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September 1, 2025 65 mins
What if the key to an extraordinary relationship isn’t just about finding the right partner… but becoming the version of yourself that can hold that kind of love?

In this episode, I sit down with Annie Lalla, a brilliant and compassionate relationship coach whose work blends science, spirituality, and soul. With a background in biology, philosophy, and Buddhism, plus years of study in attachment theory, Annie brings a rare depth to conversations about love.Together, we explore what it takes to move from a relationship that’s “fine” into one that’s revolutionary. Annie offers a bold vision: that romantic love is not just a comfort or a nice-to-have, it’s the highest game humans can play. And to play it well? We need courage, emotional mastery, and a willingness to see ourselves clearly through the mirror of intimacy.

This conversation is a powerful invitation to approach love as a path of awakening. If you’re ready to become the kind of person who can hold extraordinary love… this one’s for you.

We Also Discuss: ● Why extraordinary love demands your full self
● Why true intimacy begins with nervous system mastery
● How romantic partners mirror both our wounds and our greatness
● Self-regulation as the foundation for conscious love
● How shame dissolves in the presence of curiosity and compassion

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Radical Responsibility Podcast
[00:04:28] Relationships – the highest game human beings can play
[0:06:29] Debunking the criteria you think you’re looking for in a partner
[00:08:53] Committing only to the person who you see as inspiring
[00:13:34] Closing your heart and guarding it (what really happens?)
[00:19:45] Working creatively with conflict
[00:25:24] Self-regulation as the most important skill you’ll ever learn
[00:34:42] Shame and aggression in emotions
[00:43:05] Power struggles in relationships
[00:48:07] What drives jealousy?
[00:58:34] Attracting healthy relationships

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Connect with Annie Lalla
Website: https://annielalla.com
Podcast: Matters of the Heart
Instagram: @lallabird

Produced by Evolved Podcasting: https://www.evolvedpodcasting.com
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
One of the ways I teach my clients to do
this is when they have criticism, so they have feedback
or complaints, and every complaint is usually in the form
of some kind of WTF stance, So you might not say,
what the fuck, but you're like, ah, did you forget
to get the almond milk? Were you late picking up
the kids? It's got WTF infused into it. And so
if you could take all your complaints translate them from

(00:22):
WTF to what I call MLK. It stands for Martin
Luther King. And if anyone ever had a reason to
be what the fuck it with him? But he didn't.
He said, I have dreamed about a future, and he
inspired an entire nation and invited them to their higher
level selves with an invitation to greatness.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. I'm doctor Fleet Maul
and I'm excited to guide you on a journey of
authentic transformation. In each episode, I'll bring you insights from
leading experts to explore trauma recovery, mindfuluence practices, positive psychology,
and innovative breakthroughs in health, wellness, and life up themation.

(01:00):
This is a space for real conversations that inspire meaningful change,
helping you find alignment with the person you are always
meant to be. Let's get started. What if transformation isn't
just about thinking differently, but feeling differently. Science shows us

(01:21):
that true change happens when we align not just our minds,
but also the neural networks in our hearts and guts.
This heart mind connection is the key to deeper healing, resilience,
and expanded awareness. That's why I created the Heart Mind
All access, membership and community, a space designed to help
you rewire your nervous system, cultivate heart intelligence, and live

(01:43):
with greater clarity and purpose. With over one thousand hours
of transformational teachings specifically curated to meet your needs. You'll
learn from world renowned meditation teachers, neuroscientists, and experts in neuroplasticity,
all sharing powerful tools to help you shift your mindset
and heartset, regulate your emotions, and unlock your full potential.

