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think of james bond in real life barely

says anything not a hint of humanity

this would be a terrible person to have

a relationship with and we've been

taught that that's what women want

number one youtube channel in the world

for dating and new york's times

best-selling author matthew hussey let's

begin we have to dispense with this idea

that the one exists someone becomes the

one by what we build with them any

commitment long term requires true

effort i had an issue with my head and

my ear it created the darkest moments of

my entire life

i'd always found whatever was going on

in my life i could fix it

i couldn't fix it

if i removed it what would i remove from

matthew hassou

imagine that you're not being judged on

anything but how great a chef you are we

spend so much of our lives mourning our

ingredients don't aspire to have the

best ingredients aspire to be the best

chef

so without further ado

i'm stephen bartlett and this is the

diary of a ceo

usa edition i hope nobody's listening

but if you are

then please keep this to yourself

[Music]

matthew

before we started recording we were

having a conversation about how the

thing that gets you your glory in your

own words can often be your downfall

and it always tends to be the case that

the start of everyone's journey

especially when i sit here with people

that i consider to be anomalies like you

there tends to be some kind of anomalous

um

situation or trauma or exacerbating

factor that they can point to and say

that was probably

the the poke from life or the thing that

happened in my early years that resulted

in me becoming the man i am today have

you been able to identify exactly what

that is in your own life

i think so

to a large extent i mean we had a lot of

financial insecurity growing up and

i never knew if everything was going to

be okay or not

for me it was usually it started out as

a major

bid for control

i wanted control over my situation

and

i

i remember we were living in a in a

trailer at one point in my teenage years

and you know things were you know a

certain way at home and you know i

everyone loved each other but it was

there was a lot of tension as you can

imagine

and

i i remember going into school and

saying i'm

you know

i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that

and i would speak so

forcefully and aggressively

about where i was going

but it and what was funny is there was a

i remember a girl at school who had

never noticed me before

um

one of the popular girls she said my mom

wants me to marry you

and i said

i said why she said because she thinks

you're going to be rich

which

so for me

even though it's a fairly shallow thing

to say

there was something about that that was

interesting to me at the time because i

thought oh my god i

i've never been

further from that reality

but from the way i'm talking someone

really believes me

someone really believes that i'm going

to be something or i'm going to go

somewhere

but at the time i it what it really was

was i was just

afraid and didn't want to be at the

mercy of

of life didn't want to be at the mercy

of

whatever i had in my head as the the bad

out there that could come and get you if

you didn't

get control

and

and i think most of my early adult life

was defined by

an obsessive need for

control

when people say that to me i often

presume that that meant something was

out of control

well i think for me as a kid it was

because i felt like there were problems

when we had financial difficulties i

felt like there were problems i couldn't

solve

i wasn't

they were too big i wasn't able to do

anything about them

so

as i

as soon as i got the chance to go out

there and do something

that that became a kind of

obsession

and i think by the way combining that

with an insecurity

that i was just

desperate to feel

special in some way

desperate to feel important in some way

so

you know i defined normal as bad

whatever normal is and i always felt

like i had to do something different

i had to do something that was you know

when i was a when i was a i

my dad when i was a kid he owned a

nightclub

and i was a dj in that nightclub from 14

years old um he was a dj when he first

bought that nightclub uh he went in

there well actually the nightclub needed

a dj and they didn't have one so he

started djing that was how he became a

dj

and

and then through my teenage years i did

that but but i didn't just dj for fun i

mean i was like

you know while all my friends were going

to parties and doing that kind of thing

i was always the one djing the party i

was always the one working i was always

the one when everyone was going home at

2am i was going home at 2am to unload

the car and all of the equipment and you

know it but in my head i think it was

still coming from that place of

it was it was ambition but it was

ambition i think driven by a kind of

insecurity

control and i just wanted to feel

special

what was your relationship like with

with women in your early years so like

when you're 16

odd years old and we start to get those

first sort of

we think they're real but uh real

heartbreaks crushes romances

i was shy

i was i was quite it's not that i wasn't

i was

a likeable teenager i was

i was good with people to the extent

that i was

i was kind i wanted to be liked i wanted

to be close to people

i kind of got on with everyone at school

like there was no one there was no group

that i belonged to necessarily i could

hang with the guys who played football i

could hang with the guys who you know

played dungeons and dragons there was no

one there was no one that i didn't like

or get on with

but i

when if it came to someone i thought was

attractive

then it was i couldn't

i i could not be my

fun self my best self my confident self

then i would kind of freeze up

and that was

sort of you know in a way

i was

how old was i i was about 11 or 12 when

i first picked up how to win friends and

influence people off my dad's bookshelf

my dad was always into self-development

so i picked up that book and i was

i was

really immediately taken by this idea

that you could

be better with people

and that there were skills you could

learn that weren't necessarily the

things we were being taught in school

that that really could magnify your

impact or the opportunities that you

were able to have access to

and

as a teenager one of the ways that that

sort of manifests itself is oh i might

be able to talk to a girl i like

so

that was one of my early kind of

self-development journeys for myself

was just trying to get the courage to be

able to talk to someone that i liked

because i realized early on oh the

the girl that i'm dating right now chose

me

i'm dating her because she happened to

be the one who

asked me out or at school whose friend

came and asked me out on her behalf

and that's why i'm

dating this person right now it's not

because i

went to choose who i liked is because

someone decided they like me and i said

well i'm not going to have the

confidence to go and talk to someone i

really like

so i guess i'll say yes

and that was sort of i would say that

defined my early

sort of teenage years with girls when

