--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to an extraordinary episode of the Mel Robbins Podcast. My name is Mel Robbins. I'm a New York Times bestselling author and one of the most trusted experts in the world on behavior change and motivation. And you know, I often say that the Mel Robbins Podcast is our podcast. And today, it truly is. Because of all the people that you have requested that I interview on this podcast, there is one person who you have asked for over and over and over again, more than anybody else on the planet of 8 billion people. So today, it is my pleasure to welcome the most requested human being of all time in person on this podcast, none other than the amazing Jay Shetty.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Wow. I had no idea. That is so humbling. And that is incredible. I thought you were going to say all of that and then follow up with someone else's name.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, no, no. I literally thought you were going to...
--:-- Jay Shetty: That is so kind. And everyone who's requested me or has connected with my work or has liked a video, read a book or listened to a podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much. That honestly is... wow. That is incredible. Thank you so much.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How humble you are. Thank you. Thank you so much. So people not only love you, but for those of you who may not know Jay's work or have ever met him, I want you to know he's an award-winning podcast host. The show which you need to follow is On Purpose. He is not only a former monk, he is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Think Like a Monk. His second book, which will absolutely be his second number one bestseller, Eight Rules of Love. I have this sucker right here. I have dog-eared it. I have post-it noted this sucker. You can buy it at 8rulesoflove.com or wherever books are sold. And by the way, Jay is a rock star. This guy is going on a global tour, Love Rules, and that starts on February 21st. You are dedicated, Jay, to helping people train their mind for peace and purpose every day. Your viral videos have been viewed more than 10 billion times. You're followed by over 50 million people across social media. And I am also, like you, honored to call you and your wife, Radhi, friends of Chris and mine. So welcome, welcome, welcome. People have been not only requesting you, they've been asking for relationship advice.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Thank you so much for sharing that with me. And thank you to everyone who submitted me. I mean, I've been wanting to come on your show.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I've been wanting you to have a show for a long time. So I think everyone's very lucky that they get to have you every single week in their life. And, you know, as our friendships developed and blossomed, it's been so wonderful getting to know you better, getting to know Chris better. And I'm just so grateful that you're doing this. I'm so grateful that I get to do this with you. So thank you.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Thank you so much.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to start by just asking you, how would you define what love is having now researched this book and unpacked the eight rules of love?
--:-- Jay Shetty: Ultimately, I came up with a definition that I share in the book and through all the research that I did, and I would encourage everyone to honestly come up with their own definition. But I narrowed it down to three things. I define love as when you like someone's personality, when you respect their values, and when you're committed to helping them achieve their goals.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wait, there was something missing there. What about like attraction? What about, you know, I really... I mean, I realize there's a difference between lust and love and connection and chemistry, but I mean, doesn't that have to be a part of it?
--:-- Jay Shetty: Absolutely. Absolutely. It does. And that's my definition.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, no, no. That's your definition stops.
--:-- Jay Shetty: No, that is a given. And I fully agree with that. I'm massively attracted to my wife. And that was a beginning spark of a big part of our relationship for sure. So very completely agree with you on that. I think these are the parts that are hidden. So my definition of love is more...
--:-- Mel Robbins: Say it again. The three parts.
--:-- Jay Shetty: It's liking them. Let me break each one down. So when I say liking someone's personality, you'll like this. All the studies show that if you consider someone a casual friend, you should have spent 40 hours with them. If you consider someone a good friend, you have to have spent 100 hours with them. And if you consider someone a great friend, a best friend, you should have spent 200 quality hours with them. So when I say, do you like someone's personality? The question you should be asking is, do I want to spend 200 hours with this person? Am I intrigued enough? Am I curious enough? Am I excited enough? That's liking someone's personality.
--:-- Now, I use my language very carefully in the second one, respecting their values. What I often find in relationships is that we want people to value what we value equally to how we value it. Most relationships fall apart because we're forcing someone to change what they value. We're trying to mold them and we're hoping that they'll contort and that they'll move and that they'll fold into valuing something else. So an example is, if you ask my wife what her number one value is, she would say family without a doubt. It would be her family. She told me that before we got married, I've known that through our marriage. If you ask me what my value is, my number one value is my purpose and my service. And as I'm saying this, Radhi's back in London with her grandma, who's been in hospital for the past two weeks. And I'm here hoping that I get to serve your community and audience through this conversation.
--:-- Jay Shetty: And both of us respect that knowing that we'd be there for each other if we needed to. I said to Radhi, I was like, the moment you need me in London, like I will be on a flight right back. But at the same time, there's a mutual respect where I don't have to feel guilty for doing what I love and she doesn't have to be made to feel guilty for doing what she loves. And so I find that's where respect and value comes in.
--:-- And the final one, this is like the hardest and the biggest and the truest. Are you committed to helping them achieve their goals? Not the potential you think they have, not the goals you project onto them, not the life you think they could lead, but are you committed to helping achieve their goals? That is a sign of love. I think we think of love as, "I love this person so much. They could be so many things. I see their potential." That's not love. It's about you.
