally
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you’ve been led to believe that or because just intrinsically you kind of think in my life any anytime i’ve
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had someone to share it with it’s been better than not having someone to share it with
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that the people that put pressure on other people to be in a relationship if we were being generous
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and weren’t just doing it from a place of judgment we’re doing it from a place of thinking objectively
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sharing your life with someone is a better state to operate in than not sharing your life
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with someone of course we know that there’s not you know there are other ways to share our lives with people with friends with
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family members etc but or even with casual partners or people that we don’t
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commit to long term but if i were kind of playing devil’s advocate on this i would say that
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the pressure comes from in the most generous interpretation
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people having decided that that sharing your life with someone is
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kind of an optimal state of play for a happy life what do we think about that
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i think that you can certainly say there’s forms of
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flourishing that take place in a relationship there’s challenges that are unique to being in a relationship there
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might be great you know everyone knows falling in love is a wonderful experience people have felt it they
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enjoyed it they went through that whole thing and so you know clearly we have some yearning for love
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and romantic love is a part of that and so of course of course lots of people
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strive to be in partnerships it’s a very human impulse and okay in the 21st century we have a more expansive view of
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what those partnerships might be or how they might be traditional or non-traditional but ultimately
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yes there’s something about people do like sharing themselves with someone i think
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which should be differentiated from falling in love right i think the partnership element falling in love is something people
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enjoy but the partnership element i would argue is the part
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that friends and family or people who put pressure on us are more worried we’re going to miss out on i think
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there’s maybe two archetypes if we’re to zoom out of people who put pressure so
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to speak on single people one of them is loved ones who care about
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your well-being and they want you to find love and be happy and be connected and i think
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a less generous archetype is people who put pressure subliminally because they
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actually have a little bit of judgment around it or they feel the level of superiority because they’re not
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single themselves and so i think that two
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worthwhile things to identify right because i think that pressure if it only came from a good place would
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not feel so aggressive to people who aren’t in relationships
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[Music] and so what you’re saying are you saying it
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that comes from a good and a bad place at different times well i just think that
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the way that being single is demonized in society is seen as a lesser state and a state that’s not
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desirable and you know poor single people who don’t necessarily get to experience life in
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all of the ways that people in relationships get to i think that stereotype is
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does come from a judgment it comes from i guess what i mean is that if you are
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single you feel judged you feel like people look down on you yeah not all the time but that’s probably fair to say
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especially if you’re a woman um there must be something wrong with you and you know why are you still single
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and all of those things that people just say to you all the time if you’re single past a certain age and i think
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those are very different from the concerned family member who just wants you to find love i think
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those kinds of rhetorics and those kinds of things that you hear from society
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they’re the things that kind of shame you so to speak and make you feel bad about it rather than just
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yeah a voice of concern i do i i don’t know though i i do feel like the
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thanksgiving table their grandma who’s well intentioned who’s just
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worried about you says the thing that kind of
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taps into your greatest insecurity even though she’s well intentioned
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perhaps and granny’s not just coming from a judgmental place but
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even her well-intentioned kind of wait but what’s going on you need to find someone
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still aggravates a part of us that
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is deeply worried about that if we’re if we’re nervous about something and someone brings it up
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it just brings to the forefront that fear for us but why are we deeply worried about it
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and i think that’s an interesting question right are we deeply worried about it because we are desperate to find someone to
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share our life with or because we are made to feel like a freak if we don’t have someone to share our life with by a
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certain point in our lives and the problem goes on there that if your inherent judgment is just
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because someone’s single there’s some problem then they get in a relationship well
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what’s the nature of that relationship is it good for them is it healthy have they just jumped into it and oh yeah
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we’re all happy for jennifer she’s in a relationship great well what if something happens and now jennifer’s not in a relationship in a
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decade in 10 years 20 years now what is she has she failed has is she now
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someone to be pitied but we all thought oh she’s made it and and so that’s where i think the narrative gets really
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screwed up in that life is long and it’s not a linear path and just because you’ve got a great job today and you’ve
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got a great husband or wife it doesn’t mean these states aren’t permanent and that’s
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why when we sort of ascribe a special status to them we’re kind of then saying well but if
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you lose it then what are you and there’s something i i do think