you in your late teenagers what was your

i want to be this when i grow up what

were you thinking that your career was

going to be when you were 18 years old

at one point i thought i'm going to do

this djing thing this is going to be my

life and

my dream was kind of i loved

self-development i really loved i i was

14 when i got

taken to a tony robbins seminar really

in england

at the excel center

when i think of the people in society

generally that

are seen as special and important and

have the admiration of crowds it's

definitely the first two things that

come to mind is like tony robbins and dj

well i loved i loved music

that was something that

really is a

that's always been true in my life i've

always loved music even at my events

today music play a big part plays a big

part because i've just never lost that

love

but i also just love ideas there's

nothing more fun to me than just

discussing an idea but did you love the

the attention

and the admiration

yeah probably i know i did i i think i

still there's a part of me that

that can be hijacked by that

what are the symptoms of letting the ego

drive for too long

i think

firstly living in a constant state of

never enough

living in a state of fear that you'll

never

be enough

and feeling

ultimately disconnected

from

from from the results of things

from how good things are already

and

and when you when you achieve that thing

there is a

ultimately

uh

a scary moment awaits because it's not

it's not just a numbness there is a

there is a feeling of total

disconnection and when that happens

panic sets in

and it's a terrible feeling it's a

terrible feeling because

it then you really freak out because as

long as you're telling yourself

yeah life is really hard now but when

that happens it won't be so hard as long

as you're telling yourself that what you

have to hold on to is hope

and the hope will drive you even if

you're unhappy today

but when you arrive and it doesn't work

then hope goes away

matt damon won the the oscar at 27 for

good will hunting

and graham norton i always remember

watching this interview where graham

norton said to matt damon on his show

you know

how does it feel

when you were 27 and you won an oscar

something people worked their whole

lives to do how did you feel

he said i went home

my girlfriend

went to bed or went to sleep and graham

norton joked like so you didn't even get

laid on oscar night

he goes my girlfriend went to sleep

and i laid in bed and i i had this oscar

in my hand and i just felt so sad

because i imagined this

this version of me

kind of in a parallel universe that had

worked his whole life to get this

and then realized

70 years later that this wasn't it this

wasn't the thing that worked

um

and so i think that when when that ego

is driving and that ego is never fed

it's always hungry it's always wanting

more

um there is there is the danger of just

constant

comparison nothing ever being enough

and ultimately anytime you do get

something you think might be enough you

feel completely and utterly disconnected

from the result after

the initial high

of it which is no different from a drug

fix here's the hard part because we've

heard this a thousand times we all think

that

you know i get it i get it when you get

money it's not gonna make you happy when

you get status that's not gonna make you

happy when you become known that's not

gonna make you happy we all

we all can regurgitate that

and then five minutes later we're back

to chasing it in our own lives

and and what's curious to me is how do

you take something that is a

bumper sticker

phrase

and turn it into a kind of meaningful

practical way of

living and reconnecting so that you

don't fall prey

to not taking that advice that we all

can

say it because it sounds good

how do we do that

i

if you have a hazard i guess

i'll tell you well i'll

i'll talk about what

i do

i'm i firstly

am very

aware of the simple things that make me

happy

and i

i have them written down i was saying to

you before we started i'm a big note

taker i'm someone who

i believe winston churchill said people

occasionally stumble over the truth

but most pick themselves up and carry on

as if nothing happened

well

i would say the reason i write so much

when i feel something if i feel

something good if i feel an emotion that

i like

whether it's peace

or happiness or i feel connected

or i feel love

for something or someone

i don't anymore just pick myself up and

keep going when i stumble over an

emotion like that i i pause life

i go okay hold

on what's happening right now

why am i feeling this

i can just kind of treat emotions as an

accident

or i can try to bottle them

and figure out what's my formula

for getting to this feeling of peace i

feel peaceful right now

i don't feel peaceful a lot

this isn't like my tendency is towards

anxiety

i don't feel peace a lot so when i feel

peace i want to know how i got here

how did i stumble into this wonderful

room

and i look at it i go what's going on

around me

what was i just thinking about

that led to this thought that led to the

thought that

what what was the chain of thoughts that

got me here who am i with right now

what did i just do

because what i want is a formula for

getting back there again

an hour from now when life does its

thing because it will five minutes later

life will do its thing i'll read an

email i'll get a phone call

someone will say something that annoys

me and there is it's gone

i need a place where i can get back to

that and i need that formula

so i i call these emotional buttons

i have a list of emotional buttons in my

phone on my computer

and i teach this on my retreat

but it started from this was selfishly

just something i did for me and to this

day

is i'm always suspicious when someone

teaches something

but you never see them using that thing

you never see them doing that thing

i because not because that makes them a

hypocrite it just i feel like how

important can it be if you don't do it

this emotional buttons concept i live

this concept because

when i wake up in the morning what i do

is i immediately wake up and i look at

these little formulas

and usually there's one thing that

kind of triggers that formula

if i can the reason i call them

emotional buttons is because

if there's if there's one

idea or thought

or youtube video

or person even an idea of a person if

there's one thing that can connect me to

that formula

then

i can get there instantly

so like i don't know um

anthony bourdain who who i really

loved he did jujitsu and he was really

really into it

i do jujitsu most mornings when i wake

up and do jiu jitsu i don't want to do

it

i really don't

i'm so hot every time i come home from

doing it i'm like i'm so glad i went

that was so good i'm so why don't i do

this all the time

i almost

never feel like going

and

therefore i have emotional buttons that

get me to

to want to go to jiu jitsu i have these

little triggers one of them is a

two-minute youtube video where anthony

bourdain is being asked about jiu-jitsu

and he speaks about it and the way he

speaks about it

and because i feel connected to him as

an individual it makes me go

oh i want to go

i want to go.