(02:09):
You'll also gain unlimited access to every summit and course
we've ever produced, a treasure of trouble wisdom worth over
ten thousand dollars in growing, plus live gatherings, and an
inspiring global community to support your journey. If you're ready
to step into a more heart centered, connected and conscious life,
I invite you to join us. Clip the link to

(02:29):
learn more and start your journey today. What if the
key to extraordinary love isn't binding the right person, but
becoming the version of yourself that love is calling forward.
In this episode, I'm joined by Annie Lalla, a matchable
relationship coach known for blending science, soul, and emotional intelligence.
Annie shares powerful insights about how our childhood attachment patterns

(02:53):
shape our romantic lives and how we can use love
as a path of feeling and transformation. She shows us
how to work with conflict creatively, transmitt shame without blame,
and reframe jealousy as a sacred signal. One of Annie's
core teachings is this self regulation is the most important
skill in any relationship. When we take responsibility for our

(03:16):
emotional state, we become safer partners and more empowered humans.
This conversation is a compass for anyone who wants to
grow in love, not just survive it. Let's get started.
My name is doctor Fleet Mall your co host for
the session, and I'm really excited to be here today
with Annie Lawla.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
Welcome Annie, thank you delighted.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah, we're so happy to be able to include you.
Ever since, I've discovered your work and I've watched a
bunch of your presentations on various sites and podcasts and youtubes,
and it's fascinating work you do around relationship. You often
speak about creating extraordinary relationships through deep connection and authenticity,
So I wonder if you could share how individuals can

(03:56):
begin to cultivate a more conscious approach to their relationship,
especially when past experiences of shape feers and insecurities. You know,
there can be quite a leap there from going from
a relationship that we're kind of doing our best with tolerating,
coping it's okay most of the time, to actually wanting
to really, you know, embrace a more extraordinary level. It

(04:18):
requires quite a leap and a little bit of work.
I imagine a.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Lot of work. Actually, my husband says, it doesn't take
a lot to be in love. It takes everything. So
I really see the game of relationship as the highest
game human beings can play in their lifetime. It's most rigorous,
it's performance athletics for your emotions, and I'm really committed
that human beings believe in the possibility of true love

(04:44):
existing and as possible for them. So I really think
of myself as someone who helps skeptics believe in true love.
And so whether you're single, down dating, trying to find
your partner, or you're in a relationship and you're feeling
cynical or skeptical about what's possible here and lying to
give up that, I really love to intervene and basically
show people. You know, every cynic is a failed idealist.
You know, there's a part of them that had a vision,

(05:05):
had a dream, had a possibility, and it got hurt
or damaged or dashed to the curb, and then we
give up on that dream. But in order to be
cynical or skeptical, you actually still have to have the
dream burning inside like a little ember. Otherwise you'd just
be neutral, you wouldn't be cynical or skeptical. So I
see that little ember and I go in there and
I try to blow on it and reignite that possibility

(05:27):
for singles or couples. And you talked about when you've
been wounded or had problems in the past, you know,
original attachment dynamics, your attachment imprints really govern your patterns
in your romantic relationship, because when you fall in love,
the dynamic between your original attachment figures or it's right
over to your romantic partner. So even though you think
this is your boyfriend or your girlfriend, you're actually treating

(05:49):
them as if they're the attachment figure whose job it
is to rescue you, sees you safe, you make you
feel better when things go wrong, which is appropriate from
the child version of yourself, that's the appropriate stands. But
as an adult, we often relate to our romantic partner
as if it's their job to make us feel better.
And that's a developmental awakening that I offer people to

(06:11):
teach them how to recognize that they're doing that pattern
and using their partner, burning their partner being their attachment figure,
but teaching them how to become their own attachment figure,
their own inner adults, for their young, scared, upset, angry self.
And that's a whole set of tools and technology. But
the main thing I wanted to say here is what
I've noticed in working with singles and couples is that

(06:33):
you basically, once you have your attachment pattern set, you're
basically on the hunt, roving through the world looking for
a romantic partner that matches a set of criteria, and
we think it's good looking, funny, smart, intelligent, and those
are there. But what you're really hunting for is a
particular brand of heartbreak, a particular quality of awi that
is reminiscent and nostalgic of our original heartbreak in our