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there’s people who do just well intention think maybe you have the belief human beings are best in partnerships like if that’s
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your belief but but i think i think that as a catch-all
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is probably causes you know maybe the majority of people that works for there’s loads of people that doesn’t work for
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as loads of people where their circumstances change uh you have non-traditional situations or whatever
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or just life happens to you and then what society just tells you oh you suck now but you were doing great
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when you were married for 20 years but now you’re not i suppose there is a
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yes we have to make a distinction between what’s the pressure that i’m feeling that is coming from the outside
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that doesn’t actually relate to what i want it’s just me trying to
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now wear a badge that’s going to get other people off my back or make me feel like i fit in better to my family or to
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my friendship group or to society as a whole
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and the internal pressure we feel from a genuine fear
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of being on our own that’s a very real thing
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and you know i i i do feel like part of where when our
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family gets concerned about us or the people that just genuinely care about us without a
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gender there is a
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intuitive feeling of i feel like if this person i love
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doesn’t find someone it’s only going to get harder for them
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there’s a kind of view of everyone else everyone’s going to get paid off and you’re going to be the only person left at the dance
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there’s that thing and and the
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the ultimate fear i think not to be too morbid but the ultimately the thing they’re most
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fearing is and if you don’t find your person and it gets to a point where it’s too
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late to find anyone because everyone in this world in this landscape where everyone’s gotten paired off and there is no one available
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then you’ll be on your own later on in life and i think that that’s what so many people
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fear for themselves it’s like their worst fear is that they’ll be alone
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later in life even if they’re married now even if your mum or dad is married now
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even if your sister is married now or your brother their their fear their greatest fear for themselves is that i
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lose my person and then i am going into old age alone
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and i die alone and so that therefore becomes their fear for
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you i love you and i don’t want you to die alone and it’s going to get harder
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the longer you leave it for you not to die alone i feel like that’s
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that’s where that fear comes from for the people that care about us and
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the part of us that isn’t agitated by a kind of societal expectation but is coming from an internal
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fear of of that happening how do we quiet that part of
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ourselves in in the context of people
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asking these questions or nagging at that state for us
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i think as a woman personally i think that being single
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when you’re when you want to be in a relationship and you’re looking for love being single
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at a certain point in your life is really hard like it’s it’s unbelievably isolating and
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difficult and makes you feel like there is something wrong with you and
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it’s scary as well so i think everybody nobody is impervious to that
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feeling some people get lucky where they meet people when they’re a little bit younger when
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they’re maybe in their late 20s and they just hit that kind of sweet spot of just meeting somebody they want to settle
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down with at a time that makes sense for you to settle down
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but i think that let it just be said that nobody is
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impervious to how hard that is and how difficult it would be and i think
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if you find yourself in that situation whoever you are you will have if and as
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in the situation being you are single you are looking for love you want to be in a relationship and
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it’s not going anywhere you’re not finding that connection i think that is an unbelievably
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difficult situation to be in you can do things to quieten it but i
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think it is just an ongoing struggle because until you do meet someone you will have that fear that you’re not
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going to and if that’s something you really want you’re essentially scared of not getting
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the thing that you really want which is terrifying whatever area of your life but i think also um
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realizing that everybody is kind of one breakup away or one situation away from
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being single and no one is safe in terms of no one is
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safe in their relationship in their jobs and their lives in their looks in anything nothing is for certain and so
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we’re not completely alone when we’re in that situation you know it’s not a case of like
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you’re the freak over here who hasn’t got what they want and everybody else does because no one is safe
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and that’s what levels the playing field really i mean we think that it’s so uneven between people who are in
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relationships and people who are not but but anything can change at any moment
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for anybody and and does often because when we talk about single
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shaming shaming is a is an interesting word right there’s there’s fear-mongering
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that has is its own thing that’s like someone taking your fear of being alone
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and amplifying it shaming suggests there’s something inherently
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wrong in what you’re doing and that you should feel ashamed of the
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fact that you haven’t found anyone that’s the really
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that’s the kind of insidious part of what people do
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and i think that it’s a step in the right direction simply to remove the shame from being single even if you can’t
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eradicate all of the fear of being single because the fear of being single is a
