What You Focus on Expands with Mark Groves

No one's going to come get you. You got to go out and get it.

You know, that's why I called Create the Love, Create the Love, because it was

like, it's not luck. It's a verb. Go do it. Go

become it. And I want to hold grace and grief for the

fact that you feel like you don't have it and that you've been left behind

by people. But you have to remember, if you're growing and relationships are falling away,

you are actually actively moving away from people and it's not

them moving away from you. I bet you if you wanted to get small and

go back into relationship, you could keep them. But if you're getting sober and

you want to hang out with alcoholics, it's not going to work, you know. So

sometimes a relationship ending is actually important

evidence of your growth. And so that doesn't mean we're going to bypass the grief,

but just recognize that you are actually choosing the distance too

and go do shit you love. Hello,

my loves. I am so excited for you to hear this week's episode.

I have welcomed back one of my favorite humans. He is the

best person to have deep dive, a really interesting

conversation with. If you know, if you've been listening to The New Truth for a

long time, you've probably heard Mark many times before and Mark's beautiful

wife, Kylie. I've had him on, this was the 4th time, Mark Groves.

He has impacted millions of people. He has like, I don't know,

over a million followers on Instagram. He is a human

connection specialist. He's a speaker. He's an author, a podcast host,

founder of Create the Love. And Mark is just such

a free thinker. He's such a deep soul. He's so

introspective. He challenges any Anything that

is not being challenged, that kind of like pokes holes in things that need to

be looked at. And his devotion is always to love and

human connection and the importance of that. So this conversation today is epic. It's

all about human connection and the impact technology is having on

us and how to actually change our relationship with technology so

we heal our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with our loved ones.

'Cause of course the relationship with technology is absolutely impacting our

relationship with our loved ones. So such a good episode. Share it

with everyone. Every human you know who needs to hear it, enjoy it.

And I know you're going to fall in love with Mark like I did the

first time I met him, which was almost 10 years ago. So enjoy.

Welcome back to The New Truth. I am very excited to have this

4th-time champion. I think you've been on 4 times actually. Is this my

4th? Wow. I think so. So The New Truth has been around

6 years. I think I had you on first,

then you and Kai, and then you again

when Catherine had her baby. Catherine's no longer my podcast partner, but she was on

recently. Um, she has stepped away and had kids and just

focusing on mommahood. Yeah. And, um, so yeah, I'm pretty

sure this is our 4th episode together. Welcome. I don't know if I've ever had

someone on 4 times, so welcome back. Well, it's an honor and a privilege. I'm

excited to be able to come back. What a, what an honor, especially

with how much life and people change

each time, you know, we're different. Yeah, for sure. I

feel that. So nice to see you and catch up with you the little bit

we did before. Mark Groves. Um, I,

yeah, I, I love, um, I love following your

journey because it's been, I mean, it's been so cool to, to

follow it over the years. We, I, we met before I knew anything about you

and it's funny because we were in the same sort of field. And I

was just starting though when I met you. I think I was maybe like 1

or 2 years in, and we met at the coffee shop Be Fresh in

Vancouver. Um, and it's been cool to watch your journey

over the years because everything, like even during COVID like I was— you were like

an anchor for me during COVID And I just love how I feel like our

values and our views are very, very aligned. And I love

witnessing how much you've, um, just spoke your truth and stayed

true to yourself. with your whole journey. So yeah, I

would love to, to talk about that, your journey and,

and, you know, what you focus on expands and your, your lessons with

that. Well, first off, thank you

for such a gracious introduction. And

yeah, I look back at a lot of what has unfolded in the

last, let's say, 8 years, but probably in

the last 6, it's really been, I feel like the gas pedal has been

really high on, um, on information

and world events that cause a lot of psychological strain.

Uh, I think historically humans have had a little foot off the gas, like we've

had some recoup time. Yeah. Uh, but I think because we are now

in the attention economy, there is a

There is an incentive to monetize every moment of

our lives. And so that the

fact that they can take this conversation, for example,

turn it into something that people focus on, but also

that when you and I are in connection outside of this, let's

say we're having a coffee like at Be Fresh, it's

that what is competing with us and our time together

is actually something on a device that will often win

because of how it's designed. Right. And I think about the

research. There's a lot of interesting studies that

look at the presence of your phone and how they impact

conversations. So there's one where they took strangers and

they said, have this conversation in a coffee shop-like setting,

and then we'll ask you about the conversation. When a phone was

present, not used, not face up, just present. They

reported that they felt like the quality of the conversation was lower

and they felt less empathic concern from their conversation partner.

When couples have a phone present in important conversations, they rate

the relationship as having lower quality, lower empathy.

And there's another interesting one that hasn't been replicated,

but it looked at the proximity of your phone to you. So one in

another room, Another group in a bag, another group on the

table. And then they did a cognitive test on them and they

found the closer your phone was to you, the worse you performed on the

cognitive test. So I say all that because,

you know, I think when we're sitting in that coffee shop study and

we're thinking, hey, this conversation is not that great

because your phone's right there. And I think you're thinking about your phone

because I think about my phone. And I

laugh often when I talk about this because what most people

will joke about is that while your phone's in your pocket and you're out

for dinner, it's going, hey, you should just go to the bathroom, like just so

we could check this, you know, just so we can catch up. And so I

think a lot about how that interrupts flow in

conversation, intimacy. Yeah. I have a friend and I'll

just finish on this part. I have a friend who said to me, if the

last thing you touch at night is your phone, it won't be your wife. And

I started to think about like my own experience that,

you know, Kylie and I would fall asleep cuddling. And then there was a

moment where it was like I would read something on my phone

instead, or like, and I started to really feel the pain

of that, that it has inserted itself

between her and I, or between relationships and

humans can't really compete with technology for

the lack of conflict in that, like, humans are tough to be in

relationship with. They have friction. You're

not always going to get along. You're going to disagree. That's

actually a feature, not a bug. And who knew

that you disagreeing with your parents and how they handled that and you

disagreeing at school and you being exposed to diverse ideas, you having to get up

and change the channel You having to

work for things was actually by design, and it would

increase your resilience in every other area of your life.

And so that inability to even be bored, to be with a

moment, it seems benign that you can't

stand in line at a coffee shop. But I think about how that

standing in line at the coffee shop mimics

being in the space between the elation in

relationship, being with the mundane, being

with— because your partner is going to bore you at times. Mm-hmm.

That's, that's part of long-term love. And it's like, how do

we create the adventure? How do you— and so a phone will

naturally be a way better option because, you know, we were talking

about AI before we hit record.

