Do you believe in "right person, wrong time"?
Do you have realistic expectations about dating?
Today, Jay will discuss the popular notion of the "right person at the wrong time." He explains that this idea often stems from nostalgia, which can distort our memories by emphasizing the positive aspects of past experiences and minimizing the negatives. This romanticized view of the past can prevent us from addressing present realities and hinder our ability to form healthy relationships.
Jay also talks about the various factors that influence relationships, such as a person's relationship status, goals, and healing journey. He argues that a person's current circumstances, such as being newly single or single for a long time, significantly shape who they are and their readiness for a relationship. Furthermore, in a healthy relationship, partners should respect and support each other's goals rather than expecting complete alignment. He also highlights the importance of patience and mutual support in the ongoing process of healing from past traumas.
In this episode, you'll learn:
How to align goals in a relationship
How to manage expectations
How to build a healthy relationship
How to embrace new possibilities
By letting go of romanticized notions of the past and embracing the present, we open ourselves to genuine connections. Be open, curious, and positive about dating, we can find meaningful and fulfilling relationships.
With Love and Gratitude,
Jay Shetty
What We Discuss:
00:00 Intro
01:00 Right Person, Wrong Time
03:37 Nostalgia Overshadows the Negative Experiences
11:15 Relationship Status
13:34 Goals
15:50 Trauma
18:26 Potential
20:24 Standards
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which
is awesome. I mean, I don't have to tell you
that it's a primary focus of on Purpose, but on
a day to day basis, many people don't know where
to turn or which tools can help. Over the past
couple of years, I've been working with Calm to make
mental wellness accessible and enjoyable, or as I like to say,
fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to
(00:24):
help you reduce anxiety and stress, build mindful habits, improve sleep,
and generally feel better in your daily life. So many
bite size options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world,
along with renowned meditation teachers. You can also check out
my seven minute daily series to help you live more
mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On
(00:45):
Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calmpremium at
Calm dot com Forward slash j that's Calm dot com
Forward slash jay for forty percent off. Calm your Mind,
Change your life now. I'm not saying this to make
you feel down about the fact that there isn't someone
there for you. I'm saying it because I want us
(01:07):
to live in reality more than I want us to
live in imagination. We believe that this fake person is
out there because it's comforting, and what that stops us
from doing is dealing with the real person in front
of us, who presents real opportunities and real challenges.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Setti.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Jay Shetty, Sez Jet. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
It's your host, Jay Chetty, and I am so grateful
and so thankful that you're here right now. It is
incredible that you've chosen to invest in your health, your happiness,
and your healing by tuning in to On Purpose. And
(01:51):
thank you so much to each of you that have
left a review, shared it with a friend, or are
listening every single day now. I'm sure you've heard people
in your life or a friend of family member, someone
you know say something like, ah, it was right person,
wrong time. Right, he was the right guy, it was
(02:13):
just bad timing, or she was perfect, it just didn't
make sense right now. And this idea of there being
a right person at the wrong time has kind of
become culturally quite a big thing. We saw it in
movies like La La Land, where you look at Emma
Stone's character and Ryan Gosling's character who you know you
(02:33):
want them to be together. You're yearning for them to
be together, You're dreaming for them to be together. They
seem destined to be together, and yet it was right person,
wrong time. And today I want to break that down
because I've been thinking about it a lot, and I've
been talking to a lot of my friends. I've been
listening to a lot of you. I've been talking to
(02:54):
a lot of experts on the show, and it's pretty
clear that most of them agree that there's no such
thing as the right person at the wrong time.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I know it's painful to hear it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I know it's uncomfortable to hear it, and I know
some of you right now are saying, no, Jay, what
are you saying? But I promise you that it's not
a hopeless thing for me to say. It's actually going
to redirect your mind in a healthy way. So when
you say there's right person, wrong time, it's often something
(03:27):
we say to make ourselves feel better about the one
that got away. Oh yeah, they were the one that
got away. They were amazing, Oh they were so special,
that could have been amazing, Or we say it to
make ourselves feel better about an inconvenient truth.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
We don't want to accept.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We don't want to accept that we were in a
bad place, that they were in a bad place. We
don't want to accept that there wasn't this perfect relationship
out there, and so we can't accept that inconvenient truth,
and we keep saying it to us. Oh, they were
just the right person at the wrong time. I'm sure
you've all said people in your life maybe say hey,
(04:06):
I miss my ex. You know, they were amazing or like,
or like even though they were bad, like they weren't
that bad, Like they were actually great. Wait a minute,
the one that treated you badly. Wait a minute, the
one that you always used to complain, that made you
feel insecure. Wait, you're talking about the one that never
showed up on time and canceled on you. Wait you're
(04:27):
talking about the one that cheated on you. Like, you know,
it's literally that bad sometimes and we convince ourselves that
there was a right person at the wrong time. Nostalgia
is really really interesting, and it does one of two things.