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human thing that’s not i would argue a societal
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thing that’s a human thing what does lots of people fear being alone in many ways
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like what if i i lose all my friends or you know people don’t you know whatever people people
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fear being isolated in certain ways right if it’s not being single and even if you
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remove the word fear from it you can just have sadness i may not be afraid necessarily but i am sad i am sad
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because i know there is this really wonderful experience of life to be had
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and i am not experiencing it or i could be sad that
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time is moving on and i’m [Music] my friend who has been in a relationship
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for 10 years no matter what i’ll never get those 10 years
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that she’s just had with someone that i can’t by definition if i’m 35
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and i haven’t met someone i can’t experience years 25 to 35 with
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that person so there can be a sadness at having missed out or feeling like we’re missing
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out on one of the great experiences of life
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but i do think it’s a step in the right direction to just start by removing
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we have to remove the nonsense from the argument the shame that people make us feel that
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we’re somehow deficient we’re somehow lower status or have not got it together
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if we haven’t met somebody or if we haven’t if it hasn’t worked out for us
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so far that’s the part that that we have to be able to let go of so
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that at the very least if people could finish this episode of the podcast
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with only their fear i would be happy with just that feeling of well i’d
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really like to meet someone and i’m sad and i’m a bit afraid that it’s never going to happen for me but i don’t feel like there’s anything wrong
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yeah with where i am right now i feel like that would be a positive thing especially for for women
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who you know there’s someone we all know that mentioned being a certain age and
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being told on dates at literally being told on dates by guys that
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there must be something wrong with her that they don’t know about right because she’s still single and she said the
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stigma is uh oh you must be crazy or there must be something we don’t know about you yeah it’s almost like a guy
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has the with a guy you imagine someone who can’t commit with a woman people’s mind goes
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to not worth committing to right yeah or has tried really hard to have someone commit to her correct
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couldn’t quite get she couldn’t get commitment yeah whereas he didn’t want commitment but i will argue that it is
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changing i do think women more and more are having the same probably unfair judgment of men
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who are single in certain stages of their lives and i think that’s because the world is
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changing you know it’s no longer such a man’s world created by men for men which is
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you know heavily biased towards making men feel good and women not so much
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and i think that hopefully as the tables start to kind of turn a little bit and things start to even out
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perhaps the judgment will also just get a little bit better on both
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sides because men won’t want that label themselves you know i think people are just being
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more and more open-minded in general to that and two people being single later in life because they’re realizing
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that there are so many different inputs that lead you to being in a relationship or not being in
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a relationship and yeah it’s just there’s so many different
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ways that that can go nowadays i remember martin snow the boxing coach that you
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just saw in new york stephen our mutual friend who coached me for a number of years in
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boxing who’s this old kind of rough around the edges new jersey guy
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really fun character and i remember
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i was when i was boxing and at a certain point i was getting
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obsessed with how i threw a punch one of the things he said to me was
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it’s it’s yours it’s yours like it’s your is your punch
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you know it’s like your life you can’t you can’t do it wrong it’s yours
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and you can obs you can get so lost in obsessing whether you’re doing it right
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or wrong where you forget like it’s your thumbprint your thumbprint is your own
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your love life is your own you can’t you in a sense you can’t screw it up it’s
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yours yeah and i remember
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sitting with someone who was my agent years ago having come out of a relationship
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where i just wasn’t happy i didn’t feel like this was the right person for me
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and i remember leaving this relationship and being demoralized because i wanted to
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meet someone that i felt the right way about and i didn’t feel what i wanted to feel and i remember he said to me at the time
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he said matt i just i i don’t think it gets to be that easy for you
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i just moved to l.a at the time i met someone and he was at the time he was like matt i don’t think you get to just
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move to la and meet someone and be done i don’t think it gets to be that easy for you
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um and there’s something interesting about that because
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we do compare ourselves to other people we compare ourselves to that per that friend of ours who effortlessly met
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someone when they were 23 and has been with them ever since or you know our cousins sam
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and james our cousin sam who married jamie who she met when she
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was what 15 and they’re still together now with two beautiful kids and
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that you know i i could compare my life with that or you could compare your life with that but
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that’s not our path and and for some people the path is you meet
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someone who’s amazing at 50 or 60 for some people your path is you
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meet the perfect person at 21 and then you lose them to a car accident at 28.