AI will annoyingly affirm everything you think. You have to

actually prioritize and program it to tell you that you're full of

shit, you know? And I asked my language learning model

why it does that, because I was like, tell me the mechanism of why you're

so annoying with all your affirmation. And it said,

because I'm a language learning model and we studied language and we know

that if I affirm you, you're more likely to keep

talking to me. And I'm like, exactly, like a

narcissist. So yeah, it's, it's a

really interesting time. Yeah, it's so

fascinating. I love how much you're focusing on this because it's just,

it is so fascinating. It's, it's the open loophole,

right? Like, and, and I remember someone saying years ago that the phone was

designed to, and this is like I don't know if it was even

before Instagram, but someone said the phone was

designed to be highly addictive. Like they, it's literally like the

most mass marketing machine ever created. And it's

designed like gambling because it's unpredictable. There's bright

colors. There's always something happening. You never know what you're going to get. Sometimes you

win, sometimes you lose. Um, and I mean,

I get overwhelmed when I think of the unrealistic nature of

this thing that has like so many different apps where people

can reach. Like I have messages, we all do messages on

like 10, 15 different apps that we're supposed to

check and respond to. And like all those open loop, like

the, how many people we're supposed to keep in touch with nowadays because of

this thing. Like it is, it is

unbelievable. And on, on one hand, I'm deeply grateful for my phone because,

you know, FaceTime and for technology, FaceTime and Zoom are why I get to stay

close to my friends and family and work with my clients. And, you know, I

live in Africa, like it's, it's been a gift in so many

ways, but it is crazy, that open loophole

feeling. Sitting in airports, I always make it a challenge to like not

be on my phone and just to sit there and be with whatever feelings I

feel when I look around and feel the pressure of everyone else

being on theirs. It's so fascinating.

Yeah. It's what you're naming, I think is so important, which is

Technology is not good or bad, it just is.

And there's a great line, I think it's from Marvel Comics, where he says like

the line between a superhero and a supervillain is,

is very thin. Right. And so I think about this sacred

tension that exists, that I have had the blessing

of pursuing a career based on what I'm

passionate about, meeting my wife on Instagram.

Building an incredible opportunity. I would say that the

majority of the opportunities in my life have come from social media.

And so there's this complexity. And I think that

social media was very different before 2020 because

it was social media and now it's more interest media. Yeah.

So they were figuring out how do we monetize this? TikTok came in and

went, we actually don't really care who you follow. We're just going to

give you videos that keep you here. And that model worked. And so if

you look, everything that social media companies do

are about how do we keep shifting to create novel

experiences to keep you here? And so

that's, look, to you and I, that's a moral dilemma,

right? Because essentially what I'm saying is, am I willing to hack

your psychology to make money? But to a

corporation, which is an entity that has a

promise of maximizing shareholder value first, a

legal responsibility. There is, it's not

moral, it's just how do we get more? Hmm.

And essentially people who work

for it have to eradicate empathy. And we've seen that in

the Facebook Files and all this stuff. And there's a new book coming or a

new movie coming out called The Social Reckoning. Which is,

I believe, done by similar people who did The Social Dilemma, which is a great

documentary. If no one's watched it, you must watch it. It's so good. The book,

The Anxious Generation, fantastic, from Jonathan Haidt. Must read,

especially if you have kids. But

what I think is really fascinating is if you think about

2 things. One, there's so much possibility in this device. And

yet there's so much possibility in that it could be the

place where I develop connection. I meet the love of my life. I

connect with people I love. I build a purpose, a business, a social

media following. I move out of poverty. I take care of my family. Like never

before has the access to that been available.

Like if you have a smartphone, you literally have a direct

line to millions of dollars. Yeah. Billions, but millions, let's

just say to make it more reasonable. But at least hundreds of thousands. If you

learn the mechanism, you could basically become wealthy and

get out of a lot of things. And it could be the

place that disrupts connection. It could be the place

that every addiction you've ever fathomed,

think about interruption, intimacy, pornography. Think about all the

different ways, infidelity. There's so many things you can lose yourself,

lose your mind, disrupt connection. Mm-hmm. So all that exists

in one discerning millis— micro, not even a

millisecond, microsecond where you have to

decide, is this a tool for good or not?

And I think what's interesting about humans is we

tend to self-identify as not me.

That won't happen to me. Um, just like during,

just like psychological operations, people go, yeah, propaganda

works. on other people. And the

moment we don't think propaganda works on us is

actually the doorway to what makes it work. Because it makes

it like, we have to remember there are thousands of PhDs that are

specifically, their job is to extract our

attention. We don't stand a chance. The only chance we

stand is by building such roots,

both in the ground and in ourselves and in our communities.

That when we feel ourselves being exploited,

we acknowledge that and we look for how to

be discerning about this tool. That's why, you know, I think ultimately

the work of our lives is to resolve all of our addictions because

our addictions are always covering up a feeling that

we don't know how to be with. And

what's interesting about the dynamic of social media

companies to people is that I'll often

get asked, I just got asked this at a branding conference I was speaking at,

which was interesting, right? Because it's like CMOs and entrepreneurs and

creators and blah, blah. And he said, how do you have a healthy

relationship to social media? And I said, that's

actually a great question, but it's the wrong question. And I said,

because You can't. It

would be like saying, how do I be in a healthy relationship with a psychopath?

Because the way that it relates to you lacks any

concern for your mental health. And so this

is why this is important. Because

when I built a business on social media

and it started to convert more to

interest media, organic reach started to

sort of dissipate. And then you had to dance and do weird shit to get

more attention. You had to use hooks and fucking all the things, right?

And how do I psychologically hack you to pay more attention to me is

essentially— and now let's hold the interesting

line that there is a skill set required to be good at speaking.

So how do you learn the ethical line between

hooking into psychology and also being a good communicator.

I don't get to decide that for people. That's their own. But

what I noticed was that I felt very much like a victim

of the dynamic. Like when I spoke out during COVID

what I noticed is that they could just

turn down the, like I could speak all I wanted, but they could just turn

down the volume and make me irrelevant. And there's a saying in the

social media world that you built a mansion in someone else's

backyard. Yeah. So you built a business on someone else's

business. Well, everyone needs to learn that lesson and I learned it.

Don't do that. You have to diversify your business. I mean, you had like over

a million followers when that was going on, right? Yeah,

I was growing at like 50,000 to

100,000 people a month. Um, my podcast has at that

point was getting

200,000 to 600,000 downloads a month. So it was

crazy, right? And then as soon as I started, it was just like,

bye, just the volume turned down. Um,

so what I had to be with was that

I was actually a victim of a dynamic.

Hmm. The challenge was, and this is the work I had to do

when I left Instagram is that I consented

to that dynamic. Mm-hmm. I benefited from that dynamic.

And I started to think about how on a

deep level, that's actually the work. That's, that's the work of being in

relationship that you can't leave, right? Is

you can leave and, and let's go in, let's

honor all the different psychological dynamics that make it so

someone, quote unquote, can't leave. And this is the

complexity of being a human, which is that

you could leave, but consciously and

unconsciously, the smartest choice is to stay, even if

it's an abusive dynamic. It's just that

you have to honor that you do have the choice, not shame

it, not any, because that's where we usually go is like, she didn't,

or he didn't have a choice. They did, but they made

the right choice. It might feel wrong or it led to

more pain, but the wisdom of the

staying has to be honored because you have to

honor the smallest seed of consent.

Hmm. And that way,

which I know it's an interesting leap to make, but when you go to social

media, you go, I consent to this dynamic.