or there was a rich role had a phrase

mood follows action

and that one phrase became an emotional

button for me because i went oh mood

follows action this is so great i don't

need i don't even need to feel

like going before i go do you write your

emotional buttons down somewhere yes yes

in your notes or something yes you say

jiu jitsu this is my exactly exactly

it gets that specific for me that they

become a kind of manual

for living for me now the reason i say

all of this even though this might seem

disconnected from the idea

of uh

of not allowing ego to rule and being

connected to what's important

is

is that this whole concept what it's

really about is being connected

in life

what i experienced a lot in my 20s which

was really scary at a certain point

was

on paper i'm doing everything that i

thought i wanted to do

i

when i was a teenager i was

i was reading self-development books and

talking about them for fun

i'd grab uni mates and be like let me

tell you about this thing that i just

read and i'd have some very patient

friends at uni who would be like tell me

more that's really interesting

i would do that just for fun

at 27 i'm doing it for an audience of

millions of people

with a best-selling book and tv shows

and all these things i'm doing this

on the most incredible level this thing

that i would do for free for fun

and i can't feel it why can't i feel it

what's happening

and

i had someone once say to me at the time

you're disconnected

and at the time i just couldn't i

couldn't even i didn't even know what

that meant

i just said i don't i i'm not i feel

somehow like i'm on the outside of my

own life

and

and what i've come to truly believe in

at my core

is that

so much of life is just about getting

connected when when we

you know whether it's simon sinek

talking about the power of why

or anybody who's saying you need to find

your motivation or

it all ends up being about the same

thing really which is

are you connected

do you feel connected to why this thing

you're about to do whether it's a

conversation with a friend or a podcast

or going to the gym

do you feel connected to why

that's even important to you

not important in the world and blah blah

blah everyone wants to change the world

why it's important to you

what makes it meaningful

to you

that level of connection a friend of

mine aubrey marcus put it

i don't know whether it was his or

someone else's but he put it as being on

the inside of the moment

when there's a moment happening do you

feel like you're on the inside

of the moment

or do you feel like you're on the

outside looking in

and and

every day i wake up and the first thing

on my on my best days there are days

where life gets in the way and i rush

straight into work and i always pay the

price for that when i rush straight into

work and emails and and all of that i

pay the price for that

but more often than not

the way i start my morning is to wake up

i

get out my emotional buttons

the things that remind me what's

important to me and what makes me feel

good and connect me to those things

and i read those and i write sometimes i

just write them out again

i don't get creative i just i just write

them out again and as i write them i

connect to them again

and i play beautiful music i play music

that makes me feel really connected and

usually not with words just just

a track as an instrumental

and that process

immediately begins my day with a feeling

of

of being on the inside of my life

instead of waking up and getting dragged

through my day

when we think about the things that make

people disconnected from their lives or

causes them to live on the outside of

the moment because i was as you were

saying that i was thinking about the

listener and i was thinking there's

going to be so many people listening to

this now that have

you know veered off course of alignment

they've been dragged they're good you

know there's something called the i

think it's called the excellence

syndrome or something or the curse of

excellence where you're so good at

something

that people start paying you more and

more to do it and you keep accepting the

money and what you're what you're not

ever asking yourself is you're being

paid more and more to do this thing that

you were good at or you were qualified

in is is it in alignment with myself you

get 10 years down the line and people

have these like mid-life crises or

burnout because they're so far from

themselves but the temptation or the

money or the the applause was able to

drag them away

um

from your from your personal experience

what was it that was dragging you out of

alignment we talked a little bit about

our ego there but was there anything

else that we haven't covered where you

go that is the thing that keeps drifting

me off course

it's interesting because i remember i

was thinking as you're talking as well

about the study about the impact money

has on our motivation and you can take a

task as you you know you're a kid and

you like doing personal development you

can take a task that someone once loved

doing and when they introduce

financial remuneration in the studies

people's motivation to do that exact

same thing drops

it's mad isn't it mad

yeah makes no sense well there's a um

there's a study that involves two rats

one of them is on a wheel

that

it controls

the the rat can run whenever it wants to

run

there's that's right a rat b

is on another wheel but rap b's wheel is

hooked up to rat a's wheel

so

rat b doesn't get to decide

rat a

whenever that rat runs

rat b's wheel moves and rat b has to run

they're both doing the exact same amount

of exercise

but

the results of the experiment are the ra

a has all of the markers

associated with

all the positive markers associated with

exercise

rat b has all of the negative markers

associated with stress um

they're both running the exact same

amount they're not do one's not doing

more exercise than the other but one is

choosing

and the other one is having to

when we start to think that we're no

longer choosing

when we're now having to do something

it could be the exact same thing

that we were doing before we used to be

rat a

but now because it made money and with

that money we went and

bought a house and we got an expensive

mortgage and we got the car and we did

this we did that or we just had the

expectation now because our identity is

built on earning that much money so it

might not even be the stuff that's

weighing you down it's your identity

that's weighing you down and the

perception you want other people to have

of you or retain of you

that now has turned you into rat b

you're no longer choosing

this thing

so i'm fascinated by that

idea and and i think that

as much as there will be people in life

listening to this who

have maybe grown tired of what they're

doing

and therefore have concluded that they

need to do something else

sometimes that's true

sometimes it's reconnecting

with what you do

from a different place

and there are a lot of people that have

convinced themselves that

happiness lies in a career change

happiness lies in them going in a

different direction

and we when we do that we glorify

everyone else's job

we think everyone else does a better job

than me everyone else has something more

exciting going everyone else has

something that oh i wish i was where

that person is

but

that's not true either

there was an imagineer at disney who who

was one of the main imagineers

responsible for a lot of animal kingdom

in disney world

and he got asked do you ever not feel

excited about a project you're given

and he said sure he said but my job is

to find

what's exciting

about the project i just got given

and i think there's something important

in that because we're often seeking

passion elsewhere instead of

creating the passion

where we are i'm not saying every job is