--:-- And so when I think about a practical example in my own life with my wife, a lot of the time when Radhi would cook, as everyone knows, she's a vegan chef and recipe developer, and she's a food scientist. She's unbelievable. And every time we'd go somewhere, everyone would always say, "Radhi should start a restaurant. That's what she must do." And I remember at the beginning of our relationship, Radhi would hear this all the time. And she started feeling the pressure that if she didn't start a restaurant, then that wasn't a sign that she'd achieved her goal. And we sat down and we said, well, is that what you want? Is that something that's really important to you? And she realized maybe one day, but not right now. And I feel what could easily happen is we take all this outside input and we make it our partner's goal. But if we can stay committed to helping our partner with their journey, with their healing, with their path, that's a sign of love. And I don't think you have these three things with anyone else in this depth.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So I want to stop right there because you've already dropped a bunch of like amazing wisdom bombs on us all. And just make sure that everybody got what you just said. First of all, it strikes me that in an amazing close friendship, those three things are present too. And one of the things I loved about your new book is that this is really about love, period, in your life. And thinking about love as a skill and how to both let it in and let it out and give and receive. And I also just got something from you that I want to acknowledge that this is probably an Achilles heel of mine. And in the example that you just shared, I just realized something that I am not doing with my husband, Chris. So you talked about the example of other people saying to your wife, Radhi, "You should open a restaurant. You should open a restaurant." And I could see that because I'm like, oh, yeah, she should open a restaurant. Maybe I'm getting her.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And then you feel the pressure. I think often in relationships, we either want our partners to change. So we're pressuring them to change because we don't respect their values. We want them to conform to ours, right? And so then the resentment builds or you have this fear. And I just realized in listening to you that I have this fear with Chris. So Chris has started a men's retreat that he's been running for six years. And as it gets more and more popular, I realized, Jay, that I have been subconsciously trying to steer him away from expanding it because I'm afraid that he's going to get very busy and that's going to impact our family life negatively. That is my fear. I haven't even sat down with him to have the conversation. What's your goal? And instead of being afraid of it or trying to manipulate it, that I actually listen and figure out out of love the skill we're talking about, how to support him in achieving it.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Thank you so much for being vulnerable to that degree, because it takes a lot to be that conscious to notice your subconscious that's happening. And I think it's very natural. I don't think that you doing that makes you a bad person. I don't think that makes you a selfish person. I don't think that makes you a manipulative or controlling person. I think it makes you human and it's natural. But I think as soon as we locate one of those fears or insecurities that we're projecting, we have to do something about it because we could potentially derail our partners from the life they want to live.
--:-- And I've coached and worked with couples who've been together three months, three years, and 30 years. And I use that as a form of learning. I don't consider myself an expert. When I'm with someone who has more relationship experience, including yourself and Chris, I'm taking notes. I'm learning from that person. And I have so many clients that have had the experience that after 30 years, one partner has lived their dreams. And the other partner has either sacrificed theirs in building the other person's or forgotten what theirs was in the first place. And that is such a common story that that person now in their 50s is reflecting and thinking, "I can't get those 30 years back." Now, I actually believe you can start right now and start there. I don't think you have to get those 30 years back. But for those of us who are in an earlier stage in our relationship, I want you to pivot away from that happening.
--:-- And so our insecurities and fears get projected on our partners. Yours is interesting because your fear is of him not being around. Often our fear or insecurity is our partner doesn't work as hard as us. So we want them to work harder. Often our insecurity or fear is my partner doesn't put in as much effort as I do. So I want them to put in more effort. So usually it's the other way around, but I really appreciate your vulnerability and sharing that because I think a lot of people who are listening and watching will really resonate with that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, Jay, so I want to back up a little bit and start at the beginning of the spectrum when we talk about the topic of love. Because you and I both receive questions from people around the world every single day. And I see so many people struggling with this topic of feeling like you aren't worthy of love unless somebody else is loving you back. That it's when you get into a relationship, Jay, and you find the one that you now know that you're worthy of love. And that's where you say in your new book, we've got it all wrong. So when we come back, that's where I want to start. I want to start with the story that we are telling ourselves about love and our self-worth. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, I'm Mel and I'm here with the number one New York Times bestselling author, Jay Shetty. We're talking about his new book, The Eight Rules of Love. And we're starting with this really important topic, which is why do so many of us chase relationships and love in order to feel worthy as an individual?
--:-- Jay Shetty: We all have a story that we're writing about love. And the interesting thing is that our mind makes us fiction writers and we're writing our own fictional version of what our love story looks like. And it changes every single day. One day we feel like anyone would be lucky to have us, but then there's months that go by when we feel we're completely unlovable and we're not enough. And I think it's really interesting because we both know this, that the story you're saying to yourself, the story you're telling yourself naturally becomes your reality because you're looking for the facts. You're looking for those truths in your life. So if you think to yourself, you know, no one's attracted to me right now, you're now going around looking for how many people are not attracted to you and don't look at you. And so if the story is, "I'm not good enough, I'm not ready and I'm unlovable," which is a very true and real story of the people that are writing in for us, that unfortunately is what you're going to perpetuate.
--:-- And that's why rule one is about what you do alone. Because if you're waiting for someone to love you, to believe you're lovable, that means you're saying that the day they change their mind, you're now immediately unlovable. And so you're deciding whether you're lovable or not based on whether someone else thinks you're worthy of love. And I think that that sets us up for a lot of pain, a lot of stress, a lot of pressure.