In some cases, it makes the past seem worse, but
(04:48):
in most cases it makes the past seem better. It
amplifies the good stuff and it overshadows the negativity, the stress,
the overwhelm, and the challenges we felt back then. So
I wanted to do a bit of understanding about this
because I think we have a pretty weak understanding of nostalgia.
(05:10):
And if you talk to most people, they'll say their
favorite experiences are from college. Their past experiences were better,
their relationships were amazing, like we often look at our
past through rose tinted glasses. Now I'm reading this from
a couple of references. The first is from the memory
and reward systems co produced nostalgic experiences in the brain.
(05:32):
This is twenty sixteen July from no Riuchi. And then
I'm also reading from Barrett's. These are two journals that
I found through neurology live so nostalgic experiences stimulate metabolic
activity and blood flow in several regions of the brain. Interestingly,
people who rated higher on the Effective Neuroscience Personality Scale,
(05:55):
which measures a person's tendency to sadness, were more prone
to experience nostalgia. This correlation does make sense, as people
who generally experience stronger emotions should experience a range of
powerful feelings, whether those emotions are happy or sad, But
nostalgia itself is not linked with depression or any other
(06:16):
effective disorder. In fact, one study linked nostalgia to an
overall trait of resilience. So nostalgia is something that we
used positively, but it can be positive emotionally, but it
can set us on the wrong path mentally as we
make decisions.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
So let me explain to you why.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Nostalgia feels good from that neuroscience perspective, The reward centers
of the brain are activated during nostalgia activity. This reward
center involvement explains the very common phenomena of feeling pleasant
emotions upon hearing a song from the past, even if
the song was not necessarily a favorite song at the
(06:55):
time it was prevalent in popular culture or in a
person's life. Now, listen to this. This is the most
interesting part to me. The positive responses evoked by nostalgia
can help protect people from emotional burden of a situational
disappointment and even from anxiety. That's exactly what we're talking
about here, that there has been a situational disappointment and
(07:21):
the feeling that we look on it positively. Oh right person,
wrong time. It actually emotionally protects us, but that doesn't
make us make good decisions. We can often live in
the past. We can linger on and make a relationship
last too long. We can feel that we missed out
on something and that it got away. We can feel
that anything we experienced today isn't good enough, it's not
(07:43):
the same. When used as a coping strategy, a person
can deliberately trigger feelings of nostalgia by listening to familiar music,
looking at old photos, or visiting comforting environments of the past.
And this is one of the reasons why I think
it's so if effective when people use a burn box
to burn old memories. I remember Nessa Barrett talking about
(08:06):
that on the podcast. She has a song called burn Box,
and this idea of like, you don't want to hold
on to those memories, You don't want to keep them
present for you to keep creating or recreating nostalgia for you.
And this is where the study gets really, really interesting.
Nostalgia can be so easily provoked that it is possible
to become addicted to the pleasure of nostalgia, just as
(08:30):
a person can become addicted to any activity that stimulates
the reward centers of the brain. Nostalgia can be used
excessively as a crutch, and the positive feelings of nostalgia
may serve as a substitute for living in the present
day if current real life troubles take more effort than
a person can tolerate. Oh my gosh, Like I'm reading
(08:53):
this and I'm hoping you are having the same reaction
as me, going wow, I get it. I get what
I'm doing to myself using the right person, wrong time
as a way of making up for the fact that
dating is hard right now, as a way of making
up for the fact that things aren't going great right now.
And hey, in the short term, it's a great way
of staying positive and keeping up beat. The long term,
(09:17):
it's letting me down. It's making me turn away great
relationship prospects. It's making me judge people differently. It's making
me close the door on other people that actually deserve
a chance. Like, where is nostalgia tripping you up? Now?
I want to give you a kind of light example
to do with this. If you look at where we
(09:38):
are in society today, there are so many reboots, right
so we had a reboot or ip based on the past.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
You have the Barbie movie. Amazing movie, great movie.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
But again we're using IP from the past because it
sparks nostalgia. How many of you watched that and had
a nostalgic feeling if you happen to own a Barbie
or again, now Mario Brothers.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Same thing.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I remember back in the day having to go to
my friend's house to play on their Nintendo and the
Super Mario's Brothers movie comes out, and all of a sudden,
it's past IP being rebooted. You've got the Pinocchio remake,
You've got all the live action movies coming out, You've
got the Sex and the City reboots. So there's an
(10:23):
interesting thing in society where we have all these reboots
that are often based on or not often based always
based on playing on nostalgia and triggering positive nostalgic feelings.