made equal

in terms of its ability to

allow you to do that

but i do think that um

there's a lot more room to

there's a lot more room to experience

passion within the confines of where we

already are than we think when we're

constantly trying to change our

environment to make things better

one of the three lines of like i guess

business but life in general and also

with relationships is and i really

wanted to ask you this because it's

something that i've seen in my dms from

people people sometimes message me about

relationships and one of the things that

i find concerning when i meet someone in

their personal development journey or in

my dm's talking about their boyfriend or

in other facets of business is when i

identify a lack of

personal and self-responsibility where

you meet certain people in life where

they just can never seem to take

responsibility they never want to like

look in the mirror and ask themselves

the question what role have i played in

this and i sat with lewis in london on

this podcast about a week ago or two

weeks ago something and one of the

things that really astounded me about

lewis was when he said something about

his ex-partner

even if it was it seemed like a fault on

the surface he would say and that's on

me and then end the little the paragraph

with why he was responsible even if it

was like you know she wouldn't let me

have females on my podcast or something

like that then he'd say and that's on me

and i remember thinking damn this guy's

gonna go far

so what role have you seen that part

taking personal responsibility has on

the the positivity of your outcomes

in dating life business and everything

in between

well i think that

to start with it it makes you a much

more likeable person amen

the idea of extreme ownership

is a in some ways powerful

but

we all know there are things that have

happened in life that

are not our fault at all there are

things that we trauma we have

experienced that it would be

insulting

to say that

we have to take responsibility for these

things

uh it would be sinister in some cases to

suggest that

but

if we can get into the habit of

genuinely saying

you know how this how this is affecting

me is something i can take

responsibility for and if i do it

actually gives me a shot at feeling

better about this thing it actually

gives me a chance

of

improving it because if i if i say i'm

powerless

then i can't have it both ways

i can't say i'm powerless and none i i i

have no responsibility over how i feel

and then make it better

i have to say

okay this thing is happening it's not

that it's happening is not my fault that

someone is making my life really really

difficult right now with what they're

doing their behavior

their abuse their whatever

that is not my fault

but

i want to get really curious

about how i can

handle this

in a better way in a more productive way

and the one of the things our mutual

friend louis howes who you're talking

about one of the beautiful things about

him

both

in front of the camera and behind the

camera

is that he is lewis is not a complainer

lewis is someone who

he'll talk about the things that that

he's struggling with right now or he'll

talk about the things that he's trying

to work on

but it's never from a place of being

the victim

it's always from a place of what what

can i do

which i think is different people i

think what part of the problem for a lot

of people is they conflate the idea of

ownership with fault

and

and that takes us into some really

dangerous territory it it's not your

fault that something's happening

but

you can take responsibility for

how you

how you turn that into art

i i thought about um

i thought about confidence a lot

in my career

and the injustices of confidence right

because the

we are not distributed things equally in

life you're not distributing things

equally at birth we're not distributed

opportunities equally

you know it's super easy for anyone

who's

objectively decent looking to talk about

you know

how easy it is to go and approach

someone or do this or do that and you're

like

you cannot even imagine

what it is for someone who has been

rejected their entire

lives

they are starting from a completely

different position than you in their

confidence it's so easy for someone to

say you just need to be confident okay

start from where i'm starting from and

then tell me that

you know

the

confidence is a really

again it can be a very insulting concept

but i do believe

that that there's a i there's a tv show

called chopped and i i'm probably i'm

not familiar with the show but so i'm

probably going to get wrong the concept

but in my head the concept of this show

is very very

interesting from the point of view of

confidence

i think

the chefs get given different

ingredients

so

you you it's like just

lucky dip what do you get

what's interesting is

if you get a basket of ingredients and i

get a basket of ingredients

we're both getting judged on what we

make of those ingredients

in that format it's what are you able to

do with what you have and what am i able

to do with what i have

and i think there's something really

fascinating about that because we spend

so much of our lives mourning our

ingredients

really being upset or frustrated about

what the ingredients are that we were

given

imagine that you're not being judged on

anything but how great a chef you are

because that show isn't about

ingredients it's about chefs

well imagine life isn't about

ingredients it's about chefs

don't aspire to have the best

ingredients

aspire to be the best chef

and the best chef

is going to be the one who can be the

most creative

with the ingredients that they have

i i'm fascinated by that because if i

apply that to my own life i just go

whatever thing that just happened i wish

didn't happen

whatever thing that's happened to me

this year that is so painful

so devastating so whatever whatever that

thing is

it just became a new ingredient

in my life

i can either judge myself or my

ingredients

which if i do that i'm always at the

mercy of the next thing that happens in

my life

something cataclysmic could happen in my

life and and i lose everything and then

what i'm going to judge myself and my

life on my ingredients

it to me it's always

how great of a chef

are you

ingredients are luck of the draw

being a chef

is something we can continue to get

better at our entire lives and it's

actually the

antidote

to whatever happens if you're a great

chef

you can cook something out of whatever

you have

it's such a such a powerful analogy and

it really really did like yeah i

sort of do what you probably do when you

hear an analogy you kind of test it from

multiple scenarios and it really stands

up and i was thinking then again about

when we look into that basket of the

ingredients we're handed if we if we

believe that the ingredients we were

handed are inadequate or inferior to the

chef stood next to us we're probably

also going to prepare the meal with a

certain level of pessimism that's going

to result in a worse dish anyway and the

the agony also of looking over at

someone else's basket of ingredients and

going [ __ ] oh they've got the ribeye

and look at me and that you know because

we both know the negative power of

comparison and how it can drive down

performance belief confidence and all

those things but it's a beautiful

beautiful analogy and sometimes

imagine if you took pride in being able

to still make even if you knew like this

ingredient is

this one sucks

like there's no getting around it

these ingredients i have right now suck

but you took pride in

look what i can make out of out of this

i get you made something amazing with

your truffle salt and your you know your

caviar and your uni like i get you did

something amazing with that no [ __ ]