--:-- There's this beautiful thought from Paul Tillich. And he talks about how in the English language, we have two words for being alone, but we only talk about one of them. And that word is loneliness. "I lonely. I feel alone. It been a lonely day. It been a lonely year. I experiencing loneliness." But we never use the other word. And the other word is solitude. It's just not used in our vocabulary. And he says that loneliness is the weakness of being alone. And solitude is the glory, or as I say, the strength of being alone.
--:-- And what I want people to understand is that when you take the time on your own to do three things. The first thing is you have to learn about yourself. You have to learn what you like, what you don't like, what experiences you're into, what you're not into. Because what we don't realize is when you start dating someone, you adopt all of their likes and dislikes, only in a few years to feel like you don't know who you are anymore and you lose yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, this is going to sound like a dumb question, but I have to ask.
--:-- Mel Robbins: How the hell do you figure out what you like? I'm serious. If you've always been somebody...
--:-- Jay Shetty: So let's role play.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No, no, no. Let's do it. You're my life coach.
--:-- Mel Robbins: My parents are divorced. I have had terrible relationships through high school and college, Jay. And the last person I was with cheated on me. And every time I go out to the bars with my friends, all my friends get approached by people. How do I find love? How to coach me?
--:-- Jay Shetty: So, first mistake, and I wouldn't say this in a coaching session, but to speed it up for us, first mistake, you're already thinking it's about what do you like about the partner. I'm saying, what do you like about yourself? And where do you like in your own life? So very simple. When you go out for a dinner, as soon as you get back, you know whether you like the food at that restaurant or not, don't you?
--:-- Jay Shetty: If you went out for a burrito, you know whether you like it or not. If you went out for Italian, you know whether you like it or not. How about we start doing that with people, places, and projects? How about we start reflecting when we take on a project at work? After we complete it, let's sit there and reflect. Don't reflect while you're doing it because that can often be misleading. Sometimes a piece of food comes out and it looks awkward or uncomfortable, or it's a weird color. Then you try it and it's incredible. So it's only by trying do we know. And so after you finish your project at work, did I like it or not? What did I like about it? What didn't I like about it? Was that my comfort or was that my discomfort? Three questions, really easy. Did I like it or not? What did I like about it or not like about it? And what I didn't like about it, was that just because it was uncomfortable or is it because I actually found it terrible? And if you did that with people, groups you spend time with, so many of us never change our friends over a decade because we never reflected when we left. You'd never go back to a restaurant if you had a bad experience.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's true.
--:-- Jay Shetty: But you keep going back to the same person.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh my God, we crawl back. We crawl back. Jay, we beg them back in our lives. Because we never took that time to reflect because it was always about them. We make it about them.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Okay, so stop.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to make sure everybody just heard that. Skill number one, rule number one, let yourself be alone. But what I want to say is this was the huge paradigm shift for me. So much of us are chasing and seeking love. And step one that I just got from you is you got to make it about yourself and not about the other person. And until you understand the things you love and the things that make you come alive when you're alone, that's the beginning of this.
--:-- Jay Shetty: We keep making lists of what we want in someone else, right? We keep making a list of, "I want them to be kind. I want them to be tall. I want them..." So all of our energy is being pointed outwards rather than saying, who am I becoming? Who am I striving to grow into? What is it that I'm passionate about? When you're focused on all of that, all of a sudden you feel you have so much more to offer in a relationship. You walk into it, recognizing that someone would be fortunate to be with you and you'd be fortunate to be with them because you have something to share.
--:-- I think most of us, we walk into relationships because we're scared of being alone. And when we do that, studies show we do three things. If you're feeling alone, if you're scared of being alone and single, and you're going into a relationship because of that fear, research shows three things happen. The first thing is you're guaranteed to settle for less than you deserve. Guaranteed. The second thing is you're more likely to be dependent on that person because you think they're out of your league. And so now you'll become, do mold, fold, become anything they want you to be. And the third is you're going to be scared to leave them because being with them in your mind is better than being alone. And so you think about all of us who've been in that situation before. And by the way, it's not your fault. Movies have done this.
--:-- I have been in a situation before many times in my teens where I sadly, and I regret this, I showed love to people in order for them to validate me. So it wasn't that I didn't like them, but I showed them more extreme forms of passion and love because I thought they'd say, "Jay, that's amazing. You're the best person I've ever been with." I just wanted to hear those words. And that comes back from my childhood trauma of being bullied for being overweight, for being bullied for being Indian, for having a group of girls who lined up next to my football match when I was 11 years old shouting, "She's out of your league."