But guess what is the reboot ever that good? Is
the use of an old ip ever a satisfying Will
(10:46):
the new Jurassic Park ever be as good as the
original one? Like? It won't, And there's something in that,
like there's this false excitement that we have, but it
doesn't actually follow through. And a lot of us this
other study from Yang and Bacho says that we aren't
just longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version
(11:09):
of our past. This line in the study completely sums
up what I'm trying to say, that we're not just
longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version of
our past. According to Bacho, there's a reason our memories
become fonder over time, why the negative bits tend to
fade away faster. The study says, take parenthood for example,
(11:32):
remembering things is better than they were serves an evolutionary purpose.
If people were to remember things faithfully to the original,
most women would never want to have more than one child,
Bacho says, laughing. It's a function of species survival that
we can gloss over the bad portions of the past.
(11:53):
So nostalgia's great as a temporary escape during difficult times,
but if it becomes the of our decision making, we
can actually be let down the wrong path. And I
want to focus on this statement right person, wrong time.
It wasn't the wrong time. There was something else that
(12:13):
was wrong. One of the first things I want to
talk about is what about your relationship status? What about
their relationship status? Maybe they just got out of a relationship.
Maybe they'd been single for too long. Now we look
at that as wrong time, but that's far more defining
(12:34):
of that person than we give it credit to be.
If someone's been single for a long time, that's a
part of who they are. It's a part of who
they've become. If someone's newly single, that's a part of
who they are and where they are in their emotional
maturity to be able to spot an amazing opportunity for
it to be the right thing. Now, I'm not saying
(12:55):
this to make you feel down about the fact that
there isn't someone there for you. I'm saying it because
I want us to live in reality more than I
want us to live in imagination. We believe that this
fake person is out there because it's comforting, and what
that stops us from doing is dealing with the real
person in front of us, who presents real opportunities and
(13:19):
real challenges.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
That's really what life is. That's what a partner is.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
It's a set of pros and a set of cons
It's a set of things to look forward to in
a list of things that will set us back. So
I want you to think about the relationship status part
if someone is just newly single and you're scared of
rushing them along instead of saying right person, wrong time,
and moving on, can you be more patient? Maybe you
(13:45):
do want to get married, but maybe they need time.
Maybe you don't rush it. If they're worth investing in,
maybe they could be the right person. If you didn't
have this idea of right person, wrong time because you
wanted everything to perfectly align. What else about their relationship
status that you're in. You don't want to rush yourself,
(14:05):
You don't want to move along now. Of course, if
the conclusion you both come to is we're both not
ready right now to wait longer for the other person,
then that's not the right person, and that's okay. It
doesn't mean that you don't deserve love. It doesn't mean
you won't find love. It doesn't mean that you won't
have the opportunity to be in love. But what it
(14:26):
does mean says the wrong person and the timing is
somewhat not relevant. Recently, I became a relationship advisor at
Match because I really want people to connect based on
their values. So what we did together was we collaborated
and built a set of questions that will help you
(14:46):
understand your values and pair you up with people with
similar values and in a way that you can be
aware of what their priorities are. I think so often
we start dating and then we find out down the
line that we're going in different directions, we have different focuses.
I want to help you build a life where you're
aware of what people care about and they're aware about
what you care about. Head over out to match dot Com,
(15:09):
forward slash j to find out how you can date
based on your values and your vision. I want to
talk about goals. I think we saw that in La
La Land, where they had different goals. And goals is
a really interesting thing because in a healthy relationship, it's
not that you're going to find someone with the same goals.
(15:31):
It's actually that you're going to find someone who respects
your goals and values them and helps you get to
them and the other person does the same. I have
a lot of friends who are performers, speakers, musicians, and
they're all saying, well, why is my partner not in
the front row right?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Why is my partner not in the front row?
Speaker 1 (15:52):
And maybe their partner has their own dreams that keep
them active. At the same time, I mean, you know,
talking about pop culture. I think you see it right
now with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, Like both of
them are high performers, both of them are achieving. I'm
sure they can't be at every single game. She can't
be at every game and he can't be at every concert,
(16:14):
but they're making it work by saying, I see that
that's what makes you happy. I see that that's what
makes you you. I see that that's what makes you attractive.
And I'm going to show up for you when I can.
It will even perform together when we can, like we'll
make it happen. But I'm not going to make you
give up the thing you love in order for us
to have the same goals, in order for us to
(16:34):
have the same priorities. And so it's interesting we've kind
of been presented this either or where it's like you
either both sacrifice your goals for each other or one
of you sacrifices their goals for the other while one
of them lives them through. And in reality, a healthy
relationship is saying, well, I'm not going to let you
sacrifice your goals and I'm not going to sacrifice mine.