look what i just did with kelp jerky

yeah it's a it's a real powerful um

analogy for privilege as well isn't it

because you know 100 because you then

you realize i'm in a different game

altogether

this is why comparison is so insidious

because

what am i gonna do compare myself

to someone who got a completely

different basket of ingredients and say

and by the way the basket of ingredients

isn't just what you got in life in terms

of circumstances or parents or whatever

education

your basket of ingredients is also

what you got here

you have a sharp mind

thank you

now

you've no doubt honed that mind you've

respected it you've honored it by

reading and by educating yourself into

all of these things

but you also started with a sharp mind

yeah probably i'm really it's funny

because i'm really bad at math english

and everything i'm good at the thing i

honed but you're right i definitely had

a predisposition like your speed

of like you hear something and you i've

watched you in in interviews and when

you talk your speed of how you

assimilate

information

and draw patterns you're good at pattern

recognition which is why from a

philosophical standpoint

there's a strength there right because

you're good at pattern recognition

these things

you just won the lottery on that one

like with your brain

you just happen to win the lottery on

that one

right that's this is going to be my

confidence button

gonna get this

those ingredients extend to everything

they extend to everything you you can

have grown up in the most dire

circumstances

but have a sharpness of mind that other

people can't even relate to

and

for that reason you've if you know how

to double down on that thing

anything can happen

i love the idea

and i think that everyone could

benefit from a kind of acceptance of

just

i'm starting from where i am forget

starting from when you were a baby and

you know all of the circumstances you

were born into and so on i'm talking now

forget what's happened forget everything

you've done i had a great brain but then

for 10 years i did a bunch of drugs and

then i hurt myself and then blah blah

blah whatever doesn't matter i think

about it like this imagine that you woke

up into your life right now and your

only job

was to make the most of that life

so forget the years that stephen has

already had your 29 right now so forget

the 29 years that have already happened

you this brand new soul is waking up

this morning into stephen's body at 29

with whatever his opportunities are and

whatever his problems are

it would be

awesome you'd be so happy for the

opportunity i'd be honestly

[Music]