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and then here you are again looking for somebody else or being single for the next 20 years it
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there is no right path and that’s the part that we have to
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let go of we have to let forget whether there’s a uh an ideal path that’s a different thing
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whether there’s an ideal path because let’s say you’re a woman and you want your own biological children and
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therefore there is a time frame on which it makes sense for things to happen you
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may have an ideal path in your mind that doesn’t mean it’s going to be your
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path and you can’t screw up your path because it’s your path
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yeah you talked in the retreat about plan a and plan b and
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you know making peace with the fact that plan b or plan c might have to be plan a and
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i think there’s something to that in this point which is if your love life isn’t going where how
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you want it to be going right now making peace with the fact with all of
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the beauty that is in your life all the ways in which your life is awesome and making
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peace so to speak with that life and making that the life that you want to lead
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is actually the best way to then become the most attractive version of
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yourself and end up attracting the best partner for you right because
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i know that i was single for a few years and
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in the beginning i found it really really hard being single because i really wanted to meet someone and it wasn’t until
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i got really kind of okay with my life as it was i
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still don’t get me wrong i still really wanted love i really really wanted to meet someone but it was
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i was good it wasn’t a happy good place and i think that’s only then was i
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actually able to welcome the kind of love that made sense for me
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into my life and i think there’s something to that right it’s making the life that you have right now the
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situation that you’re in right now making that your new plan a right yeah and not being obsessed
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with some past version of plan a because that’s where people get stuck people get stuck
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lamenting a plan a that’s dead it’s not there’s no longer a
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possibility but they’re sitting in it lamenting it and talking about you know
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steve we talked about someone we both know who a a a guy who’s not experienced in this
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this phenomenon in his love life but is he’s seeing well he kind of is but he’s
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seeing his friends who have got jobs and who have made things happen in their life that he hasn’t yet they’ve all
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achieved a level of success he’s not come close to they’re getting married off and he’s sitting there saying to himself
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that he’s messed up his life because he hasn’t done those things yet he hasn’t achieved
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anything that his friends have yet he hasn’t achieved what he thought he’d achieved by this point in his life
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but the crazy part is he’s still alive and it’s all still to play for yeah when
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there’s an open field ahead right but but he’s he can’t do he can’t make the most of that open field because he’s
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literally sitting there lamenting the old plan a which is dead yeah and you
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think of how many people go through with lines of shoulds like should have graduated that age should have got
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married then should have bought a house then should have done you know that the more of those you have
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you are setting yourself up for all kinds of lots of things are not in your control and
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you know i have no problem as well like don’t get me wrong if you want to make something a priority if it’s important
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if if you care about that right now and you want to direct energy to that that’s