(16:57):
And yes we may spend a little less time with
each other, but I know you support me deeply. I
don't need you to be in the front row to
know I'm front of.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Mind for you.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I don't need you to be cheering me on right now,
because I know you're going to be there to cheer
me on in and around that area, in and around
that activity. And I think so many of us can
lose a great relationship because we think, oh well, our
goals have to perfectly match, Our goals have to perfectly align.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Another area is trauma. A lot of people today say
I want to be with someone who's gone to therapy.
They have to be focused on healing. The truth is,
we don't know when someone's healing journey is going to start,
and we don't know when ours is going to end.
Let me say that again. You don't know when someone's
(17:53):
healing journey is going to start, and you don't know
when your healing journey is going to end. Feel that
you've done a lot of healing and something next to
you could trigger a new reason to heal. And someone
else may have gone to therapy for years and they
may actually be in a peaceful place right now. The
(18:15):
right person will heal themselves as they watch you heal.
The right person will be patient with you as you
are patient with them. The right person will make time
and space for what you need as you make time
and space for them. The right person will not be
(18:38):
the person who's perfectly healed, because neither are we. The
right person will not be the person who's already done
all the self work before they met us, because we've
also got so much self work left. If anything, the
right person becomes our partner in the journey of healing
and self work. In the journey of inner work, we
(19:00):
become companions and partners who understand each other, see each other,
hear each other. And that's not perfect. This is an ideal.
This is conflict. This is hard, this is heavy, it's challenging,
but it's what builds greatness in a partnership. There's this
old story about rocks that are put into a bag,
(19:25):
and when the bag is moved, the rocks rub against
each other slowly to become softer edged. The rocks didn't
become softer because they were made softer independently. They became
softer because there was conflict and tension between the rocks.
But they eventually softened each other out. That's what the
right relationship will do. In the right relationship, your fights
(19:49):
will make you closer, your arguments will make you more thoughtful,
your disagreements will make you more considerate, and words you
wish you never said will make you more mindful. That's
what happens now a lot of us. The next one
is we live in a state of they were the
(20:11):
right person at the wrong time because we saw their potential,
we saw what they could be, we saw what we
wanted them to be. And really what it was is
they were who they were, but we had this imagined
version of who they could be, should be, would be. Again,
they weren't the right person because the right person was
(20:32):
what you dreamed up in your potential person, the real person.
And that's why I almost want to get away from
this language of the right person.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
It's the real person.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
We're dealing with real people, and the right person will
be the person you want to make it right with.
The right person will be the person who you choose
to do the right thing for and they choose to
do the right thing for you. That's the right person,
which is a real person. I think we've kind of
made it so that, oh, the right person will be
(21:05):
all these things. And I'm like, the real person will
be all those things in a whole set of other things. Right,
that's the real person. The right person in your head
only is your perfect checklist. And I promise you you
meet people who have that checklist and they have everything
else as well, and because they have all these other
things that you didn't have on your checklist that you
(21:25):
don't recognize, you write them off as the wrong person.
It's funny how we write people off as the wrong
person because they have everything we want, but they come
with a lot more baggage as well. And that's the
real situation that we're in a couple more things that
I want us to focus on because it's not time.
So it's right person but real goals, right person but
(21:53):
real trauma, right person but real relationship status, right person
but real all no potential or potential, right person and
real standards. Sometimes our expectations get the better of us.
(22:13):
Sometimes someone wants us to lower our standards beneath what
we deserve. Neither make someone the right person. And it's
amazing how in the rear view mirror everything looks more beautiful.
Everything looks more amazing. Everything looks like it was more exciting.
And I think a big part of this is because
(22:35):
there's a part of us that loves that feeling, and
a peaceful, healthy relationship doesn't provide that spark. I think
a lot of people who are in happy, healthy, right person,
right time relationships, real person relationships, find peace more than pleasure.
(22:56):
And I think the problem is people think a peaceful
relationship is a relationship, and that's not true. A peaceful
relationship is a relationship where you're not creating drama and
neither are they, where you're both not triggered over petty things,
where you both don't make something out of nothing to
fight for each other's attention, where you're not playing games
(23:20):
or manipulating in order to get someone's validation, where you
actually communicate honestly about what you want. And the funny
thing is we will say we want this, but we
won't behave that way with the person. So I want
you to really take this episode in because it's a
reality check, and the reality check is to encourage you
to say, let's stop thinking about the right person and
(23:41):
let's look at real people. What does a real person have?