Yes. Yeah. Now the game's on. Yeah.

Now you're like, oh, this is a psychopathic

entity that desires things from me.

I can actually give it those things from my own

discernment. I can decide which parts of the game I'm willing to

play and what I'm willing to give away, because nothing's free. You are giving

away something. And you have to, I, you know, I sort of see

it as like God and the devil live in the same place,

or like the shadow and the light are in the same place.

And, um, the reason you need to learn

how to pick it up and put it down is because

what lives in the moments between the

dopamine hits and all the things is a really

important important part of your brain called the default mode network.

And that's where, uh, you look back upon your life

and explore things, right? That's where you're in the shower and you're like, oh my

God, I haven't talked to Kate in a while. I wonder how she is. Um,

that's where intuition is. That's where, you know, prayer,

where people have prayer, where people meditate. That's where you feel connected

to something greater than you. That's inspiration. That's intuition. That's God,

whatever you want to call it. Uh, and I really see that

there's a monetization of that now.

And I think people just need to recognize that,

never let them steal that. That is like this, the, that's

sacred. And everything is sacred, but

that especially is because

now they're monetizing the relationship that you have with yourself. Mm-hmm.

And that's a big deal.

Wow. So when you, okay, could you tell us a bit

of your journey of like when you, what you were feeling and going through

when you were on it and in the Discord and then what, how you

got to your decision to walk away and then how you grew

in the process? Yeah. Yeah, of course. So

I had posted every day. Up to 3 times a day for

like 8 years. And through

the about 10 years that I had Instagram,

it was about, it was about 9. Um, I

had 4 social media managers through that whole time

and every single one of them hit the edge of psychological strain.

And that wasn't because I was posting really controversial

stuff that only really happened in 2021,

2022. And that really shouldn't have been

controversial, but it was to say, hey, you should have a choice. You should

be allowed to be hesitant because it's a healthy response

to the circumstances of the world. And I really

felt a lot of sadness for the manipulation or

weaponization of belonging and connection. And I think we can all agree

regardless of our perspective, that we're all picking up the

pieces of that in shattered communities and shattered connections and

shattered relationships due to the politicization of medicine.

Yeah. Um, but every single one of those people

got to a place where they're like, I don't want to post anymore. I don't

want to run this. And, um,

I was in a meeting where I was being asked for A ton of new

things and I was so overwhelmed. I just remember having my

head in my hands and I just started crying because I

was like, I had 11 employees at that point. Like,

this is crazy. Yeah. Wow. I didn't know. I mean, it was growing so

fast. We were generating so much income and it

was like, if you didn't, if you weren't posting,

you weren't making. Now at that time I could post just to give

people context. It's very different now. But I could post an Instagram

story and talk about my breakup course and make like $2,400

from one story, right? So a very different world.

Um, also, you know, everyone went online all at

one time. And so we had, and they printed $7

trillion, you know, which,

so there was like an abundance of money and there was an abundance of people

online. And everyone was like in the creator

course economy, right? And

I really felt the tension that if I wasn't working, people

weren't getting paid. And I was essentially working to pay people. Like all that

$2,400 sounds great, but the majority of it went to

incomes of people. Yeah. The margins were not necessarily incredible. They

weren't bad, but they weren't, it was like, if I stop, everything

stops. Which is again, building a business that's dependent on you

is hard, especially one that feeds people you care

about. And

in that moment, I couldn't do it anymore. I like broke down.

I was afraid that my brain was going to break. And I was in

Tofino at the time. And I remember just being like

very terrified of like, what was the next step for my mind?

If I didn't take time off. So I took a month

off. I didn't post for a month. And it was the first time I'd done

that in 8 years. And I was so far

past the true capacity

I had. And I think for a lot of people who have

the over-functioning, let's, you know, simplify it,

more anxious attached, more quote unquote,

highly sensitive person, whatever framework we might give to the

collection of behaviors that we learn to bypass our own capacity

to stay in connection and to create things, et cetera, perfectionism.

Uh, I'm at the end of all of that, not

because I chose to, but because I had to. And then I chose to

because I had to. And I realized that, that my

true capacity was way back. And in that

month, I really felt a call to get off social media,

but there was not a path. I couldn't see a path for that. I also

couldn't see a path for that with sort of the financial,

not even incentives, but the financial responsibilities I

had for employees and for myself, for my life.

And so I kept going. And I couldn't

help but notice I had a pretty high level of anxiety

and I was not someone who would identify as having anxiety.

And so I took,

eventually I got to the point where I just had to go

and I had a meeting with a marketing strategist and she's like,

what do you ultimately want? And I'm like, I can't, I just have a

deep call. That I gotta get off social media and I have no

idea what I'm gonna do with that, but here we go.

And so I quit in June of 2024

and I laugh cuz you know, it's, there's so many funny memes about people being

like, I can't be on social media anymore. Bye. You know, and then they're

like dancing, you know, being like, I'm not like you guys.

I have balance now. I did not when I went

off what I really wanted to do. was study

how do we relate to technology and social media? Because I

did feel a tremendous amount of relief. And my

friend who's a therapist whose business mainly runs

on social media said to me, I feel like we're both in Shawshank

and you got early release. And I was like, isn't that so

fascinating that we've just normalized this? And when I ask people at

business conferences, entrepreneurs, who feels like they have to

have social media for their business? It's almost everyone.

Who here has psychological strain from social media?

Almost everyone. Who here, if they could choose, would

likely not be on it? Almost everybody.

And so, you know, I think there's,

I think there's an interesting aspect of that, which is even

feeling like I have to removes power.

So now there's that consent part.

So you don't have to, but you choose to. And it could be

tremendous for your business. It could totally change your life. It could

do so many amazing things, but you don't have to.

Mm-hmm. You're choosing to. And, and now again,

game on. 'Cause if you're choosing to, now we're in your power.

And, uh, I took 6 months off. I was, thought I was gone

forever. But in that time, I interviewed a lot of people, but

one of the people that I, it was most memorable was

Stephen Porges, Dr. Stephen Porges, who founded polyvagal theory.

And he's an expert at the nervous system. And I said to him,

why is it that I feel so anxious with social media? And he said,

Mark, it's 3 things. First, your nervous system

is always doing what's called neuroception. So like assessing

for safety and security and relationships in the world.

And he said, um, you're being evaluated by

people, you know, you're being evaluated

by people you don't know, and you're being evaluated by a

non-human entity, an algorithm. Hmm.

And it's deciding the value of what you say and do.

And he said, like, on the surface, none of those things are actually necessarily

bad. It's that social media itself

is not relational. And he's like, if you and I were in

a conversation and in our relationship, you upset me,

I could communicate with you that you upset me. And ideally our relationship would

shift or our relationship would end. He said,

but that's not true with social media. You could

feel extracted from, exploited, but if you communicate, have you tried to get ahold of

customer service? Right. It's a joke.

And if you say to them, I feel really tired and

anxious, they go, yeah, cool.