--:-- Jay Shetty: Yeah. So I was 11 years old in primary school or elementary school, as you say in the US. And there was one girl in school that everyone had a crush on, right? You're 11 years old. And there was one girl that every guy had a crush on. And all the guys knew and all the girls knew, but she didn't know we had a crush on her. And one day I came in late from, I think a doctor's appointment or something like that. And everyone was laughing when I came in and I didn't know what they were laughing about. So I sat down and everyone was giggling at me and pointing at me. And I was thinking, what's going on here? And then one of my friends slipped me a note and the note, I opened it and it said, "She knows." And I was like, "She knows what?" I realized that all the guys and all the girls had told her that the only person in the class that had a crush on her was me. And I was considered one of the least desirable people in my class because of my weight and the color of my skin. And so for the rest of that week, all the girls bullied me standing behind, literally were playing football. When I say football, I mean soccer, but we're playing football and I was a goalkeeper because that was the only position I'd be allowed to play. And the girls lined up behind the goal and shouted out, "She's out of your league. I can't believe you thought you could get her. I can't believe that you thought she could be with you." And I realized that that trauma, that experience transferred over to my teens when now all I wanted was a girl to say, "You're the best. You're amazing. You're incredible." Because of that other statement I'd heard all those years before.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I feel like you spend your life seeking validation. You then don't get it in the way you wanted it. And then you finally decide you have to validate yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And that journey can be 10 years, 20 years, or even 50 years. And so the shorter we make that journey, the better it is. You know, it's amazing how we have these experiences and it just blocks our ability to let love in because we don't believe that we're worth it. That also, I'm realizing impacted how you first showed up when you started dating your wife, Radhi.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can we talk about that? Because, you know, I know that you were in business school when you first heard a monk speak at the age of 18 and you felt the call to become a monk. And did you meet Radhi before you became a monk or how did you guys meet?
--:-- Jay Shetty: Yeah. So I met the monks when I was 18 years old. And I met Radhi just before, six months before I was about to go and become a monk. So my final year of university. And the way we met was I was using the last six months, I would use all my weekends to go to the temple in my local area to train. And to be honest, just to stay out of trouble, because I was like, if I'm at university during my weekends, I'm going to get into trouble. So I need to go and practice. And I was asked to show a lady came in one day, she was around my mom's age. And I was asked to show her around to do some services and some rituals at the temple. I've never been asked to do this before this day. I've never been asked to do it again. And at the end of it, she said to me, she said, "I have a daughter that I'd love to introduce to you. I'd love for her to meet someone who's into spirituality and meditation. She's probably around your age." And I said, "Well, I'm so sorry. I'm going to go off and become a monk, but I'd introduce her to my sister." So that woman that I'd met happened to be Radhi's mom. And she brought Radhi in to meet me and I introduced her to my sister and I saw Radhi. I probably exchanged like three words with her. I thought she was stunning, but in my head, I was like, no, no, no, I'm training to be a monk. I need to stay focused. Like, don't worry about it. And so her and my sister became friends. When I came back from the monastery, her and my sister had become really close. Radhi was at my house all the time. My sister was at hers all the time. So my sister was our middle person who, our wing person who helped us get the message across. So we met before and it was four years from, and then I found out that her mother that day prayed that her daughter would find someone like me. And I found it out many years later. And now I know she hates me because we moved to LA. So my mother-in-law hates me because we moved to LA.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So you mentioned though, that you made mistakes in love. And I want to just connect that experience of being bullied as a kid and then feeling like if you just really get somebody to love you back, then you're going to feel worthy for how you showed up in the beginning with your now wife.
--:-- Jay Shetty: I think another big thing for me was chasing the approval of a male figure. My dad was quite aloof when I was growing up. And I've always considered my dad to be more of a friend than a father. And even till this day, my dad's my friend. I can always talk to him, but it was my mom who taught me how to like shave my beard.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And like, that's why you have great grooming habits.
--:-- Jay Shetty: I was going to say, is that why you still have a beard? Did she not do a good job with that? No, yeah, exactly. But my mom taught me how to take care of my skin. My mom was the one who was teaching me and guiding me through all the things that you think a dad would do. And what was really interesting about that is I think the monks became my first male role models and I was looking for them to validate me. Now, the interesting thing when you're trying to get validated by monks is they don't validate you. They're just trying to teach you the truth. And so that's when I learned to validate myself during that time. And it was really powerful.
--:-- But here's the interesting thing. We're conditioned so deeply. We've watched so many movies. We've listened to so many songs. We've seen so many cliches and examples of what love truly is that we snap back into those habits as soon as we're back. So as soon as I came back from the monastery and I started dating Radhi around six months later, I snapped back into all my old habits because that's how strong it is. So if anyone ever feels compelled and you keep thinking, "I keep dating the same person again and again. I don't know what's wrong with me." Well, that's the thing. The conditioning of the gifts and gaps that our parents left become the map of how we look for love. So if our parents gave us gifts, we're looking for people who give us those same gifts. If your parents were present, if they turned up to your dance recital, if they turned up to your soccer game, you now are looking for someone who's forever present, unlikely as an adult, that's not always going to happen. And if your parents left gaps, maybe they didn't believe in you. Maybe they criticized you. Maybe they compared you to a sibling or a family member or a cousin. Now you have that gap and you're hoping someone else is going to fill it.