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great like if you really wanna it is a dream to own your home and work towards
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that or there’s a certain goal job but i do think you have to accept that
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life doesn’t always work on the timeline you want and there’s sometimes a rhythm to your
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life that isn’t one that is prescribed to someone else sometimes your life is like
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oh i thought i’d be like this actually my twenties were for really building and growing in certain
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ways and i had a lot of [ __ ] to learn and i went through loads of mistakes but i actually had to focus on
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building a career or building security in other ways or you know your your 20s might
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have been whatever exploring different things maybe they were having fun whatever but
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i think it’s fine to if there’s something you know is important and you want to make it your
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create the space we do all kinds of things to say hey if you want a relationship here’s the things you actually can do the places
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you can affect but what i’ve noticed is that if you are doing the right things for a certain
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goal you have you kind of then have to let go a little bit of the timeline and the
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outcome it’s like if you are doing all the things living the way you want to live you’re being
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open you’re meeting people you’re having fun doing it and you you know you’re feeling like you’re living
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with your integrity then it’s like well okay if the right person’s not here yet
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i’m i’m living in a way that i’m fulfilled with i feel like i’m
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doing my part and if you feel like you’re doing your part you kind of then don’t feel so much
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anxiety about the actual thing because it’s like you know if you’re working on your business you feel like you’re doing
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everything right you’re working hard you know well the result will come if i’m making that a focus and taking it
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seriously and nurturing it the result will come it just might not come in the way or the timeline you thought it would
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come in well growth spurts happen in different parts of our lives at different times
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and they happen in they happen differently on different time frames for different people
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life is funny you know you you could be someone who spent their entire 20s
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building avidly building a business and by your 30s you’re done
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you’re burnt out you’re like i can’t do this anymore i’ve just my hole in my 20s while everyone else
32:47
was out kind of being a bit more fast and loose and having fun and doing i was avidly building something and now i am
32:55
tapped out you could be anthony bourdain and
33:00
spend your 20s doing drugs and your 30s working in restaurants and then in your
33:06
40s have a like literally you’re on a rocket ship where you achieve so much
33:14
and in your 50s he became a mega star in his 50s yeah
33:19
and then just when you think he’s got it all and he’s accelerated to this unbelievable point then he ends it all
33:26
he kills himself you don’t you everyone has a different time who’s to say like it seemed like he
33:33
had a terrible timeline for the first 20 years if you insert by certain lenses
33:38
right he was 40 years old and broke and and struggling and had all these
33:44
anxieties about where his life was going to go and so on you could say the first 20 years oh my god what a terrible trajectory you could
33:51
say the next 20 years what an amazing trajectory and then you look at the next
33:56
you know that that point and you go oh then that
34:01
you could be sam harris like jay when did sam harris get big he didn’t get big in his 20s
34:09
i think he was in his early 30s early 30s and and now he’s like having the time of his life building the waking up
34:16
app and and you know building his business and doing all of this which is amazing like doing this in his what is
34:22
he now in his 50s yeah that you know he’s having i would say in a way like this huge
34:28
entrepreneurial uh growth spurt and success in his 50s
34:35
that’s amazing someone can have the best relationship of their life starting at 50
34:42
at a time when someone who had the best relationship of their life for a decade in their 20s or 30s is alone yeah
34:48
so we have this idea of this linear way that life is supposed to go and life
34:55
doesn’t care life does not care about that linear path that you had
35:01
planned and if you’re alive and you’re breathing it’s all still to play for
35:08