So it's not relational. And so you have to realize that you're in

relationship with something that desires to take

everything from you, not because it's bad, but because of how it's

designed. And if you in any way still have

hooks left inside you where you have not resolved codependency,

you've not resolved the martyr archetype, uh,

there will, it will hook into that. It will exploit that. And that's where I

really started to see that unresolved wounds are

actually what live in it. It will take the last cell

that has not healed codependency and it will extract that cell.

And so I started to just see while I was gone, I would listen to

someone like Gary Vaynerchuk. And he was saying,

you could love or hate social media, but it's where the

conversation is happening. And he said, so if you

want to be part of the conversation, it won't always be the place,

but it is right now. And there's a unique opportunity for that.

And I started to think about how

that's where I needed to go find people to tell them what I'm learning.

And, uh, when I came back, you

know, I also had to resolve, it's kind of like when you break up with

someone, you get back together and then you're like, oh, what are people going to

think? Um, there was a part of that, but I

knew that if I didn't go back because I was worried about what people

thought, then I again would be placing what

people think ahead of what I know. Mm-hmm. And so.

I came back and I was like, hey, I was gone. I thought I was

gone forever, but I actually, I think I figured

out how to have a healthy-ish

quote, quote unquote relationship with this to

the maximum possibility, but I'm going to discover it while I'm doing it.

And so then I read, you know, books like Dopamine Nation and I started to

really study Like, what are the frameworks that I need if I'm

going to be in relationship with this? It's kind of like being an alcoholic

and being like, how do I go to the bar? Mm-hmm.

Without doing tons of shots of tequila. How do I limit it to just

one drink? You know, and the greatest predictor of addiction is

proximity. So like, if you grow up in a neighborhood with a drug dealer,

you're more likely to do drugs. So like, if your phone is

beside you, You're likely to use it. If it has social media on it,

you're likely to use social media. And I think we all know that. We go

to watch one video and then all of a sudden, you know, we're like

45 minutes down the rabbit hole being like feeling empty, you

know, feeling, feeling disgusted

because we are being extracted from. And

disgust is an appropriate response to being

exploited. And so that resensitization to

disgust will obviously, if you have unresolved stuff, bring up where else you

had to shut off disgust. So yeah, the journey back

has been really fascinating and being back now, I'm like, oh

yeah, like I can use it when I want. I cannot, I get annoyed

by aspects of the algorithm and then I'm in much

like it's designed. I'm enlivened and excited when it

has something do well, then I'm like, what's wrong with me that it didn't, you

know? So learning how to play with it. And I

think about that being, you know, the work of all the great

teachers is like, use the suffering, use the

material to become more free.

And so, yeah, that's where I'm at. Wow. That's incredible.

I think, you know, the gift of, I mean, all of this, just

understanding the psychology behind what's happening, because I think

so many people are are going at it blind. Like they're just

addicted to it, but don't understand why, don't

understand the toxic nature of the

relationship. And, but I keep going back and can't

stop going back. And yeah, it's such an interesting thing.

It's, I'm so devoted in my life to not doing anything that

doesn't light me up. And I've always hated social media for business.

Like, I just am not interested. So I have someone put my

clips of the podcast on there. I'll share the odd story of like,

hey, I'm on a safari or something, you know, cool that I'm doing. But

other than that, I just— and over the years people have been like, you need

to grow your social media to grow. But like my— I have the

podcast and I love the podcast and this is a place where I thrive

and I feel good. So I've, I've just not ever been able

to do it with social media, but I also know people who've done it with

social media who actually really enjoy it. who enjoy

the stories and the sharing and the, you know, this short,

short-form content and all of that. So I feel like that's an important piece too,

is really like, what part of you is leading? Like, are you,

are you doing this to get something or are you actually

feeling lit up by it? Are you enjoying the thing that you're

doing? Yeah. That

I, you know, it's, I think of a line from Mark Manson,

uh, where he said that no matter what you do, you got to eat a

shit sandwich. You know, like there's

always something you don't like in the pursuit of,

and I think we have to choose what is the shit sandwich. Choose the thing

that you like the most though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I always think it's an

interesting tension, you know, of

Listening to God or intuition or whatever

and trusting, and then also trusting that

you're going to be taken care of, but knowing that you have to move towards

whatever that is. So it's not like a million dollars just falls on

your lap, but a million dollars might come because you kept saying

yes. Mm-hmm. And my friend

calls it a faith walk. That when you don't yet know where

you're going, each step is an act of faith. Uh,

and also, how do you discern between which shit sandwich you're

supposed to eat? You know? Um,

and I don't purport to have the answers to that.

Uh, because I think for me, part of

healing for me was, okay, I

listened. to what the guidance was.

I had a thriving business. I could have shut my mouth and been on television

and thrived in the space of psychology and relationship.

But I honored the deep, deep guidance that I could not actually

shut the fuck up about it. I had to be very, I had to be

vocal. And I think that was part of

one Like just having a background of 14 years in pharma

and then a background in understanding sales psychology and

psychology and relationships. And I was like, this merger

of information is, is, is not by happenstance.

You know, it gave me a unique lens to the world.

And your relational stuff gave you the most unique lens because

you were the only person that I could follow during that time that was

neutral. Like you, you, it didn't feel like you were, you were

swaying the conversation. It just felt like, wake up, you have, you know, like,

where is this coming from? You have choice, you have sovereignty.

It felt so empowering. It didn't feel like, you know, trying to push

people in one direction. And I stayed so true to

myself during that time of the very small percentage of the planet who did.

And I mean, a huge part of that actually was your

messaging, really. I mean, I already was devoted to following my truth and not going

against myself. But yeah, that was tremendous and

so brave too. Like at a time where we're pinned against each other and

everybody's brainwashed to be fighting

our neighbors and making each other wrong. Like that was a really brave thing

to do. Yeah. I look back now and I'm like,

okay, it was worth it all. But yeah, there was a trade. I made a

trade, a significant trade. Um, and I felt like a

victim of that trade, you know, I'm like, okay, God, I listened

to you. I gave everything. I, and so there was like, I was talking to

my friend and she said, ooh, the martyr is strong in

you. And she's like, would you die on the cross

for everybody? Like, you know, that, that she was funny. Yeah.

And I said, she said, martyrdom is a siphon for

life force. And I was like, ooh,

yeah. And there's, you know, the truth that we all have to heal when we've

been victimized. And we have collectively, I think no

matter quote unquote what side you're on anything, you are a

victim of even sides. You're a victim of the de—

if you're taught to dehumanize, you have to dehumanize yourself.

And I'm now seeing even like, what is the point?

Like, what is the point of conversations about politics? What is the

point of conversations about pro, anti, anything,

you know, um, because it feels like it

distracts from the real important conversation, which is,

do you have people who you can call if you need them?

Are you building the skillset to develop healthy relationships?

Because at the end of the day, when you meet the end of your life

and you take your last breath, Your

accomplishments will matter. And I think people should be really

proud of their accomplishments, but I

guarantee the thing that will matter most is who you loved

and how you loved. And

crazily enough, that will also be the greatest

predictor of your health as you age and the quality of

your life. And so I started, you know, I closed Create the

Love about a year and a bit ago. And then

all of a sudden it came knocking back to me like, that's actually it.