What does a real person come with, and a real
person comes with all these things. But love is saying,
can we take all of that into account and make
it make sense? And if we can't, let's not glorify
or put that person on a pedestal for the rest
of time because it makes us feel better. Let's actually
(24:02):
say it didn't wasn't the right person, And I'm going
to keep looking for that real person that I can
connect with. I really hope that you'll share this episode
with a friend. I hope it will help clarify so
much of our mind and brain works and makes decisions,
and I hope it's going to make you more open, curious,
and positive about dating. I'm so excited for you and
(24:22):
forever in your corner and always rooting for you. Thanks
for listening. If you love this episode, you're going to
love my conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get
over your ex and find true love in your relationships.
People should be compassionate to themselves that extend that compassion
to your future self, because truly extending your compassion to
(24:44):
your future self is doing something that gives him or
her a shot at a happy and a peaceful life.
Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which
is awesome. I mean, I don't have to tell you
that it's a primary focus of on Purpose, but on
a day to day basis, many people don't know where
to turn or which tools can help. Over the past
couple of years, I've been working with Calm to make
mental wellness accessible and enjoyable, or as I like to say,
fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to
(00:24):
help you reduce anxiety and stress, build mindful habits, improve sleep,
and generally feel better in your daily life. So many
bite size options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world,
along with renowned meditation teachers. You can also check out
my seven minute daily series to help you live more
mindfully each and every day. Right now, listeners of On
(00:45):
Purpose get forty percent off a subscription to Calmpremium at
Calm dot com Forward slash j that's Calm dot com
Forward slash jay for forty percent off. Calm your Mind,
Change your life now. I'm not saying this to make
you feel down about the fact that there isn't someone
there for you. I'm saying it because I want us
(01:07):
to live in reality more than I want us to
live in imagination. We believe that this fake person is
out there because it's comforting, and what that stops us
from doing is dealing with the real person in front
of us, who presents real opportunities and real challenges.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
The number one health and wellness podcast Jay Setti.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Jay Shetty, Sez Jet. Hey, everyone, welcome back to On Purpose.
It's your host, Jay Chetty, and I am so grateful
and so thankful that you're here right now. It is
incredible that you've chosen to invest in your health, your happiness,
and your healing by tuning in to On Purpose. And
(01:51):
thank you so much to each of you that have
left a review, shared it with a friend, or are
listening every single day now. I'm sure you've heard people
in your life or a friend of family member, someone
you know say something like, ah, it was right person,
wrong time. Right, he was the right guy, it was
(02:13):
just bad timing, or she was perfect, it just didn't
make sense right now. And this idea of there being
a right person at the wrong time has kind of
become culturally quite a big thing. We saw it in
movies like La La Land, where you look at Emma
Stone's character and Ryan Gosling's character who you know you
(02:33):
want them to be together. You're yearning for them to
be together, You're dreaming for them to be together. They
seem destined to be together, and yet it was right person,
wrong time. And today I want to break that down
because I've been thinking about it a lot, and I've
been talking to a lot of my friends. I've been
listening to a lot of you. I've been talking to
(02:54):
a lot of experts on the show, and it's pretty
clear that most of them agree that there's no such
thing as the right person at the wrong time.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I know it's painful to hear it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I know it's uncomfortable to hear it, and I know
some of you right now are saying, no, Jay, what
are you saying? But I promise you that it's not
a hopeless thing for me to say. It's actually going
to redirect your mind in a healthy way. So when
you say there's right person, wrong time, it's often something
(03:27):
we say to make ourselves feel better about the one
that got away. Oh yeah, they were the one that
got away. They were amazing, Oh they were so special,
that could have been amazing, Or we say it to
make ourselves feel better about an inconvenient truth.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
We don't want to accept.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
We don't want to accept that we were in a
bad place, that they were in a bad place. We
don't want to accept that there wasn't this perfect relationship
out there, and so we can't accept that inconvenient truth,
and we keep saying it to us. Oh, they were
just the right person at the wrong time. I'm sure
you've all said people in your life maybe say hey,
(04:06):
I miss my ex. You know, they were amazing or like,
or like even though they were bad, like they weren't
that bad, Like they were actually great. Wait a minute,
the one that treated you badly. Wait a minute, the
one that you always used to complain, that made you
feel insecure. Wait, you're talking about the one that never
showed up on time and canceled on you. Wait you're
(04:27):
talking about the one that cheated on you. Like, you know,
it's literally that bad sometimes and we convince ourselves that
there was a right person at the wrong time. Nostalgia
is really really interesting, and it does one of two things.
In some cases, it makes the past seem worse, but
(04:48):
in most cases it makes the past seem better. It
amplifies the good stuff and it overshadows the negativity, the stress,
the overwhelm, and the challenges we felt back then. So
I wanted to do a bit of understanding about this
because I think we have a pretty weak understanding of nostalgia.
(05:10):
And if you talk to most people, they'll say their
favorite experiences are from college. Their past experiences were better,
their relationships were amazing, like we often look at our
past through rose tinted glasses. Now I'm reading this from
a couple of references. The first is from the memory
and reward systems co produced nostalgic experiences in the brain.