terrified do you know why

because

i'd lose the lessons as well

and then i think i literally was

thinking of this soul coming down

getting my credit card and going and

buying a lamborghini

he was like he will go back to the club

you start with a 60 year old level of

wisdom but i guess you keep the wisdom

it's so funny i started i was having

this conversation with with uh my fiance

the other day and we were like

we would not go back to our 20s for any

amount of money in the world there is

nothing

i would not take i would not want those

extra years back

if it meant that i didn't have the

lessons that i have today that have

brought me more peace

than i had done

mo gowda sat here and he said when he

was the head of google x

he said that when they did the eraser

test which was asking people if you

could erase the most traumatic

experience of your life these are really

horrific things

but in erasing it you'd erase the

lessons that came with it 99 of people

said no

and it's the same thing it's like i

wouldn't even go back to being younger

if it meant that i'd lose the last 10

years of lessons as you said yeah

because

you you erase that trauma and and you

want to because my god who would want to

go through that but you're playing

roulette with your wisdom yeah who wants

to take that gamble and some trauma

not all of it got to be clear there some

trauma

is a consequence of a lesson we had to

learn and so if you're so

life will probably have to teach you

that lesson again in my my case whether

it's heartbreak or whatever it is or

failure there was a lesson i had to

learn about the nature of the world and

people and if you remove it then i'm

gonna have to learn it again that means

more pain

and that

that trauma that you went through even

if it wasn't a result of something that

you needed to learn

may have been the catalyst for you to

learn something that

is going to prove essential for

something you've yet to experience amen

there are things for me that

have prepared me for the rest of my life

in some way

that

i

i i had an issue with my um

i have an issue with my head and my ear

that bothered me

to say it bothered me is as

is ridiculous it

it created

the darkest moments of my entire life

tinnitus isn't it well i have tinnitus

right it's but it's not tinnitus alone

it's um

it's a it's a kind of a pain and a

throbbing that

that rides up through my ear and my head

it's been very traumatic because there

were times when i was there were times

when

i couldn't

i couldn't

imagine i didn't know what i was gonna

do

it robbed me of all of the joy in life

i i couldn't

i couldn't experience any joy i was so

it was so centralizing this pain this

chronic pain

and i would go through cycles of every

time there was some new treatment that i

thought could help

i would get some hope and that hope

would give me a momentary kind of

for a couple of weeks or a month before

the treatment i would feel uplifted even

though i would still be in pain i would

feel like

there's this thing that's going to work

and i'd talk about it to friends and

family i know i'm they'd be like how's

your head and i'd be like oh it's bad

but but i'm going to go and do this

thing and i did

so many different things and every time

when it didn't work

i would i would plummet even deeper

and

and it got so dark that i didn't know

i thought oh i'm not signing up for this

i can't do this i can't i i cannot do

this for another 50 years

in my head it was the closest i'd ever

been to suicidal

without

truly going there in a practical sense

it was a kind of conceptual thought

where i thought

i'm i can't i can't sign up for this for

the rest of my life

and

because i had

friends that i love family i love more

than anything in this world

staff accompany all of these

things i had a big life

there was never a real option it was

never like a real thing that i'd

considered

but i remember the thought that that

triggered

was

i am just gonna

live for the people that i care about

now i'm just gonna live for other people

whether it's my audience when i make a

video or whether it's by family or

whether it's my team who rely on this

company for their living

i'm going to live for other people

because

i i don't experience joy anymore

this just

this robs me of everything in my life

i'm always thinking about it 24 hours a

day there would be 15 seconds when i'd

first wake up in the morning where i'd

forget

that i wasn't that i was in pain for

just a brief moment

and then it would rush back in and i'd

remember

for me it was the first brush in my life

with anything it was my first brush with

something that

my

ingenuity my determination my ambition

my

intelligence my problem solving could

not

i'd always found whatever was going on

in my life i could fix it

i couldn't fix it and in that sense it

sort of became my first brush with

mortality because i went

i i just have to

i have to somehow learn

how to make peace

here and

in doing that

and and there's a whole conversation to

be had on how i did that but in doing

that

i've now

learned

to deal with something that i know in

one form or another is going to come up

again and again in my life

it may not be in the same context

it might be through

the death of somebody i care about

it might be through some other

traumatic circumstances i can't even

picture right now that are going to

happen to me

but i know that in the process of

handling that trauma

i have become more robust

in my ability to deal with

all manner of chronic conditions in life

that there isn't an easy answer to

if i removed it what would i remove from

matthew hussey

i mean

so

so much i it would remove

an extraordinary amount of empathy

look chronic conditions can come in the

form of physical pain but they can also

come in the form of emotional

pain and and there are people that

when they talk about being depressed or

when they talk about

struggling with anxiety

there's a chronicity to that

that they are dealing with that

is incredibly hard to understand if

you've always been able to make things

go away

there

there is something about a thing you

can't make go away

that

brings you to your knees

and truly truly humbles you

and

and so it wouldn't just take away an

enormous amount of empathy it would take

away an extraordinary amount of humility

to lose that would be to lose i think

the most powerful parts of who i am

today

do you still have the

[Music]