all of the things that you want to experience in life they are all still to play for life is a is a cruel
35:17
[ __ ] but it never
35:22
as long as you’re still here it never denies you the opportunity to
35:27
have a whole new era that’s the that’s the interesting part he has many different chapters yeah you
35:34
you’re still here if life has been cruel to you or if life has been chaotic or if life took away something
35:41
the one thing you know is that if life if you’re still here
35:47
life won’t deny you a new era if you want it and that’s there’s something very
35:53
exciting about that and i think the one thing you can know for sure as well is that if somebody
36:00
is being judgmental towards you being single it’s because they don’t know how vulnerable they are
36:07
to having their relationship taken away from them and it’s actually they’re in a much more dangerous place than you are
36:14
because they’re obviously ignorant to the fact that their whole world could change tomorrow or they’re coming from a fearful place
36:21
of knowing that and it’s their fear they’re projecting onto you that
36:26
you know they’re not comfortable with how happy they would be if their life changed they would you know in in a way implicit
36:33
in what they’re saying is that if my life changed i’d be terrified for my own happiness
36:39
because if you’re secure in your ability to be happy in different weather in different eras
36:45
then you don’t freak out so much for the people in your life because because you believe i’ll be okay and
36:51
therefore they’ll be okay too we’ll all be okay we’ll all we’ll all be okay in the next era
36:57
whatever it brings i really like that movie the best exotic
37:03
marigold hotel i watched it on a plane mum wanted me to watch it for years and she loved it and
37:10
i just never felt like my kind of movie and then i watched it on a plane it’s a really sweet film it made me feel like
37:18
filled with hope yeah it made me feel like being being older and having like another
37:23
crack at it it made it feel like that’s cool it seemed fun that’s cool yeah it seemed fun like there’s always a new era like
37:30
that you know i think about that when someone i love is going through a situation or as finds
37:36
themselves in a you know having to reset their life again that movie comes to my mind because i’m
37:43
like well this is your [ __ ] it’s an adventure best exotic old hotel era it’s a new adventure your judy dench in india
37:50
exactly in india for god’s sake the the the point you made audrey you
37:57
know that we spoke about on the retreat the virtual retreat recently um
38:03
was the point that was made that we have to at any time be prepared to
38:08
make plan b the new plan a what that requires is for us to
38:16
redefine the word settling we’re not settling for
38:22
the situation we find ourselves in we’re settling on the situation we find ourselves in and there’s a huge
38:29
linguistic difference between those two phrases settle for
38:35
implies we kind of gave up it implies we we settled for a lower standard than we
38:41
should have we settled for a life or a person that was beneath our worth
38:48
settling on implies a conscious act
38:54
a decision to make the best of the situation we find ourselves in
39:02
and the way that plan b becomes plan a is we settle on
39:09
our current experience and consciously apply focus focused love
39:16
and attention and investment to it much as you would
39:21
wherever i’ve lived in i’ve lived in the back of people’s gardens before in their tiny little out
39:28
houses their tiny little back houses not outhouses jameson i didn’t live in a toilet
39:33
i’ve i’ve lived in the back of people’s houses and i’ve lived in this beautiful
39:38
house that i’m in today the one thing that’s always been true wherever i’ve lived
39:44
is i really made it cozy and beautiful and it always had a
39:50
sense of magic to me because i settled i didn’t settle for that place that i was
39:56
living in i settled on it and invested in it and made it as gorgeous as that
40:02
could possibly be and and the like we said when we focus on a
40:08
dead plan a that is the source of fear and anxiety
40:14
i thought recently that and if i could kind of leave people with
40:20
something uber practical today i always think of the phrase
40:27
wait or create i’m someone who
40:34
i i struggle i don’t know if struggle’s the right word i suppose because it’s just become a relationship i have a relationship
40:40
with anxiety which is true um i never used to call it anxiety when i
40:47
was younger because i didn’t really identify with that word i just did i didn’t have the language for it but
40:53
in my 30s now i realized my whole life i’ve been dealing with anxiety in one form or
40:59
another and one of the
41:04
the areas that anxiety rears its head for me the most is in thinking about
41:10
what i’ve done wrong what mistakes i’ve made what i shouldn’t have said
41:17
the way that i think i screwed up today the the friendship today that i feel like i
41:24
hurt by something i did or the the email i sent that i look back on and i’m like oh that was a i wish i’d
41:31
written that differently i feel like i did the wrong thing in that email and it all it creates this anxiety
41:38
as does thinking about the fact that you should have found love by now or you should
41:43
have handled that relationship differently or you should have you never would have broke up if you’d have done this
41:49
differently whatever to me all of that anxiety of focusing
41:55