(06:57):
attachment dynamic with whichever parent we had to work on
feeling love from the most. So here we are we're
thinking we're looking for a dream soulmate, but we're looking
for someone who replicates that particular heartbreak. So once I'm
able to show someone this is the pattern, you're attracted to.
All these other people you don't feel the chemistry with
because they don't produce that nostalgic heartbreak. So since you're

(07:20):
always going to be looking for someone who's like, you know,
if your dad was emotionally unavailable, you're always going to
be looking for an emotionally unavailable guy. That's just the deal.
So here's what you do. You want to look for
the smartest, most intelligent, most conscious, most committed to personal growth,
emotionally unavailable guy that you can find, which is what
I did. I found my husband he was the best looking, smartest,

(07:42):
most conscious, emotionally unavailable guy can find. So you just
call the shot, because you won't be attracted to sensitive
ponytail guy if emotional unavailability is what the imprint was.
So it's like co opting the attachment pattern. And then
the point of being in love is to meet someone
who fits the role of replaying that attachment dynamic, but

(08:04):
this time, this time, at the end of the scene,
I will get the dream outcome where my attachment figure
loves me the way I most needed but never got
from my parent. And so once people realize the schema
that's underpinning there, make choice. Then they can do it proactively,
and I train both partners or the singles on how
to consciously wield their already existing attachment patterns and those

(08:28):
wound driven propensities to their advantage. To let go of
this delusion that you're ever going to find someone who
just satisfies instantly all your needs and wants and you
know doesn't trigger you crazy, because you literally pick them
so that they trigger you that crazy, so that it
comes up for healing. So that's one thing, and you

(08:48):
know I'm working with singles, I just say let's start
looking for mister and missus.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Right.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
We've got to make you into a version of yourself
that you are proud to offer to the most inspiring
human you meet, which is the only person you should marry.
You should only ever commit to the most inspiring human
you've ever met. Why settle for anything less than that?
I mean, picking a partner is the most important decision
you ever make in your life, and you're interviewing for

(09:14):
that very important job. And so the first thing I
do is try to help my singles create a version
of themselves that they can sign their name too triumphantly.
Who would you have to be to love what you're
offering to another person? And then build a life and
a tribe filled with activities that you love being in,
because no partner wants to join a life and rescue

(09:34):
you from it. They want to join a life that's
amazing that they get to add too. So that's a
few things to start with, and we could dap autle deeper.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Well there's a lot there, you know, trying to project
that perfect parent we didn't have under our partner, getting
them to fulfill that as a recipe for disaster, But
it sounds like you're saying that these attachment patterns we
have are inescapable, and thus we're going to find somebody
that meets you know, that creates that away, that meets
that attachment patter, and we just have to learn how

(10:04):
to work with that creatively. Which does sound like a
formula for a lot of great personal growth work and
therapeutic work. But isn't it possible to change the pattern?
And I have to do that till it is.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
But here's the deal. You always think of a number line.
There's zero in the middle, and to the left is
like you know, use standard attachment language, a super avoidant,
and to the right is super anxious. Right, oh my god,
do you love me? Are they going to text me back?
I need space, I need a long time. You always
find yourself on one side or the other. And in

(10:36):
some relationships I was a super avoidant and I ended
up falling in love with someone where I ended up
I was more clinging and attached at the beginning. So
the more work you do to come closer to the
center from whichever side you're lop sided towards, and it
can be both sides depending on the relationship you're in,
the more you integrate your shadowed ecotomy.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
So all my relationships up until my husband, I had
really I had to learn how to deal with and
love someone in their anxious and nurture and reassure that
person in order to make the relationship blast and be
as flourishing as it was. Little did I know that
I was practicing technology to be able to be my
own attachment figure to my own anxious self when my