(05:32):
This is twenty sixteen July from no Riuchi. And then
I'm also reading from Barrett's. These are two journals that
I found through neurology live so nostalgic experiences stimulate metabolic
activity and blood flow in several regions of the brain. Interestingly,
people who rated higher on the Effective Neuroscience Personality Scale,
(05:55):
which measures a person's tendency to sadness, were more prone
to experience nostalgia. This correlation does make sense, as people
who generally experience stronger emotions should experience a range of
powerful feelings, whether those emotions are happy or sad, But
nostalgia itself is not linked with depression or any other
(06:16):
effective disorder. In fact, one study linked nostalgia to an
overall trait of resilience. So nostalgia is something that we
used positively, but it can be positive emotionally, but it
can set us on the wrong path mentally as we
make decisions.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
So let me explain to you why.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Nostalgia feels good from that neuroscience perspective, The reward centers
of the brain are activated during nostalgia activity. This reward
center involvement explains the very common phenomena of feeling pleasant
emotions upon hearing a song from the past, even if
the song was not necessarily a favorite song at the
(06:55):
time it was prevalent in popular culture or in a
person's life. Now, listen to this. This is the most
interesting part to me. The positive responses evoked by nostalgia
can help protect people from emotional burden of a situational
disappointment and even from anxiety. That's exactly what we're talking
about here, that there has been a situational disappointment and
(07:21):
the feeling that we look on it positively. Oh right person,
wrong time. It actually emotionally protects us, but that doesn't
make us make good decisions. We can often live in
the past. We can linger on and make a relationship
last too long. We can feel that we missed out
on something and that it got away. We can feel
that anything we experienced today isn't good enough, it's not
(07:43):
the same. When used as a coping strategy, a person
can deliberately trigger feelings of nostalgia by listening to familiar music,
looking at old photos, or visiting comforting environments of the past.
And this is one of the reasons why I think
it's so if effective when people use a burn box
to burn old memories. I remember Nessa Barrett talking about
(08:06):
that on the podcast. She has a song called burn Box,
and this idea of like, you don't want to hold
on to those memories, You don't want to keep them
present for you to keep creating or recreating nostalgia for you.
And this is where the study gets really, really interesting.
Nostalgia can be so easily provoked that it is possible
to become addicted to the pleasure of nostalgia, just as
(08:30):
a person can become addicted to any activity that stimulates
the reward centers of the brain. Nostalgia can be used
excessively as a crutch, and the positive feelings of nostalgia
may serve as a substitute for living in the present
day if current real life troubles take more effort than
a person can tolerate. Oh my gosh, Like I'm reading
(08:53):
this and I'm hoping you are having the same reaction
as me, going wow, I get it. I get what
I'm doing to myself using the right person, wrong time
as a way of making up for the fact that
dating is hard right now, as a way of making
up for the fact that things aren't going great right now.
And hey, in the short term, it's a great way
of staying positive and keeping up beat. The long term,
(09:17):
it's letting me down. It's making me turn away great
relationship prospects. It's making me judge people differently. It's making
me close the door on other people that actually deserve
a chance. Like, where is nostalgia tripping you up? Now?
I want to give you a kind of light example
to do with this. If you look at where we
(09:38):
are in society today, there are so many reboots, right
so we had a reboot or ip based on the past.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
You have the Barbie movie. Amazing movie, great movie.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
But again we're using IP from the past because it
sparks nostalgia. How many of you watched that and had
a nostalgic feeling if you happen to own a Barbie
or again, now Mario Brothers.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Same thing.
Speaker 1 (10:01):
I remember back in the day having to go to
my friend's house to play on their Nintendo and the
Super Mario's Brothers movie comes out, and all of a sudden,
it's past IP being rebooted. You've got the Pinocchio remake,
You've got all the live action movies coming out, You've
got the Sex and the City reboots. So there's an
(10:23):
interesting thing in society where we have all these reboots
that are often based on or not often based always
based on playing on nostalgia and triggering positive nostalgic feelings.
But guess what is the reboot ever that good? Is
the use of an old ip ever a satisfying Will
(10:46):
the new Jurassic Park ever be as good as the
original one? Like? It won't, And there's something in that,
like there's this false excitement that we have, but it
doesn't actually follow through. And a lot of us this
other study from Yang and Bacho says that we aren't
just longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version
(11:09):
of our past. This line in the study completely sums
up what I'm trying to say, that we're not just
longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version of
our past. According to Bacho, there's a reason our memories
become fonder over time, why the negative bits tend to
fade away faster. The study says, take parenthood for example,
(11:32):
remembering things is better than they were serves an evolutionary purpose.