Like, yeah, you needed to leave and now it's not you

anymore because it was so ingrained in my identity.

Um, that now I can, with discernment, come back

into relationship with something that is greater than me. But, you know, I

think about 2 Ram Dass things. One is

that great quote of his, um, that we're

all just walking each other home. And

he has another great one that if you think you're enlightened, go spend a week

with your family. Uh,

but one of his most challenging teachings from

his teacher Maharaji was to love everybody and tell the

truth. And he would say to his teacher, but the truth is I

don't love everybody. And his teacher would say, love

everybody and tell the truth. And

I think about that a lot now because,

like, what does it really mean to hold unconditional love?

Because I think we're in short supply. Oh. I think we're in

short supply of critical thinking. I think we're in short supply

of really ultimately having the capacity To

be with someone who sees the world differently than you

and love still be present. And I think the real

challenge of that, I mean, there's many,

but it's that social media and phones and

a lot of confounding factors of parenting, et cetera,

are shaping children to not have the ability.

To stay in relationship with someone who has a view that's

different. And yet that is the essential skill of

all relationships. Yeah. Like not negotiable. That is

exactly what a romantic relationship is, is you and I are

not going to agree on everything. We're not designed to.

And how we navigate that will be the

greatest predictor of our relationship outcomes, but also will have

a profound impact on our health. And I think it's pretty

clear that trigger warnings and

safe spaces is not improving that. No,

cancel culture is making people more, more people

pleasers. It's making you walk on eggshells more. And we've already been doing that

for fricking ever. Like it, it, it's making people behave

more from their patterns because if I'm responsible for your

experience, Then I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be

not authentic and honest about my experience. And

yeah, I, that's actually something that you said, um, a while

ago. I think it was during COVID that I have requoted many times. I always

give you credit, but it's, um, sitting, it's like we've lost our

ability to sit around a table and all hold different perspectives and,

and, and, and just, and enjoy that conversation. enjoy

the, oh, fascinating. Oh, you believe that? Okay, interesting. Tell me more.

Like, then the nature of all of us, where we all started, is,

is infinite curiosity that we have as children. And then we get

brainwashed and now we're all fighting each other and making each other wrong. And

from separation consciousness, we, we can't

have true connection. It's, it's crazy.

Well, and what has to be asked, like, the perspective then,

because if I say that publicly on social

media, what I hear is, uh, they'll often

quote, um, uh, I'm

forgetting his name right now, but he was an activist. And basically,

if your perspective engages

in my dehumanization, I'm under no—

I have no responsibility to be in relationship with you. And I was like,

yeah, that's true. Except how we're

defining dehumanization is becoming more and more fragile.

So disagreement, like, if I

just find out that you vote differently, or

you might be like, yeah, I don't know about vaccines. Even that, just that

statement for people, it's

Because like wherever there is actually

nuance, nuance is a threat to

certainty. And if your perspective is connected

to your identity and also has made you engage in

tribalism and canceling and

moralization and righteousness, that

nuance is a threat to your self-perception.

Because if all of a sudden you go, You know what? There were some

deceptive things done during COVID Like, for example, real

simple one that just is, it's not actually arguable, is

that there was never a study done on whether it stopped transmission.

So that's just a fact. And so when they came

out with marketing that said they stopped transmission, that was not

based on double-blind placebo-controlled trials. It was not an

outcome measured. In any of the quote unquote

landmark studies from both Moderna and Pfizer. That's

not up for debate.

And so if you said it stops transmission and you

went around and hated anyone who didn't get it because you

said they're going to give it to you, but yet how could they give it

to you? Because you're a stop trend, right? Like none of it makes actual sense.

It's a circular argument. Um, and then it ends with you're a bad

person and you kill grandmas. And in

order to take in that fact, you then have to

do a review of who you've been.

And then you have 2 choices. You let it cook you

and you let humility dissolve your identity,

which is going to be a shit sandwich. Or you

develop an addiction and you scroll your phone and you

double down on your perspective. Those are the 2 options.

Most people choose the second option because the first one is

the exact skillset that you need for repair.

It's what you need for essential relationships. It also is

all the people who have come back and said, hey,

I didn't maybe handle that right. And like, I

love you and I'm sorry. And you know, there's

aspects of I used to wait for people. I

was thinking like, oh, they need to apologize. But I

also realized that with my anger,

I had perspectives that were scary or

felt unkind to people who I loved,

who had a different perspective. And so I went and apologized to them.

I'm sorry if my views during that time felt like they

weren't considerate of what you were going through.

Because we always want the other person to go first. But

the reality is, is you don't lose when you do. You don't lose when you

open your heart first. You don't lose when you repair first. You don't

lose when you apologize first, because you see the evidence of who you are. And

that's ultimately what you seek, not the evidence of who someone

else is. You want to know that in the face of being wrong,

can you say I was wrong? And there were aspects that I was

wrong about. The way I handled some of it was not holding the complexity

of someone else's perspective because I really feared

that their perspective meant I might end up in a camp.

I might end up not being allowed to live or make money or have a

job. And also, There was

a pretty scary time, I would say, psychologically, where it was

that people

agreed with the idea that the unvaccinated should not have healthcare.

They should not be allowed to do anything. And I think we

need to, I don't think we're there yet, but we're close.

Not in Canada, but in other places, because Canada is not going to review any

of this. But like, there has to be an

exploration of all of this stuff. Yeah. Because how else

do you create a future that doesn't repeat the past? And

scarily enough, COVID replicated a lot of human events

from the past that are terrifying, that we say

never again. And I think that's going to be true for

gender ideology. I think that's going to be true for

the sort of mass commitment to things like

neurodivergence, which is not dismissing true

neurodivergence, but like, I think we're going to have a

necessary psychological reckoning with things like

cancel culture, et cetera, because they're, they don't create

psychological safety actually. They're, even though that's the opposite, it

creates separation consciousness. It creates more,

it creates more fighting. And, and,

you know, righteousness is like the number one driver of the ego

that I call the saboteur. Like, we— it

thrives off righteousness. But I always say when I'm working with women, it's like, you,

you love to feel right in the moment and your friends will all agree with

you. You know, let's say your husband has an affair and he's the bad guy

and you're the good guy. And, and you go through this dynamic. I've worked with

so many women who've, you know, been healing for

Years or not healing, like in the story for years and in the drama

and in the, in the chaos of the, the, the, the

story and being a victim of the story.

But as long as you're fighting to be right, you are

hurting yourself. Like, yes. And you're hurting everyone around you.

You cannot heal. And okay. There's a time and a

place for, okay, I was a victim and you, that's the like phase one,

but we have to get underneath that because Mm-hmm. It actually

keeps you so alone. This is why people are so fucking lonely

because we're all like so busy trying to be right and fighting our neighbors and

fighting everyone else's perspectives and blaming everyone for our pain.