(11:20):
husband might be avoidant in a conflict. And so the
work I help singles do, or our individuals do, become
more integrated and more balanced near the center because the
mate that you attract is as far away from the
center point as you are. So if you're very, very
codependent and like, oh my god, I need someone else
to prop me up, then you're going to find a

(11:40):
very agantic individual's self absorbed person. It's why you get
the full on narcissist with the super codependent EmPATH. And
everyone's on one side of these two. Whenever I meet
a couple, I'm always secretly going which one's the narner
and which one's the more impact that codependent, and I
get that they came to find each other to cross train.
You're always attracted to the underdeveloped skill that needs to

(12:03):
be blushed out in yourself. That's why you're attracted to it.
My husband was attracted to my ability to empathize with others,
except that was also a flaw. I was martyr, always
empathizing with everyone else, and I was attracted to him
because he knew his needs and wants and could empathize
with himself. So our relationship has been about him teaching
me how to empathize with my own needs, wants and
desires and developing a backbone of selfhood that is trustable.

(12:26):
And my relationship with him has been cultivating in him
the ability to empathize with other people's needs, wants, and desires,
attuned to the implicit unspoken requests from people. You know,
I'm training him in the implicit, he's training me in
the explicit. And honestly, after fifteen years now we've crossed,
I'm actually a little more avoidant and alone time and

(12:47):
like kind of need my space, and he's more let's
go for walks, let's hang out. We need more time together,
so that you could actually cross train your partner where
you actually, in midlife kind of go to the other side.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
That's fascinating. So today, moment to moment, it seems like
the working relationship or this the energy of relationship has
allowed to do with our heart being open or it's opening,
or it's closing, and it's not evisual. We can feel that,
you know, shutting down, we're avoiding, or our heart is opened,
even in a positive way, not necessarily a clean way,

(13:18):
but it's actually opened. And so but that you know,
can feel very vulnerable and very unsafe. Most of us
have been bruised quite a bit childhood downward when we
had our heart open with expectations and hopefulness and I'm
here and then we get bruised, right, and so how
do we override all that conditioning that.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know, it's like us intelligent con morty. Yeah, am
I really going.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
To put my finger on the hostile again? You know?

Speaker 1 (13:45):
I hear you, And I mean, it's a really beautiful,
elegant solution to close our hearts to keep it protected.
And so I want to really honor and dignify the
propensity of us to guard what's sacred and tender and vulnerable.
And the heart art, like the mind doesn't really work
as well when it's closed. Like if you are going
to go out into the world and become successful. Putting

(14:07):
on your closed mind is probably least likely to lead
to success, and similar to the mind, when you close
your heart, it literally doesn't work as well. I think
of consciousness as equal parts mind and heart, and I
don't even like to look at dualities and ecotomies, but
if we have to make them, but you need to
be have full consciousness online. You need to have an
open mind and an open heart, and if either one

(14:30):
of these is closed, you only have half of your
intelligence online. Your success romantically or in any enterprise is
going to be compromised if you're not bringing your full
intelligence and your full consciousness. So you can't win if
you don't play in their game of romance. And the
only way to guarantee that you never get hurt is
that you never ever explore a relationship, and so you're

(14:51):
guaranteed to win that game. But do you really want
to win that game? And I don't know anybody, even
no matter how in love you are, that doesn't become
doesn't befriend heartbreak, and the heart like a muscle, just
like when you rip your muscle at the gym and
it grows back stronger. Every time the heart rips, it
grows back stronger. And so I look at heartbreak as opportunities,

(15:14):
especially in the form of conflict, as opportunities to build yourself,
your own emotional resilience and the resilience of the relationship
stronger each time if you know how to fight. And
there's a heuristics and technologies around alchemizing conflict and drama
into communion, connection, and collaboration. A conflict is a collaboration

(15:34):
trying to happen but getting undermined or stymide by the
two enemies of collaboration, which is coercion and collapse. And
we can talk more about that. You know, conflict is
a collaboration gone wrong, and collaboration is a conflict gone right.
And when you close your heart, you can't play the
human game, first of all, and you can't trust. And