If people were to remember things faithfully to the original,
most women would never want to have more than one child,
Bacho says, laughing. It's a function of species survival that
we can gloss over the bad portions of the past.
(11:53):
So nostalgia's great as a temporary escape during difficult times,
but if it becomes the of our decision making, we
can actually be let down the wrong path. And I
want to focus on this statement right person, wrong time.
It wasn't the wrong time. There was something else that
(12:13):
was wrong. One of the first things I want to
talk about is what about your relationship status? What about
their relationship status? Maybe they just got out of a relationship.
Maybe they'd been single for too long. Now we look
at that as wrong time, but that's far more defining
(12:34):
of that person than we give it credit to be.
If someone's been single for a long time, that's a
part of who they are. It's a part of who
they've become. If someone's newly single, that's a part of
who they are and where they are in their emotional
maturity to be able to spot an amazing opportunity for
it to be the right thing. Now, I'm not saying
(12:55):
this to make you feel down about the fact that
there isn't someone there for you. I'm saying it because
I want us to live in reality more than I
want us to live in imagination. We believe that this
fake person is out there because it's comforting, and what
that stops us from doing is dealing with the real
person in front of us, who presents real opportunities and
(13:19):
real challenges.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
That's really what life is. That's what a partner is.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
It's a set of pros and a set of cons
It's a set of things to look forward to in
a list of things that will set us back. So
I want you to think about the relationship status part
if someone is just newly single and you're scared of
rushing them along instead of saying right person, wrong time,
and moving on, can you be more patient? Maybe you
(13:45):
do want to get married, but maybe they need time.
Maybe you don't rush it. If they're worth investing in,
maybe they could be the right person. If you didn't
have this idea of right person, wrong time because you
wanted everything to perfectly align. What else about their relationship
status that you're in. You don't want to rush yourself,
(14:05):
You don't want to move along now. Of course, if
the conclusion you both come to is we're both not
ready right now to wait longer for the other person,
then that's not the right person, and that's okay. It
doesn't mean that you don't deserve love. It doesn't mean
you won't find love. It doesn't mean that you won't
have the opportunity to be in love. But what it
(14:26):
does mean says the wrong person and the timing is
somewhat not relevant. Recently, I became a relationship advisor at
Match because I really want people to connect based on
their values. So what we did together was we collaborated
and built a set of questions that will help you
(14:46):
understand your values and pair you up with people with
similar values and in a way that you can be
aware of what their priorities are. I think so often
we start dating and then we find out down the
line that we're going in different directions, we have different focuses.
I want to help you build a life where you're
aware of what people care about and they're aware about
what you care about. Head over out to match dot Com,
(15:09):
forward slash j to find out how you can date
based on your values and your vision. I want to
talk about goals. I think we saw that in La
La Land, where they had different goals. And goals is
a really interesting thing because in a healthy relationship, it's
not that you're going to find someone with the same goals.
(15:31):
It's actually that you're going to find someone who respects
your goals and values them and helps you get to
them and the other person does the same. I have
a lot of friends who are performers, speakers, musicians, and
they're all saying, well, why is my partner not in
the front row right?
Speaker 2 (15:50):
Why is my partner not in the front row?
Speaker 1 (15:52):
And maybe their partner has their own dreams that keep
them active. At the same time, I mean, you know,
talking about pop culture. I think you see it right
now with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, Like both of
them are high performers, both of them are achieving. I'm
sure they can't be at every single game. She can't
be at every game and he can't be at every concert,
(16:14):
but they're making it work by saying, I see that
that's what makes you happy. I see that that's what
makes you you. I see that that's what makes you attractive.
And I'm going to show up for you when I can.
It will even perform together when we can, like we'll
make it happen. But I'm not going to make you
give up the thing you love in order for us
to have the same goals, in order for us to
(16:34):
have the same priorities. And so it's interesting we've kind
of been presented this either or where it's like you
either both sacrifice your goals for each other or one
of you sacrifices their goals for the other while one
of them lives them through. And in reality, a healthy
relationship is saying, well, I'm not going to let you
sacrifice your goals and I'm not going to sacrifice mine.
(16:57):
And yes we may spend a little less time with
each other, but I know you support me deeply. I
don't need you to be in the front row to
know I'm front of.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
Mind for you.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
I don't need you to be cheering me on right now,
because I know you're going to be there to cheer
me on in and around that area, in and around
that activity. And I think so many of us can
lose a great relationship because we think, oh well, our
goals have to perfectly match, Our goals have to perfectly align.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Another area is trauma. A lot of people today say
I want to be with someone who's gone to therapy.
They have to be focused on healing. The truth is,
we don't know when someone's healing journey is going to start,
and we don't know when ours is going to end.