--:-- And what I learned during my time as a monk was whatever you want from someone else, first give it to yourself. If you're looking for compliments from someone else, give it to yourself first. If you're looking for understanding from someone else, understand yourself first. And if you're looking for validation and affection, do that for yourself first. That's why I love your high five habit. Like it's perfect, right? The reason why it works is you're asking everyone to look in the mirror every morning and give themselves exactly what they need from the day. And they can give it to themselves in the mirror. You're high fiving yourself. Like that is a perfect demonstration of how deeply you believe in this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I just want to offer up something to someone who may be listening and feeling like, "But, but, but, but..." One of the most simple exercises you could ever do. If you feel like you just can't break through in this area of being in a healthy relationship or truly finding or attracting love with the right person, just write down on a piece of paper everything you're looking for and then be that person yourself. And something funny happens. You're like actually looking for things that are a void. And if you be those things for yourself, that person starts to show up. But Jay has an even deeper tool. You have this younger self meditation. Would you be willing to walk us through that meditation, even just for a minute, when we come back from this short break?
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'd love to do that.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Awesome. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins. I'm here with my friend and the number one New York Times bestselling author, Jay Shetty. We are talking about the eight rules of love. And I promised, or I should say Jay promised, that he would walk us through this meditation that you can do for your younger self. And it's beautiful. So I'm going to turn this over to Jay.
--:-- Jay Shetty: So for anyone who's doing this, I'm just adding a disclaimer that this can be emotive. It can be challenging. So please do this when you're in a safe space, when you are feeling more steady and you're feeling at ease. And maybe do it when you can follow it up with a bit of journaling or a bit of moment of reflection, and maybe even a conversation with a partner or a friend or someone that you trust. So just to give that before we dive in.
--:-- I want everyone to gently and softly close their eyes and just take a moment to be present with your breath, the seat or bed or floor beneath you, and whatever sounds are in your environment. I want you to visualize yourself meeting your 13-year-old self. Visualize their face. Visualize what you were probably wearing. Visualize yourself at that age. And as you get closer, give them a warm, loving embrace.
--:-- And now I want you to share with your younger self everything you wish you heard at that age. Everything you wish you were told. You can give it to them right now. "You are enough. You're worthy of love. You have what it takes." Whatever it may be for you. Shower them with all the love that you deserve then and now.
--:-- And now ask them what wisdom or insight they have for you. Just listen carefully. And if nothing comes up immediately, allow it to arise, even after this meditation, tomorrow or this week. What advice or insight or words does your younger self have for you?
--:-- Once again, give them a warm, loving embrace. All the love. All the connection. And know that their inner child is forever within you, and you can revisit them and shower them with love whenever you like. And when you're ready, you can gently and softly open your eyes and just be present.
--:-- Thank you for allowing us that space.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I literally... Do you mind if I share?
--:-- Jay Shetty: I'd love to hear. If you're willing to, yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I saw myself standing there with this Dorothy Hamill haircut, which was that famous figure skater. Let me tell you, the 13-year-old Mel Robbins does not look like the average 13-year-old today. That's why I picked that awkward age. No one at 13... I don't think there's any one of it. And I've got this like Betto sweater on. I don't know why I'm focused on that.
--:-- Jay Shetty: That's good. No, that's really good visualization. The more detail, the better. As I describe in the book, that's great. That's fantastic.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I was just struck by how little I was. And I remember what I said is, "I've been waiting a long time for someone to say this." And then the wisdom was, "Please say this to me every day." And that whole thing that you said about showering yourself with love.
--:-- One of the things I want to point out about your book is that it's not only about the rules, everybody. I'm on page 71, for example, where he's unpacking rule two. And he has meditations in here where you can meditate on solitude. He has step-by-step guides for writing letters to your younger self. So it's not just the science and the rules. It's also the tools.
--:-- And one of the other places that I want to go, Jay, because I think there's so many people that struggle with the beginning stages of love. And we were joking earlier about lust versus love and chemistry versus true connection. And in your research, you talk about the need for us to define love for ourselves before we think about it, we feel it, and that we have to know the four phases of love. So can you walk us through these four phases of love?
--:-- Jay Shetty: Yeah, absolutely. And I want to try to figure out which one you're in and which one I'm in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, absolutely.
--:-- Jay Shetty: What's really interesting is that I found that someone can say "I love you" and it means they want to spend their life with you. And someone else can say "I love you" and it means they want to spend a night with you. The definition of love can truly be that large of a spectrum. When someone says "I love you," you don't stop to say, "Wait, wait, wait, what do you mean?" You just say "I love you" back. And what you forget in that moment is that you signed up to your contract of the word love, but they signed up to their contract of the word love. If their love meant "I like this right now," that's what they meant when they said "I love you." And if you said "I love you" and that meant "I want to be with you forever," then that's what you signed up for. And you never checked whether your contracts matched. You never checked whether your definitions matched. And the unhealthy part about that is you're expecting what you signed up to.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's so true.
--:-- Jay Shetty: So the four phases of love are attraction, dreams, disappointments, and adapting and trust.
--:-- Jay Shetty: The first one is attraction, as we said. You have an attraction, you get excited. There's a spark. There could be something there. Now, if there isn't a spark on the other side, that's it. Game over.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can we just start right there? Because I think, especially as a mother of daughters and a son, but I'm more worried about it with our daughters, the attraction piece seems to flood everybody's ability to think. What are the red flags that this is the "I love you tonight, don't text me tomorrow" and I have signed up for "I love you means we're at least going to breakfast"? As you think about the attraction phase, there has to be the spark. There has to be that moment where you're like, "I'd spend 200 hours with you, even though I don't even really know you right now." What are red flags for when you realize my concept of what I'm signing up for is very different than what this person's concept is?