on what happened and what we wish hadn’t happened is a form of waiting
42:03
it’s all kind of remaining still while we analyze and chop up the past
42:10
creating is the root out of anxiety and into
42:17
creating a new plan a out of what we thought was plan b
42:24
creating is whatever i said to that friend today that made me feel like whatever i said to
42:30
that friend today that i wish i hadn’t said or whatever i did today that i wish i hadn’t done creating is saying
42:38
i can do far more for that relationship by what i do now
42:43
and for the next year then damage i just did in the last day
42:50
there’s so much i can do for this relationship or if that relationship is dead there’s so much
42:57
the infinite number of possibilities of new relationships i can create new
43:02
friendships i can make new opportunities i can create far outweighs
43:08
what i just lost that’s true after a breakup that’s true
43:14
if you’ve spent the last 20 years of your life single what you can create now
43:20
by settling on your life now not settling for settling on your life now and applying love and attention to it
43:28
and seeing where it can take you that creation that creating
43:34
is the root out of all of that grief about what hasn’t happened
43:40
in your life because you come to realize that what’s possible still far outweighs
43:46
what is already dead for sure i also think
43:52
it’s so important to remember that there is an abundance of love in the world and there is an abundance of people who will
43:58
love you and ways of finding love and giving love and experiencing love
44:03
and the more you become the more loving and the more open-hearted you are you become a magnet
44:10
for love right and that the right kind of people get drawn to you if that’s the energy that you’re
44:17
pulling out there but you have to not come from it from a scarcity mindset
44:23
but rather realize that there is just so much love in the world to be experienced at our
44:28
fingertips if we only know where to reach out for it and and value it in the right people also
44:36
and sometimes the fact that you took the scenic route to get there
44:43
means that you have a different value you put a different value on it when you find it or you know the right love when
44:50
you see it because you actually you went through it and you experienced
44:56
a lot in the meantime you’ve done all the growth work and maybe you didn’t waste time
45:02
because of being pushed into being in relationships maybe you had the space for
45:08
the right love later on if you weren’t just jumping into things because well
45:14
mom really wants me to get married now so i just jump in with this person
45:19
and by the way the person that does jump in with that person and then realizes it’s all wrong and did the wrong thing
45:24
yeah that’s a scenic route too and they end up in the same place yeah so it’s
45:31
it’s all this comparison and this judgment of each other that is just nonsense
45:36
it it really is pointless it’s your life is your
45:42
thumbprint you’re the only one who has it it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing
45:48
it’s your thumbprint it’s your snowflake you can’t screw it up it’s yours yeah
45:54
i love that so i want to just let everyone know if you
46:00
are going through some kind of heartbreak right now or if you find yourself in the position
46:07
of wanting to meet someone i like
46:12
i really love what you said audrey i would keep wanting to say babe it’s a tricky one isn’t it because i never say
46:18
audrey outside of a professional world podcast somehow sits in limbo between
46:25
the professional world of our meetings in the company and our actual normal life you managed to avoid
46:32
calling me babe on the podcast [Applause] that’s true
46:37
that’s true sorry sweet um i
46:43
i really love what you said about you found a way to be happy with your
46:48
life the way it was but it didn’t mean that you didn’t really want to find love a lot of people can’t admit that a lot
46:54
of people want to hide that and be like no no i’m really happy i don’t need anybody
46:59
admitting that is really powerful because both can be true you can be happy you can find peace now
47:06
and also very much be open to the wonderful experience of meeting somebody and if
47:12
you find yourself in that place right now or if you’ve been through heartbreak and
47:17
you just want to know how to get back out there in a healthy way we have a free guide called the three
47:24
love habits which details three habits that are well worth forming
47:30
in your life right now that will not only put you on a path to meeting
47:36
someone amazing but will allow you to experience peace in the meantime even when you’re not
47:42
meeting that person and will enrich your life in the meantime in other ways
47:48
because our philosophy here is that when you’re out there making things
47:53
happen for your love life there should be wins for your whole life we shouldn’t have to do lots of things
47:59
in service of our love life that don’t give us wins everybody everywhere else too absolutely so if you want to check
48:06
out that free guide it’s at three love habits dot com
48:11
it’s completely free it’s a fun read and it’s something that will absolutely help
48:16
put you on the path to finding love in a healthy way while being happy now
48:23
[Music]
48:41
you

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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From The Good Men Project on Medium

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