pain now

yeah

but i i what i learned

and this is true for many people with

chronic pain

is that

there is an emotional component

to it

and so

the way that i relate to it is

has the ability to either make worse

that emotional component or reduce it

the the pain is always there waiting to

flare up

and some days it's a four some days it's

a nine

when it's at four

i can get on with my life when it's at a

nine i have to almost do the opposite i

have to practice immense self-compassion

because i'm like you i'm like

i want to wake up every morning and get

after it and there's so many things i

want to do and that's like into a fault

i pack my days and i'm always trying to

and what it taught me was how to slow

down and not beat myself up for slowing

down

because there were days where i was so

miserable with it

that i had to learn how to just be okay

with being miserable today

i'm so unhappy with this today this is

so affecting

that

i can't

do that piece of work that i really want

to do i can't get that thing done i

don't want to hang out with people i

don't want to it

and once i let go of all the

expectations of myself on that day

and said you know what then [ __ ] it

let's just be in pain today

once i did that

that would impact the emotional

component of it

because now i wasn't i wasn't

upset about being in pain

and i wasn't

stressing about being in pain and i

wasn't beating myself up for being in

pain because i felt like

i'm i'm it would even sometimes go to

the core of me being a man

i'd be like i'm weak

i'm deficient somehow i'm not

this you know i don't feel able

and

that that made me feel like an elderly

person in a 30-somethings body

i was like what's wrong this is so they

don't beat myself all of this by the way

is just making the pain flare up

so when i flare up emote when emotions

flare up for me it goes straight there

for me

and

what i learned is oh that's interesting

because

the game now is

can i control stress

or anxiety or self-judgment

or any of the shame any of these things

can i control these

and get a handle on them and reduce them

because for me

there's a very literal consequence

to them going up

and there's a real benefit there's real

treasure to be had in

being able to get a handle on those

things so that again was a gift

very few people will be able to relate

to the chronic pain um experience that

you've had but people will be able to

relate to how their

out of control emotions have an impact

on their broader immune system so when

we get stressed we get ill like for me

in my life when i was running my my

company i would get ill

so rarely that when i did i would know

the email or the situation or the cash

flow issue that had caused it in the

preceding 48 hours i'd go ah [ __ ] yeah

you know and then i'd get a cold right

so it happened like twice a year and it

would always be typically always be when

we had a cash flow problem

um

is there anything you've implemented in

your life to get to get control of your

emotional sort of stress response that

life

you know will um cause because of

whatever's because life happens

whether it's meditation or something

else just to bring yourself back down to

a place of peace

one of the things that's important to me

is to recognize that

the actually what i need to be happy is

not

it's not actually that

impressive

if i get to

i have um

a certain i call them my criteria

my criteria are the things that

need to happen every day for me to

feel like

i'm living

a good life

and therefore my head hits the pillow

and i feel like

today mattered

today was a good day

and i've distilled that down to

a few key words create

move

learn

connect

appreciate

and contribute

interesting and i really thought about

those as like my my personal formula for

happiness

the reason that those words sound quite

vague is because i actually have

many many different ways of achieving

any of them

right now i'm writing a book

it just so happens that

every day i write is contributing to the

goal of producing a book but

even if it wasn't

it still ticks my create box every day

when i sit and write for

45 minutes or an hour

i tick that create box in my criteria

now it doesn't matter whether i'm

writing a book or making a video or

doing something else that's creative i

just have to take that box

i don't by the way have to tick it for

six hours a day

there's diminishing returns

if i do it for one or two hours a day i

take that box

movement or move

i typically i do jiu-jitsu or i do uh

boxing or i'm in the gym

but i could even if if you and i went

for a hike tomorrow i'd meet that

movement box with that

multiple ways of achieving our criteria

but it matters to me immensely

it's everything that i do meet them each

day

and an unhappy life for me is one where

i don't where too many days in a row

i didn't

hit those criteria

it has nothing to do with

how big my book deal is

or how many people watched a video today

or

you know it all those external things

that are stressing me out

because in that moment when i'm stressed

i've convinced myself that that's what

really matters

what helps me is stepping out of that

game altogether and stripping my life

back down

to the absolute basics

if today

i

call my mom or my brother and have a

a nice conversation to connect

if i

go spend an hour doing brazilian jiu

jitsu

if i

uh

write 500 words

if i learn something new from a book

if i help someone that's my contribute

if i help someone

i've done what i need to do

to live a good life

all the rest and none of those things

are dependent on how well everything is

is going in my life

and that that to me is really liberating

because it means all the stress that i'm

creating is is self-imposed

one of those boxes was connect

and you have

connected

with someone

who's actually sat in the room i am

you know you historically not posted a

lot on social media about your

relationship situations you've been as

you said in your own words on that

wonderful proposal announcement post you

did you'd been quite a private person

one of the lines in that that um post

you did when you announced that you and

audrey had become engaged was

and finally thank you for teaching me

how to love in a way that i was too

scared to before

i found that quite intriguing

i

i think like a lot of men

i struggled with

genuine vulnerability

we all have our fake version of

vulnerability

the you know

it's the version of going into for a job

interview and saying my what's your

biggest weakness i i work too hard

everyone's got their pr version of

vulnerability

it's vulnerability if on some level it

just makes me feel like i'm expressing a

part of myself that you might not like

or you

you know i can't control your reaction

to this and

i had been in relationships in the past

where i had revealed an insecurity

like

i was jealous of somebody you know i

felt threatened by somebody else

and

it was fed back to me that that was

unattractive

and in my mind

that

that kind of stuck

i think there is a especially in a lot

of men there is a kind of

there's a kind of double thing going on

in their head where they go yeah yeah i

know that's really important but i'm not

saying that

because if i say that she's not going to

think i'm cool anymore

i've spent a lot of time curating this

sexy alpha core image

that has attracted this person you

really think i'm going to jeopardize

that by showing an actual weakness

something that and i'm again i'm not

talking about the weakness of i cry in

movies that's not vulnerability that you

know that's going to be cute

you know that she's gonna see that and

go oh my god he's sensitive too

that's not vulnerability

real vulnerability is

this is something that

i never really wanted anyone to see

and

and i'm taking a risk

that when you see this

you're gonna still think that i'm what

you want

have you got something in mind when you

say that when you had a conversation

with audrey and you think now this is

one of the things where i wouldn't

normally have had the

safety i think that for me

times when i was anxious i would

normally bottle those up

and keep them to myself

i wouldn't express what i was anxious

about or what was doing that to me

times if we were arguing

where i wouldn't

really be honest about

why i was upset um

i'd give the kind of

strong version of why i was upset

the pr version yeah yeah but i wouldn't

give the real reason i was upset that

went to the core of me not feeling

enough

of me not feeling good enough of me

feeling scared of me

feeling like something was being

triggered that i didn't know how to

handle

sometimes even when i was in pain and

there would be other situations from my

past where i would kind of not want to

reveal how much pain i was in with my

head

because i was worried that someone might

determine this is not i can't

i don't want to deal with this so i kind

of keep it to myself

for a lot of guys their experience of

growing up wasn't one where being

vulnerable would have been rewarded

and then you add on to that the

additional layer of

as a guy we've been culturally led to

believe that being the

caricatured alpha male

that's what women want

and some of our experiences have

confirmed that

we lost out to the guy in high school

who was much meaner than us

and who we knew was not a very nice

person

but he had his pick

and that that's quite scarring for a guy

because you go what does that mean yeah

what do what do i so i have to be more

like that

and so we close parts of ourselves down

and and then it's and then you know

god forbid you come across or have a

relationship with someone who confirms

that yeah

now you really feel like i need to be

that guy

and and it can take a lot of

rewiring

and deconditioning to get to a place

where you go

oh the if i keep if i keep being this

way i'm actually going to attract i'm

just going to continue to attract people

who do value the wrong things who are

looking for an instagram

man

can you do that from the jump though i

was just thinking about some of my

friends in my head and i was thinking

they're going to hear that and i know

some of my friends who are actually

probably scared

of especially at the start in the dating

phase of

laying it out so they come they put the

makeup on they get the hair done they go

get the tan whatever and their objective

is i just need to keep this [ __ ]