--:-- Jay Shetty: What's really interesting about the way I see red flags is I think a lot of people think red flags are things that other people show you. For me, it's more about how strong your radar is and what you're looking for. People just think, "Oh, someone's just going to show you all their flaws and mistakes." Very unlikely, because most people walk into dating or meeting someone as a job interview. They're presenting their best selves.
--:-- The way you know a red flag, the first one is the halo effect. You are giving them qualities that they've never shown you. I'll give you an example. If someone is attractive, you assume they must be trustworthy. If someone is smart or they went to a good school, you assume they must be organized at home. If someone is wealthy or famous, you assume they must be likable. So what we're doing is we're giving people qualities they haven't shown us. If someone is kind in the moment, we think they must be kind all the time. We've never seen whether they're kind when they're stressed. We've never seen if they're kind when they're tired. We've never seen if they're kind with their mom, their family, or anyone else. They've just shown us one moment of kindness, and we've amplified that to be that they're kind all the time.
--:-- Another red flag is something called the context effect. Studies show that if you're holding a warm drink while on a date with someone, you're more likely to have warm feelings towards them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Really?
--:-- Jay Shetty: Really. With that biologically simple. The context effect also refers to if you bump into someone at a wedding, you're more likely to think that could be the one because love is all around.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No way.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Truly. The context effect is also that when you walk out of a theater and you just watched a romantic comedy and they went off into the sunset happily ever after, you're more likely to believe you're going to bump into someone that you could do that with. So we have to be so aware of, are we actually with this person in environments that don't promote and flourish love, but in the realities of life?
--:-- Mel Robbins: How the heck do you do that when your hormones are going crazy? And yes, you've worked on knowing yourself and what you love. But I want to come back to this idea of in the attraction phase where you're not thinking rationally. How do you notice this in yourself? Do you start bargaining with yourself? You start to notice that you're crossing lines with your own values. What would you counsel somebody to really pay attention to if they continue to fall into a problem of making themselves available to people who are not actually available to you?
--:-- Jay Shetty: The first thing that I'd look at is, is that person responding at the pace you're responding?
--:-- Jay Shetty: Is that person responding at the pace you're responding, or are you constantly having to force play games? What's really interesting about what you're saying is that the biology shows that that spark we feel at the beginning, what we're really experiencing is excitement and stress at the same time. The excitement is, "I think they're hot." The stress is, "Do they think I'm hot?" The excitement is, "Oh my gosh, I just texted them. I have their number." The stress is, "When are they going to text back?" So we think chemistry and the spark is something that we just feel, but actually it's excitement and stress together.
--:-- What's really interesting is that as you get to know someone better, the stress decreases and comfort increases. So we think the spark's gone, but actually you've just become more comfortable in their presence. Now, how does this answer your question? The way it answers your question is the idea that you can't control your hormones. You are going to go through that. You are going to feel all of these things. What you have to do is get past those feelings as they naturally will, and then use your reasoning and logic to be thoughtful, to be mindful, and slow things down.
--:-- That's the number one thing I can say: slow it down. You will make better decisions when you actually take time to see the other person, but take time to reflect. You message them, but then you also take time again to slow down and say, "I don't need to see them every day. I can see them once a week and see how this goes." I think people are scared of doing that. I want to validate that your hormones are going to push you and take over, and you can't control that. You can only control what happens when they finally calm down. And you can either look at that and go, "Oh, the spark went," or you go, "Oh, now I actually get to see." It's almost like it's been foggy this whole time, and now the fog's cleared. Now I can actually see.
--:-- You could do two things. You can slow down the pace of a relationship emotionally, but you could spend more time with them to learn more about them in different scenarios. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes we make. When we first see someone, we only see them in a very specific scenario. We see them on date night. We see them at a movie. We see them at a dinner. What about you see them with a few of their friends? What about you get to know them over an activity that puts you both in an uncomfortable situation? What about you go to an escape room? What about you go to a pottery class? What about you go to something where neither of you have any skills, but you get to try something new? Because now you get to see how they deal with new things.
--:-- I remember the first time I took Radhi to an escape room. We did a lot of activities when we first started dating and got together after we'd gone past the first few dates. In the escape room, she could tell that I am obsessed with figuring things out. I'm obsessed with time management, and I'm pretty intense to be with when we have one hour to get out of a locked room. I'd be like, "Radhi, come on, we've got 55 minutes left. We got to stay focused. Come on." I'm giving all these directions. And she's just bouncing around, and then she'll push something and the trap door will open. She's an amazing lateral thinker. It was interesting because that's where I started to learn that I'm an intense, obnoxious person to be around. She got to see that. Thankfully, she still stayed with me.
--:-- The idea is you see so much more of a person if you do things with them that are not an interview. I really believe that if your relationship starts as an interview, it will end like a rejection and a firing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hold on, hold on. Did everybody hear that? If your relationship starts like an interview, it will end in a rejection or firing. I keep thinking about this idea of slowing down because if it's meant to last, you have plenty of time. And the speed is what's going to make it break.