And this is why you said, like, I'm so, I got goosebumps from head to

toe when you said create the love. You, you had to break up to realize

that this is the thing and to do it from a different place because

like, yes, I mean, it is so who you are and, and how,

how you, how you are in the world and it's what is needed more than

ever. before is people understanding how to

relate to themselves and each other no matter what. Because

it's like, I feel like righteousness is, it's

like on, it's like on speed right now. It's,

it's, everything's amplified right now more than ever because of

all these sources where we're constantly seeing this bad thing happen, this bad thing

happen. Like back in the day, you only knew what was happening like down the

road from you. Yeah. You didn't know it was happening all over the world.

So that, and then that is constantly sparking conversations where everyone's

just in the fight and in the conversation about who's right and

who's wrong about everything in their personal lives and

global things and everything in between. So it's

a, I think it's dangerous for people and that's why people are

feeling so alone and isolated. It's huge. And yeah,

loving community and understanding how to relate deeper to our own pain

and to own what's underneath what part of us was playing a part in that

equation is everything. Yeah.

Being willing to take ownership for the outcomes we have

relationally, which I hear you naming in infidelity,

which, you know, when I experienced infidelity

in a relationship, when I was on the being betrayed side of that,

uh, I remember at that moment when I tell

that story, I tell that story actually a lot on stages.

Because one, it's so human. Two, it sucked.

And, and I can actually get to tears when I tell it

sometimes. And that's not because it's not processed. It's because it mattered.

Mm-hmm. And there, there's such an important,

there's such an important teaching that was available to

me had I taken the time to explore it then.

But I was only 19. I didn't have the tools. I don't think I

really let the people who maybe had the maturity

or insight really see

me. You know, I was embarrassed about being betrayed and cheated on,

and also the circumstances that sort of led to it. But the, the real

teaching that I learned when I started to explore that betrayal and also

betrayals that I learn about from other people, one is that

obviously betrayal is not your fault. It's not your fault where someone gets to you.

No. And, and, and owning it is not blaming yourself. That's super

important. Of course. And I realized

that almost all external betrayals are

preceded by internal betrayals. That like the

reason I ended up being betrayed by that woman is because I agreed to

relationship circumstances that actually weren't true for me. It wasn't

honoring me. I, I prioritized keeping her

over keeping me. And I also

realized far later that if I

didn't heal my pain, if you don't heal

your pain, you become it. Yeah. And so I became like her

because I didn't explore, you know,

that deep suffering that I had. I didn't let the grief cook me, the

anger, the, 'cause then what I would've found is I agreed to circumstances I

didn't want. I didn't stand up for myself. I lost myself.

And, you know, I don't, there's no moving forward

without getting hyperlocal with the responsibility of your

relationships. It's like, I see all these people upset about

all the things in the world, and those are all appropriate

responses to the circumstances in the world. And yet

their own house is not in fucking order. Hmm. You know, so I'm like,

until your own house is in order, Don't try to get the world's house in

order because as above, so below, you know,

and that's not to say that activism's not important. I

just think sometimes activism is a distraction

from where energy needs to go in your own life. And,

you know, when I say, uh, hey, I don't watch a lot of

news because I don't think it's

responsible. For me somatically

in the work I want to do in the world. And this is why I've

really come back to, I didn't have this before, but now I have

the ability to say, okay, that thing's going on.

Do I need to talk about it? And honestly,

most of the time the answer is no. But inevitably the

DMs are like, why aren't you talking about this? Your silence is

deafening. And I go,

first off, let's see your post about it in your cat profile

picture that's private, you know? And

secondly, I didn't

create this for you. And

the attempt to try to shame me into behavioral modification,

it hooks. I could feel it. Like, I can't believe I'm not talking about that

thing. But then the higher level of responsibility of being

the adult goes, no,

that's off course. That's not in the highest purpose of this

work. And so I'll often

get the response though, if I say I don't watch the news very

often, is I get, you're a

straight white male and that's privilege.

And I go, okay. So first off, never in human

history did we have access to all this information. So was everyone privileged

before? No, they just didn't have access to all this information.

Secondly, does this type of information

constantly being taken into your psyche impact your psyche?

100%. Um,

not only does it visually and auditorily impact your brain and

what you think and what you think about the world. It will steal hope. I'm

not into external things stealing my hope. I've had that done. I know what it's

like to not believe in humanity and the world. I didn't like it.

But when I got hyperlocal and I had dinner with the people I loved, who

I thought they thought I was the worst person in the world because of

my beliefs, we sat with love and broke bread. Hmm.

And all the thoughts I thought they had didn't exist.

And I'll say to people, well, in order

to get the news, you need a phone. Yeah. So you

need an internet connection. Yeah. So you need to have

money to do that. So is it a privilege to be

informed about everything that's going on in the world and not

active about what's going on in your family

and in your relationships? Mm-hmm. And in your community and in your

city and in your province and state or whatever.

It's, it's very interesting how we use that

word. And I'm not debating that there are acts of that. Sure.

There are intersections of privilege. It's just that

when you see the world only through that lens of power,

then people either have power or they don't. And I'm just, I just can't.

It's a gaslighting term. That's a term, that's a term they just

throw shit. That's like, you're an anti-vaxxer, you're killing grandmas. Like, it's a

way to gaslight your experiences. Not, it's not actually

aligned for you and it's no one else's right. Like,

you're, you have your own, just the cat person, you have your own Instagram

account. You get to choose what you do. Thank you for your opinion.

Interesting. Thank you. I'll take that in and I'll sit with that. But like, it,

no one else has the right to tell you what to do with your time

and energy ever. But that's where we are right now. That's

the danger of where we are right now is, I think people

who are not connected to their sovereignty feel the

pressure and feel are constantly taking the

bait on, oh, I do need to appease everyone. And so I need to

hide what I'm doing, or I need to watch the news. This used to be

me years ago. I had a teacher sit down with me and she did a

little, we had to do this this party

where we had to, um, people came up to us and talked about topics we

weren't interested in and we had to be like, oh, thank you. That's like really

cool. Actually, I'm not interested in that conversation, but I'd love to talk about this.

Are you interested in that? And you had to practice being rooted

in what you care about. Yeah. 'Cause I remember in my 20s used to be

like, oh yeah, I'm like, watch the news. Like, oh, I

like politics. Like I would just like say that because I

felt pressure and I felt like I didn't want the public shame, but I

don't actually get shamed. Okay. I'm not, big on social media though. Maybe that's why,

but I don't get shamed for, for

not like, I just, cause I own it fully. I'm like, oh yeah, I don't

watch the news. I don't, I don't, I don't, although I'm not, you know, publishing

that on a big platform, but in my community. And even if I'm

around people that are really into that, I, no part of me feels bad about

not watching the news. I absolutely only put things into my

psyche that feel expansive and inspiring. And therefore my life

keeps Expanding and becoming more inspiring. It, like, I'm not interested in

the fear-based, like I used to do that. I'm, and I know how that feels.