(15:56):
what I love about trust is it's a word that
has us in the middle. And in order to trust
another human being, you have to feel like they are
prioritizing and centralizing the relational dynamic the us more than
their agenda, more than the outcome that they're attached to.
Someone's trying to sell you a car and you think
that's more important than this relationship. You don't trust them
if you're part you know, someone wants you to come

(16:18):
over to their house and help them paint, but they
are willing to undermine the relationship. I eat guilt or
shame you in order to get that you don't trust them.
So I would just say vulnerability, first of all, is
the word that gets used a lot. But I've noticed
that young children never say when they grow up, I
want to grow up and be vulnerable. It's not aspirational.
So usually I just see vulnerability as a very special

(16:41):
case of honesty. Vulnerability is a form of honesty. So
my invitation is, how could you be more honest and
transparent about what's really happening when your heart's wanting to close?
Because when your heart's wanting to close, there's a framework,
a belief that is generating the closing of the heart.
And usually that leaf of that framework is dead, ossified

(17:02):
data from the past, past experience, either yours or somebody else's,
And you're literally letting obsolete data infect the present moment.
And what if you could breathe into your body, be
with the sensations in it, and use the fresh cutting edge,
fresh off the press data of what's so in the moment,
and if you can do that, which is really the
key opening your heart is being coming present to your body.

(17:26):
And when you're fully present, your heart naturally goes into
its resting position, which is open. And so there's obviously
a lot of tools and technology around this, but I
would say if someone's in a situation where your heart's
wanting to close, I would just ask yourself, is there
any circumstance that you can conceive of under which it's
more useful, pragmatic and effective to close your heart? Because

(17:49):
I asked myself this question and I never come up
with a yes. Even if you have to kill your
enemy to defend your family, you will do a better
job with your heart open. And as Byron Katie says,
you can love someone with all your heart and never
want to see them again for the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 (18:04):
So I like to circle back later to talk about
attracting relationship or mathesting relationship for those of us who
are single, and what aspire to a relationship in our lives.
For those of us in relationship, As you've been describing,
conflicts inevitable, and I like the way you relate it
with collaboration and so forth, and yet you know, conflict
can become embedded. There's all kinds of patterns. You kind

(18:27):
of alluded to this in terms of how we play
out our attachment patterns and also even old conflicts. I
don't know if you're familiar with Virginia's cheers work, Ryan
Sculpting love her, but you know, you'll have a couple
in a fight that they constantly get into, and so
you work with one of the partners to get him
into the posture they're in, and you do this, and
then suddenly they get it, Oh yeah, it's my father

(18:48):
yelling at me. I'm four years old, as you the partner,
and something similar, and you find that it's like the
ghosts of their parents, and it's conflict out to them.
It has very little to do with actually what's going
on with them right now. And also then conflict can
be you know, if we don't know how to work with,
conflict can be so painful, terrifying and terrifying. You know,

(19:09):
we walk away feeling bad about ourselves. You know, it
can just be like you know, I mean, I know
there's been times in my life where I just like
no drama. That's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for
a relationship with zero drama. That's probably a pipe dream,
but it is a pipe dream. I know that much well.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Drama is a form of a liveness, and so if
you say no drama to any situation, you get no liveness.
You know, I guess why.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
I mean, there's no use I know, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
And you know, as you get older, you learn to
navigate preemptively to mitigate drama upstream. That's a lot of
what I teach how to mitigate it upstream, which you know,
most of a conflict happens before you even open your
mouth to speak to your partner. It's all happening in
here before you even interact. So I can do a
lot of the work with just one partner in the

(19:56):
relationship to mitigate the conflict. But I'm also quite a
depth in the middle of the drama, like when a
couple called me and they're in it. It's unlike the
er doctor, I like, come alive in the intensity because
I believe any two seemingly disparate perspectives that are occurring
as antagonistic dichotomies, there always exists an overlap in the