--:-- One of the things that I want to really focus on next, because Jay unpacks the four phases of attraction, dreams, struggle, and trust in the book, is I think my favorite rule of all eight is number four: Your partner is your guru.
--:-- Jay Shetty: I thought it would be that when you said your favorite rule. I was thinking it would be this one.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why did you think that?
--:-- Jay Shetty: I don't know. I just feel like you and Chris have such an incredible, hard work-based, genuine real relationship and marriage. I think as you spend more time together, you start learning so much more through your partner and from your partner. I just felt it. It was intuitive. I was just like, "Mel." I can see Mel being Chris's guru, and I can see Chris being Mel's guru.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Will you explain what that means? Because I think when you first hear "your partner is your guru," I didn't realize what it meant because it didn't mean what I thought it meant.
--:-- Jay Shetty: I want to encourage people to understand that this step comes as you deepen a relationship. This isn't something you want on day one. If anyone's listening to that rule and you don't read the book and you're thinking, "Oh yeah, my partner's my business mentor or they're my coach or they're my therapist," that's not what I'm talking about at all. What I'm saying is that as you deepen your friendship, as you deepen your relationship, as you actually get to know each other better, your partner becomes the one person who exposes all your flaws, all your weaknesses, and all your truths to you without even trying.
--:-- I'll give a personal example of this. When I first met Radhi, I didn't have anything. I didn't have a job. I was in $25,000 worth of debt. I didn't have any job offers or prospects, and I was being rejected by 40 different companies during the time we were dating. So I would tutor economics and subjects that I was great at in college and university to students, save up to pay for our dates. I always felt intimidated that we'd go on dates and I'd be with her friends or family and they'd be like, "Well, Jay, what are you doing? What are you up to?" And I really had no answer because I'd just come out of being a monk, and surprise, surprise, no one wants to hire a former monk.
--:-- Then it was really interesting because as my career took off, I started to hit these external milestones, and I'd hold them up — almost not physically, but mentally — I would hold them up and I'd be like, "Radhi, love me for this. Look what I just achieved. I did this. Love me for this." And she wouldn't love me more for that. So then I achieved something bigger, and I'd be like, "Well, look at this. Look what I did. Look what I did for us. Look how amazing I am. Love me for this." And she didn't react differently. So then I kept going, and then I held it up. And it was at that point I realized there's only two truths: either my wife doesn't love me, which I know wasn't true because she'd show me love in so many ways, or that there was something I was missing.
--:-- What I realized was I was trying to get my wife to love me for what I achieved when she actually loved me for who I am. She didn't teach me that by getting out a whiteboard and drawing bullet points. She taught me that by loving me only for my essence and who I was. Every time she would acknowledge me or appreciate me, it was not about the views or the downloads or the amount of people that were commenting. That was never the stuff she congratulated. The thing she congratulated was, "I really love what I learned from you in that moment today," or "I really loved how you dealt with that challenge," or "I saw that you were being criticized for this and I saw how you responded. That's what I love about you." Just in the way she loved me, she was teaching me how to love myself.
--:-- I think that your partner is the only person who can do that for you because they know you so intimately. The interesting thing is, a guru, in the way I learned from a guru in an ashram, gurus don't judge. They don't critique. They're compassionate and empathetic. They don't complain and compare to show you your flaws. They reflect the truth back to you just by being present with you so that you can see yourself. A guru isn't a partner who's telling you what to do or manipulating and controlling you, because that's ownership, not a relationship.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hold on, hold on, everybody. There was another one. The monk is in the house dropping the wisdom. I love making you laugh.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Oh gosh. You make me laugh so much.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But you just said that when somebody's controlling you and when somebody is — I would even add in nitpicking, criticizing, manipulating, judging, being cold with you, silent treatment — that's ownership. Will you talk more about that? Because I think there's a lot of people listening to you right now going, "Your marriage sounds amazing. And my relationship sucks because I do not have a partner that is like that. I have a partner that's criticizing me. I have a partner that is doing all those things that make me feel bad." So talk to that person and this notion of partnership versus ownership.
--:-- Jay Shetty: We come into relationships based on the imprints that our parents gave us, as we talked about before, or even our first partners gave us. We also have so much inside of us that's unresolved that comes out in four ways. These four things are comparison, criticism, complaining, and control. We think that if we do these four things, we feel better about ourselves, our partner may change. Overall, this is the language we've learned in how to talk to anyone.
--:-- What we do is we compare them to someone else, thinking that if they know what one of our friends did for their anniversary, then our partner will get their act together. No one in the history of comparison has ever changed their life because they were compared to someone else. You don't make someone act better by making them feel inferior. It doesn't work that way. People act better because they feel inspired to, they feel called to, they feel energized in their life, but we try and use comparison.
--:-- If someone else is trying to control you, it can often come in the form of care. It can look like care, but it's actually control. There's only one way to know: Is someone giving you care in the way you want to better you? Or are they doing it to make you more comfortable and convenient for them? Are they telling you what to wear? Are they telling you which of your friends are a good influence on you? When you hear that, you think, "Oh, they might actually care about me. They might actually care about me because they're telling me these friends are a bad influence, these friends are a good influence." But wait a minute, I've never actually told them what I even do with these friends. I've never even told them.