person and i believe the way to keep

them is just you know keep trying to be

that sexy perfect at what point do you

go from sexy perfect to

listen i'm you know pretty [ __ ] up in

a number of ways

i think that we have to

there's a way to

firstly vulnerability in the beginning

of dating

isn't

it

well

vulnerability is is can be really

attractive

but not

in a way where you've exposed all of

your wounds

and the things you don't like about

yourself instantly and offloaded i guess

exactly there's a

you know it's fine to talk about

something that you're

working on or

you know even in a playful tone kind of

nod to something that you're not very

good at

but that's not the same i remember being

on a tv show

in australia

where

i

there was this one woman she was an

amazing woman but every time she went on

a date

it would just be a kind of

all on the surface laughing and just on

the surface on the surface on the

surface on the surface and i was like

part of the problem is these guys that

go on dates with you by the end of the

day

they don't feel connected to you in any

way and the reason they don't feel

connected to you is because there's no

real

vulnerability at that stage

so i said the next day i want you to

actually connect and be a little

vulnerable

now what she did with that advice is

when on the next first date

and told

the story of her dad getting in a car

accident

that changed her whole life in a really

awful way at the time

and

i was i had to say at the time

when i said vulnerability i didn't mean

go and tell the story of the worst thing

that's happened to you in your life

vulnerability

can be

paying someone a compliment

because in a way when you pay someone a

compliment you're handing them a little

power right not in a bad way but you're

saying like there's something great

about you and i'm acknowledging it and

now you know that i think that you're

great in some way

or it can be laughing at somebody else's

is joke or it can be

talking about something that you really

enjoy doing that's a little bit nerdy

that you you know

i might not put on social media all the

time but it is something i actually do

in my spare time that's kind of geeky

but i love it

sometimes or even if it's not geeky if

it's just something you're super

passionate about and you talk about

something with passion that's a

vulnerable act to to express that you're

passionate about something

is vulnerable because they may not think

that thing is cool or or even just to be

passionate is to be vulnerable

you might think that my passion is too

much or you might think it's silly or

so you could be vulnerable about the

right things early on and the more

someone gets to know you

the more you can kind of

let them in on some of the things that

you struggle with vulnerability isn't

necessarily revealing all of our

insecurities all at once

and one important reason for that

is because when we tell an insecurity

i tell you something i don't like about

my face

i'm telling you what to think about my

face

i'm not letting you have your own

opinion of my face

you can take the view that there's some

part of your body or there's something

you're

not a fan of in yourself you can take

that opinion

but you don't get to be the opinion for

everybody else

the reason we're saying it is because

we're almost trying to beat them to it

you know let me just tell you that i

don't like this thing about myself

because then i'll feel better that's out

in the open but i'm presupposing what

you're going to think

about it that's an awful quality people

have that self-disparaging thing it's

really insidious in many ways and that

isn't vulnerability

that's a different thing from

vulnerability vulnerability can be

acknowledging that there's something

that

you don't like about yourself all the

time that can be an act of vulnerability

but you have to suspect yourself if your

instinct with someone you don't know

that well is to immediately go to that

place

i've been in relationships where i felt

like my partner was trying to fix me

and it really is a shitty feeling

for men i think it really emasculates us

as well right we want to be

i guess perfect we want to just make our

woman happy i've been in relationships

where i felt like she was trying to fix

me

and it [ __ ] sucked

that's a rough situation to be in it's

really i had a conversation with her

about it where i was like

by the way when you when you do that

thing where you try and correct correct

me constantly what you're actually also

doing as a consequence is saying that

i'm not good enough

i remember having that conversation with

her fortunately she was someone that

could really listen but women i think

women and men

i only can speak from the perspective of

women because i've only ever been on the

receiving end of it from women but um

what do women need to know about that of

this because a lot of them do it they

they meet someone he might be they're

doing this he might be down the pub too

much he might be have this bad habit

this thing

what do they need to know about this

desire they have sometimes to try and

fix us

does it work where does it lead well i

think

people have to suspect themselves in the

beginning if they're choosing people

that they're not aligned with in the

first place

that i think is a the fixing thing is

often a big symptom of the fact that

instead of choosing a partner you chose

a project of some kind

right

and now i'm unhappy because i needed

these things from the beginning but this

person isn't doing them but i knew that

in the beginning it's not like i

suddenly found out that he enjoys going

to the pub

our first four dates were in a pub

you know

the guy likes a drink i i knew that in

the beginning and does that mean there's

a certain level of acceptance that's

required when you meet someone

well i think that we have to

we have to

um

to a certain

extent say am am i at peace with

who this person is today

because if i'm not

why would i get into a relationship with

them

i'm literally getting into a

relationship on a wager

that they're going to become what i want

what are the chances of that

it goes back to the point we were saying

about this inauthentic initial

connection when you you kind of you're

not really sure who you are

and you might also have a presumption

that the bits you don't like about them

you're not going to mention it just yet

or you know you're going to kind of

maybe not 12 months in you're going to

start mentioning that that's really a

big problem to you but you connected and

authentically from the start so

yeah i just i just i'm totally thinking

about my own experience of that and the

other part of it was hugely my fault in

the sense that i would compromise

so say that i loved watching the

football and she didn't want me to watch

the football or whatever

sure if i can turn the football off for

the first couple of months just to keep

happy families and then this resentment

starts building where you go i [ __ ]

miss the football and you're the reason

i can't watch it you know what i mean

again that's like i was inauthentic i

wasn't honest and we all in some way are

prone to that we we are trying to

we're trying to oil the joints of of

early dating so that everything moves in

this nice smooth romantic

direction and

and we kind of

if we're not careful we do end up

playing a part that we think will just

create the most

energy

the most good energy the most romantic

energy

i i think that what i've learned

as a personal lesson is

that i would

judge things very quickly in people

without trying to understand

what was behind them

like why

why is this thing important to you

why do you like doing this what is it

about this thing what because it's very

easy when someone's different

to how we are

it's very easy to decide what that means

yeah amen to decide what the intention

must be behind that yeah and then to

judge someone on that

and

one of the things i think would help

people because it's very easy to say

well date people who you already

like the way they are and don't date

people or don't go any further with

people that do things you don't like

that's a