Let me say that again. You don't know when someone's
(17:53):
healing journey is going to start, and you don't know
when your healing journey is going to end. Feel that
you've done a lot of healing and something next to
you could trigger a new reason to heal. And someone
else may have gone to therapy for years and they
may actually be in a peaceful place right now. The
(18:15):
right person will heal themselves as they watch you heal.
The right person will be patient with you as you
are patient with them. The right person will make time
and space for what you need as you make time
and space for them. The right person will not be
(18:38):
the person who's perfectly healed, because neither are we. The
right person will not be the person who's already done
all the self work before they met us, because we've
also got so much self work left. If anything, the
right person becomes our partner in the journey of healing
and self work. In the journey of inner work, we
(19:00):
become companions and partners who understand each other, see each other,
hear each other. And that's not perfect. This is an ideal.
This is conflict. This is hard, this is heavy, it's challenging,
but it's what builds greatness in a partnership. There's this
old story about rocks that are put into a bag,
(19:25):
and when the bag is moved, the rocks rub against
each other slowly to become softer edged. The rocks didn't
become softer because they were made softer independently. They became
softer because there was conflict and tension between the rocks.
But they eventually softened each other out. That's what the
right relationship will do. In the right relationship, your fights
(19:49):
will make you closer, your arguments will make you more thoughtful,
your disagreements will make you more considerate, and words you
wish you never said will make you more mindful. That's
what happens now a lot of us. The next one
is we live in a state of they were the
(20:11):
right person at the wrong time because we saw their potential,
we saw what they could be, we saw what we
wanted them to be. And really what it was is
they were who they were, but we had this imagined
version of who they could be, should be, would be. Again,
they weren't the right person because the right person was
(20:32):
what you dreamed up in your potential person, the real person.
And that's why I almost want to get away from
this language of the right person.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
It's the real person.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
We're dealing with real people, and the right person will
be the person you want to make it right with.
The right person will be the person who you choose
to do the right thing for and they choose to
do the right thing for you. That's the right person,
which is a real person. I think we've kind of
made it so that, oh, the right person will be
(21:05):
all these things. And I'm like, the real person will
be all those things in a whole set of other things. Right,
that's the real person. The right person in your head
only is your perfect checklist. And I promise you you
meet people who have that checklist and they have everything
else as well, and because they have all these other
things that you didn't have on your checklist that you
(21:25):
don't recognize, you write them off as the wrong person.
It's funny how we write people off as the wrong
person because they have everything we want, but they come
with a lot more baggage as well. And that's the
real situation that we're in a couple more things that
I want us to focus on because it's not time.
So it's right person but real goals, right person but
(21:53):
real trauma, right person but real relationship status, right person
but real all no potential or potential, right person and
real standards. Sometimes our expectations get the better of us.
(22:13):
Sometimes someone wants us to lower our standards beneath what
we deserve. Neither make someone the right person. And it's
amazing how in the rear view mirror everything looks more beautiful.
Everything looks more amazing. Everything looks like it was more exciting.
And I think a big part of this is because
(22:35):
there's a part of us that loves that feeling, and
a peaceful, healthy relationship doesn't provide that spark. I think
a lot of people who are in happy, healthy, right person,
right time relationships, real person relationships, find peace more than pleasure.
(22:56):
And I think the problem is people think a peaceful
relationship is a relationship, and that's not true. A peaceful
relationship is a relationship where you're not creating drama and
neither are they, where you're both not triggered over petty things,
where you both don't make something out of nothing to
fight for each other's attention, where you're not playing games
(23:20):
or manipulating in order to get someone's validation, where you
actually communicate honestly about what you want. And the funny
thing is we will say we want this, but we
won't behave that way with the person. So I want
you to really take this episode in because it's a
reality check, and the reality check is to encourage you
to say, let's stop thinking about the right person and
(23:41):
let's look at real people. What does a real person have?
What does a real person come with, and a real
person comes with all these things. But love is saying,
can we take all of that into account and make
it make sense? And if we can't, let's not glorify
or put that person on a pedestal for the rest
of time because it makes us feel better. Let's actually
(24:02):
say it didn't wasn't the right person, And I'm going
to keep looking for that real person that I can
connect with. I really hope that you'll share this episode
with a friend. I hope it will help clarify so
much of our mind and brain works and makes decisions,
and I hope it's going to make you more open, curious,
and positive about dating. I'm so excited for you and
(24:22):
forever in your corner and always rooting for you. Thanks
for listening. If you love this episode, you're going to
love my conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get
over your ex and find true love in your relationships.
People should be compassionate to themselves that extend that compassion
to your future self, because truly extending your compassion to
(24:44):
your future self is doing something that gives him or
her a shot at a happy and a peaceful life.
Host
Jay Shetty
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