--:-- By the way, I did some of this when I met Radhi. When I met Radhi, I would look at some of her friends and I'd think, "Well, I don't think they're a good influence on her." And even if it came from a place of care, I realized that wasn't my position. Some of these friends had been in her life far longer than I'd been in her life.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. That whole paradigm of ownership versus partnership. I hope that's a ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Is somebody controlling you and trying to change you and own what you're doing? Or are they truly in partnership, supporting you with your goals and hearing you?
--:-- Jay Shetty: It applies the other way too, Mel. I think a lot of us who are in personal growth, who are in self-development, we have a bad habit of wanting to improve our partners, but not in the way they want, in the way we want. The amount of people that come to me and say, "Jay, I'm really begging my partner to read your book." And I'm like, "Please don't. Please don't." I mean it, because I want you to actually stay together. Maybe what they need to do is they need to watch one of my interviews with an athlete they love. Maybe that's what they need to do. Maybe they don't even need to learn from me. Maybe they need to learn from a completely different person. Maybe it's one of our friends. Maybe it's someone else. Maybe it's someone from decades ago.
--:-- The point is, are you trying to get them to the next step in their journey, or are you trying to get them to the next step in your journey?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, hold on, everybody. Did you just hear that? Because that is literally it. No, but I really like to stop.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Yeah, yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's beautiful. You do it so well. I just want everybody listening to get the wisdom that you are weaving together, because I think that's it right there. Are you trying to get them to step forward? You said it better. Something about...
--:-- Jay Shetty: I was saying, are you trying to get them to the next step in their journey? Or are you trying to get them to the next step in your journey? You may love listening to me and Mel, and that's beautiful. And I love that. And if your partner loves listening to me and Mel too, awesome. But chances are they might like learning from a different voice and a different coach and a different teacher and a different guide. And guess what? That's okay. Because what inspires them may be completely different.
--:-- I've had clients before where I'm working with the wife, I'm working with the husband, and they want me to work with each other. And I'll say, "If they want to, if that person wants to learn from me, I'm all for it. But we have to allow people to select their own mentors. We have to allow people to select their own path."
--:-- I'll give an example. There's a couple that I know. One of them finds knowledge and learning to be what growth means to them. And one of them finds service. So one of them will happily go to a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, and help out every week. To them, that's growth. And to the other person, reading books, listening to podcasts, trying to study and be better is their form of growth. Now, could we honestly say one is better than the other? No. It's just two different parts. And probably they'll cross at one point if we don't push the other person away. But sometimes we push away the other person so far that our parts of growth never get to come together.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think you also have to be present enough to know when someone that you love is pushing you off your path, that you're busy supporting them on theirs, but they are not meeting you halfway.
--:-- Now, one thing I am going to disagree with you on is that I do think you should send this episode to a person that you're in a relationship with, because I think it provides a tremendous amount of things to talk about. And it might not be the same things that you think you want to talk about.
--:-- There's one more thing I wanted to ask you. I just keep thinking about this idea that the whole purpose of your relationship is to help your partner achieve their goals. And if you're in a relationship where you are focused on their goals and they are focused on yours, that is true partnership. Because you are showing up in a way that somebody really feels honored and seen and heard and supported, and you will feel the exact same way. And it's so simple, and we make it so complicated.
--:-- You know, obviously we're friends, but I did research before you came on, and I noticed this article in the Telegraph, and I did not realize that you had officiated J-Lo's wedding. If you were to give someone listening — because I think that moment of a wedding, right, where you are really holding space for somebody's love and relationship — if you were to give the person listening right now one final thing to think about the purpose of love in their life, what would you say?
--:-- Jay Shetty: What a great question. I would say that we think that the greatest act of love is to give love, share love, feel love. But actually, the greatest act of love is loving someone so much that they learn to love themselves. That's the act of love: you have loved someone so beautifully and deeply, not that they feel loved by you, but that they've learned to love themselves.
--:-- I think that's hard. When we love out of ego and selfishness and pride, we make people feel impressed by how much we love them. I would not feel proud if Radhi would just feel, "I feel loved by my husband." That's great. That's awesome. I'd feel more proud if she said, "The way Jay loves me makes me love myself more." My only goal is to hope that the way I love them will help them fall in love with themselves, and that what I see in them, they'll see in themselves. And that what I don't see in them, they'll discover within themselves. So I think whether it's marriage, whether it's moving in, whether it's a long-term relationship, that's what I'd have to say.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Beautiful. And what I want to say is, in case nobody else tells you today, Jay and I want to tell you that we love you.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Absolutely. And we believe in you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Absolutely. And your ability to feel, express, give, and receive the love that you deserve in your life. And start noticing all the love that is there in your life. And you'll start feeling and finding the one that isn't. Because you are loved by your brother, sister, family, child, dog, cat. You are loved. You're loved by Mel and me.
--:-- Jay Shetty: You are loved. And if we start noticing how loved we are, we'll find that we're not as drained of love as we feel we are.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't know about you, but I just feel my heart swelling with love. So thank you, Jay. I love you and thank you for being here. I'll talk to you in a few days.
--:-- Jay Shetty: Oh, one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional.