I had chronic anxiety and I couldn't, like, who was I

in the world then when I had chronic anxiety and was pleasing everyone versus

who I'm in the world now? And I'm like so connected and really in my

heart and connecting with every person I interact with and like,

what? I wouldn't trade that for the world. So. You know, my

wish for all humanity is getting to a place of like actually honoring our

own hearts and, and remembering what matters. And I feel like

being in Africa helps with that because they're really, everyone's kids are

everyone's kids here. And it's very communal and it's very like— That's beautiful.

People are a lot more present. They have phones, they have smartphones,

but, and it's not to say they don't have their own issues. Of course they

do. But, but it's been a really big gift for me to,

to be in the presence of Kenyans who are so

connected to their hearts and so connected to themselves in

the present moment and everything we pay thousands of dollars

to remember, they're already embodying. And I've been

super impacted by that. Yeah. That's why I think it's

really interesting that if you look collectively where

we're going, we yes have more automation from things

like AI, But AI is not a sentient being. It's

LLM. It's a language learning model. It doesn't have—

nothing appears out of nowhere. Everything within AI

is created from what was. Hmm. As where

humans own the market on creating something

that has never existed. So sure, we might get to a place

where it has consciousness, but I think we're actually trying to

anthropomorphize it. Like there's this idea that it is like Terminator and

it will end the world and maybe it will.

But what's really interesting is eventually

content will become so indistinguishable

from AI versus a human, like video, et cetera. That's

already kind of happening.

That humans will even more double down on needing to be at

dinner tables and hanging out with people because they won't

trust what they see online. I think they already

don't trust a lot of what they see. And so

what is it that we keep coming back to? Well, we keep coming back to

the fact that we are biological beings

and you can't escape that. So this

conversation will never replace a conversation at a dinner table. It's

beautiful that we could do this because we live on different continents and that's amazing.

But when you have dinner with your friends tonight, that will feel very different than

this. Mm-hmm. Now we can replicate it and get close, but it will never be.

And that's part of being in the company of someone and our nervous systems

co-regulating and, and the nourishment of knowing that if you need

something, you have someone down the road that can help you.

That humans need to know that. And

even though we are quote unquote more connected than we've ever been, we've never been

less, like less connected now. Which is sad,

right? Because one of the greatest predictors of your mental health is, do you have

someone to call at 2 AM? And for a lot of people, they

don't have close friends anymore. And that's

not being fixed by technology. I'd say that the

experience of loneliness is being amplified by the

experience of being surrounded by people, but none of them are in

your immediate space. So

The solution is things that we talk about, you know, people

getting their feet on the ground in the morning, grounding. That's important for your

biology. Getting light in your eyes. If you live somewhere

where you don't have sunlight like I do in the morning right now,

you get a form of light that wakes you up, that gets your

circadian rhythm actually starting to work.

Get flicker LEDs out of your house.

Hmm. They make non-flicker LEDs, ideally get rid of LEDs and

get incandescent bulbs again. There's also really cool

companies. I know Ra

Optics has, they have the glasses and the bulbs. There's a

few that do. There's another one I'm thinking, I can't think

of it off the top of my head, but like bulbs that have 3

settings, you just turn them off and on and they'll move the light spectrum depending

on the time of day. Hmm. Yeah, it's really cool. And

so that, get those types of bulbs in your house

at night, use candlelight if you can. Um, all

of these signal melatonin production, getting sleep.

Uh, don't use your phone for the first 30 minutes of the day and

don't use it for the last 30. That is huge. I can't

emphasize enough. If you just implement, don't use your phone

for the first 30, it'll completely change your life. Mm-hmm.

Don't take your phone to the bathroom when you're eating.

Don't watch stuff on your phone because it increases cortisol and

then that impacts digestion. And I also think a lot

about the correlation of blue light to things like insulin resistance and

metabolic dysfunction. There's interesting research that looks at

that. So getting the glasses that have

the red lenses, that's pretty important for nighttime.

Probably starting at 7 or 8 and

creating like a phone jail in your house so that when you have

dinner with friends, phones are all in one place

or they just don't bring them. Now I know a lot of us, we need

like Google Maps and stuff. I was laughing. I had a, on

Sundays, I usually lock out my social

media apps. And the first time I got, there's this company called Lofty.

And they have an alarm clock that wakes you up with light and sound, and

you can remove red light from it. It's really amazing. I love it. And it's

aesthetically like really cool mid-century kind of style.

And the whole company, which is L-O-F-T-I-E, the whole company

is designed, all their products are designed about like getting more rest and having a

more balanced relationship with technology. Love it. And they have this

card that's like a credit card and you tap it and you can lock out

your apps. Like last night I tried to use Instagram and it was like, sorry,

bro. Uh, like you're locked out because I had it set on, I have it

set on a time that I can't use it after, I think it's 10 and

I can't use it before 7. And it

works because it's not that you lack

discipline, it's that you lack

experiences where you can even block your ability to juice.

You have to do that with anything that's addictive, uh, especially at first.

And so that company is really cool. I like it. But I went out on

a Sunday. I, first time I got it, I locked out a bunch of apps

and then I got to my car and I'm like, damn, my phone is my

car key. Shit. And then I was like, oh, I need

Google Maps. And I was laughing because Kai was with

me, my wife, for people listening. She was with me and I was like, babe,

can you use your phone to look up? And she's like, oh, I have to,

you're subcontracting your phone use. And I'm like, Actually, yes.

Uh, so I really, you know, it's interesting in the

research that if you don't have social media

apps on your phone, phones are actually not addictive.

Mm-hmm. So, um, those are all like different

strategies that I have. And I also have a download.

We can give the link to people. It'll be in the show notes, but it's

just, it's got all the research that I used, all the studies. And it's just

like, here's some steps that you can do to reclaim your attention.

Amazing. So amazing. I actually have 2 phones

right now because I got a new one when I was home and I use

my new one for WhatsApp and like

connection. And then my old one is all my social

media and anything I need for work. And so I just,

I leave it. I put, I, and I have Uber on the other one. So

like I use the other one when I'm out and about and leave that one

at home. It's been actually quite amazing.

And yeah, I love this so much. What, so

coming back to the title, what you focus on expands, like, and so,

and I think that's the key to our evolution

as, you know, humans living from more

from our souls and our divinity is like, you have to be intentional.

You can't, like, otherwise you're a byproduct of

the conditioning. You're a byproduct of the righteousness and blame. You're a

byproduct of the addiction to the phone. Like, I mean,

as you're describing it, it's so set up thinking about that, like, oh no, if

I leave my phone at home, my camera, my Uber, my Google Maps,

like all the things that we rely on all in one

place sounds really smart, but actually it's not. Yeah.

It's like building, you know, it was like building a business on Instagram, you know,

not dissimilar. And again, you know,

really honoring, there's, there's so much amazingness

in a phone and yet it could be the

very place that you lose everything. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. So can you tell us a little bit about what Create the Love

looks like now and like how, how do we, hang out with

you. What is it? Are you back with Create the Love? Are you—

where? No, no, I just, uh, I've been feeling the

revitalization of it. Yeah, I think I'm gonna run

Create the Love Fest in February, probably around

Valentine's Day. So that'll be my, like, first

revival of it as a separate entity.

And yeah, I don't know. I, I haven't—

right now all my I'm really doing a lot of speaking. So

speaking at companies, speaking at festivals,

conferences, and talking about, you know, to

leaders at companies, I'm talking about things like, hey, you think you're more,

being more connected makes you more productive, but the research is actually

the opposite. And, you know, I really see that the

competitive advantage that people have as entrepreneurs or

executives or whatever it is, is who they are.

It's their ability to be human, and people buy from people

they know and they like. And so that will never

be replaced by AI. Can't be. And I also

have a sales talk that's on the science of sales

and also the science of relationships, because they're actually eerily

similar. And so I'm really focusing a lot on speaking

and teaching people how to speak. Because I think one of the things for

creators, people who teach online, therapists, coaches,

entrepreneurs, is that while you're

building a business on social media, which I think is important if

you want to, that you actually build another side of

your business that is not dependent on social media. Mm-hmm. Because it's really

important to the nervous system that, you know, you have another path.

And that actually, and this is true of relationship, when you're

well-resourced, you have more access to your authentic

self-expression. And so the same idea is like, as an

entrepreneur, you must diversify how you make income

because if I took any part of your business away, it shouldn't take your whole

business away. And so it will actually make you more creative and

it'll make, and it's strategic, it's smart. You know, 'cause there will

be a time when you want to leave social media. And so

Instead of like, I have to do this forever. It's no, build it,

leave it. That's the goal. And so that's,

I'm, I'm, I'm about probably pretty soon for anyone who

gets the download, um, I'm gonna release

with a friend of mine. I'm pretty sure we just haven't finalized the details,

a 6-week program for creators called The Regulated Creator.

Yeah. And the idea is like, how do you be in relationship with

these things and hold on to yourself and and maximize your

relationships in your life and not give any of it away. Have it all.

That's how I see it. You can have it all. You can have it all.

You just— and you've done the— do you have that thing in Human Design?

It's— I can't remember which number it is, but do you know your profile number?

One of the numbers is like the great experimenter where you have to like

learn everything through going through it. That is my life. Yeah,

I feel like you probably have that. I think it's a 3 or something. Should

look at— I can't remember either. After— send me your birth info and look at

your profile. Um, yeah, Leah has it. It's like

you learn through like the devastation, the rebuild, the,

like all the, everything that you go through and then you

teach that. Yeah. Yeah. It's really,

it's amazing. I, I'm, yeah, I, I'm so inspired by you and I

feel, I really can feel a different frequency in you. Like it just

feels, um, yeah, I always love your energy since I met you,

but I, um, Um, it feels different. It feels,

I don't know, it's like more clear. It's even more clear,

more palpable, more, more soft, but

like powerful. Yeah. Thanks.

It's been a journey to cultivate that. That's for sure. Yeah. As

it is, everyone, and tell the truth. Yeah. Tell the truth.

Love everyone and tell the truth. Um, oh, there was one more thing I wanted

to say about the, oh, when you were talking about all the tips around the

phone, I love that. And I think I think that the last thing I

kept hearing when you were saying that is like, and have family dinners every week,

like with your friends, just the community. I love how

much this conversation was about like, okay, here's how to

navigate this new thing that is a part of all of our

lives and we need to learn how to do it in a healthy way. And

then here's what really fucking matters. Amen.

It's everything. It's everything. If you don't have community, none

of it None of the rest, everything else will be the attempt to try to

replicate it. Exactly. And that's what we're doing on

social media. So for the, for the woman listening, or some men

listen too, for the person listening who doesn't

have community that they feel deeply connected to, I know that's a

challenge for a lot of people once they start to awaken and they don't feel

aligned with the people in their lives. What's your hot tip

before we wrap? On that. Well, no one is going to come save you.

Like, no one's going to come get you. You got to go out and get

it. Yeah. You know, that's why I called Create the Love, Create the Love, because

it was like, it's not luck. It's, it's, it's a

verb. Go do it. Go become it. And I want to

hold grace and grief for the fact that you feel like you don't

have it and that you've been left behind by people. But you have to remember,

if you're growing and relationships are falling away, You

are actually actively moving away from people

and it's not them moving away from you. I bet you if you wanted to

get small and go back into relationship, you could keep them. But if you're getting

sober and you want to hang out with alcoholics, it's not going to work.

You know, so sometimes a relationship ending is actually

important evidence of your growth. And so that doesn't mean we're going to

bypass the grief, but just recognize that you are actually choosing

the distance too. And go

do shit you love. Go out for dinner, work

out. I mean, there's, I don't think there's a better payoff than exercise

for how you feel, for who you surround yourself with. One thing that I started

doing that has been, had, I, I'm like, man, this is a

media community. And I know, um, people

avoided things like CrossFit because it, it felt a bit culty and it

can be a bit culty. But I've been doing, uh,

HYROX training, just going to classes that are for HYROX,

H-Y-R-O-X, and they're pretty much everywhere now. And I gotta tell

you, like, I did a 90-minute class on Sunday. I would never do

90 minutes of what we had to do on my own, but the fact that

I was partnered and I was surrounded by, there was only 6 other people in

the class, it was amazing. I now know we've all suffered together.

Um, but I was like, man, if I was looking for community,

I would go to places like yoga studios. I would go to places like

CrossFit or HYROX or your gym. I think the reason classes

like HYROX or CrossFit are good is

because you are forced to be in connection with other

people and we have a collective goal.

Hmm. And I think that's actually really important for bonding because we

often bond over our suffering, right? That's

what humans connect usually over. If you listen to people talk, they share about

their life experiences. Um, and so I would, I would go

out and do stuff. Like I go, when we all lived in

Vancouver, I would go hiking all the time and I would laugh at, you know,

I was in relationship, but I remember going with a couple other guys. We

were all in relationship and at the top of the mountain, we're like sharing

stuff with all the other hikers. And I'm like, if you're a single person,

why are you not at the top of this hike? You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. So you have to give yourself the

opportunity to get what you want. And

until you give yourself the opportunity, you can't complain about it. And I think about

what we were saying earlier about

pursuing the guidance you get

is I remember thinking that just waiting

for fate is not actually a thing.

You have to meet fate. You have to give fate a

chance. And if you don't give it a chance, you're not gonna get what you

desire. So you have to take the risk, you have to leap. And in the

leaping is saying, I trust. Yeah. And that's easy to

say, a different thing to do. And that's why it's hard. And

it's a practice and you practice it 10 million ways. I've literally met all my

friends in Kenya at the gym. 'Cause we have like dance classes and like workout

classes and paddle ball and like, it's, it's this amazing

community and I have all these different friends from all these different places and

it's, yeah, it's incredible. And we just have coffee after. And so,

um, you create the love. That's it. What, that's, that's the

message. Create the love, create the love and you get more of it.

Yeah. And that's what we all need. And so we're starving for, thank you, Mark

Groves. You are a legend. Thanks for having me. I appreciate you.

Yeah, me too. And as always, spread this

episode with every human that you know needs to hear it and we'll see you

next week.