(20:17):
Venn diagram. I just believe that on pure faith, and
it's because I believe that the way I hunt for
that overlap and I look for it is with this
it shall be so we will find the shared reality
that we can use to build scaffolding up to the
next level of this conversation that is more productive. And
just having the audacity to have that faith, because a

(20:38):
lot of times I see couples from their perspective, ones
on the white side of the ying yang, ones on
the black side of the ying Yang, and they're like,
we are enemies. But I can see above that they're
interpenetrating and that there is a shared reality. I can
find some framework where they both go yes, I agree,
and then I can build that out into a bridge

(20:59):
back home home to what home to us. I know
that their relationship is stronger, more resilient, and bigger than
this one issue. Their love is wider than this fight.
And if I can remember that and shuttle that memory
back to them during the drama and teach them the
technology around collaboration, they will start to believe, even though

(21:22):
in the moment they're triggered in angry, they will start
to believe there exists a version of this conversation at
the end of which we are closer, better understanding of
each other, and we will not regret that we had
the drama because of the upgrade we got, and because
I believe that's always possible in any conflict we get
access to it right, Opportunities only occur to the minds
that entertain them.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Absolutely, so I want to talk more about that and
an officer, there's a lot of skill sets involved in
working creatively with conflict, and conflict can of course lead
to greater intimacy w and work with the skillful and
healthy ways. But it seems like to begin with, at
least for me, there is a need to kind of
maybe not rare, but for somewhere shift our attitude around
conflict altogether, because earlier I've been very fortunate to have

(22:05):
some really amazing partners of my life, and early on
when my partner was upset with me, I just was
out of there. I'm out the door, I'm to the bar,
I'm going somewhere out the door. And this one partner,
of course, I lost two earlier partners who were both
amazing to cancer. I'm now an amazing marriage with my
beloved Sophie. So idem very fortunate. I've had these amazing

(22:28):
women in my life, and but anyway, this one I'm
thinking of. She was almost literally grabbed me and just
look at me, say, you're not gonna die. You're not
gonna die. I'm upset, but you're not gonna die. You
can survive this. Just stay here, let's work through this.
You won't down. I'm like, no, I'm gonna die. I'm
gonna die out of it.

Speaker 1 (22:44):
Yeah, yeah, like terrifying.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
At some point I had to become less threatened by conflict. Now,
maybe that happened because I had some experience with working
through it better, or maybe I just I don't know,
but somehow I had to.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Get well, I was just like you. I literally thought
anger coming towards me from anyone meant I was going
to die. That I had the same coding. And then
I married mister angry, who's very comfortable with it. Well,
there's two parts. First, I think realizing that there's a
part of you that cognitively knows I'm not going to die,

(23:17):
which she was speaking to. But there's another part that's
pre cognitive, pre lingual and not in time. And it
really does believe it's going to die because there was
a time in your life where some anger was coming
at you and your little nervous system could not cope
and totally understandably and would dissociate, which is another form

(23:37):
of leaving to cope, which is a beautiful technology that
the human nervous system has, and it works so well
that as we get older, we keep doing it. Except
instead of dissociating into a fantasy world or playing with
dolls or trucks, we dissociate into narratives that involve explanations, justifications, reasons,
blames and shames. That's the new form of dissociation, is

(23:59):
the story that we go into rather than being with
the sensations in our body, which is from my experience,
a feeling of fear or frustration. Has never killed the client.
They've never spontaneously combusted. At worst, they tremble a little
and cry. But teaching someone the process of being self

(24:20):
regulated enough to be with their feeling is I think
the great mission of being a human being. It's basically
what all my coaching comes down to. One taking radical
responsibility for feeling safe in your body, so that might
include removing yourself from the conversation, leaving the house, leaving
the room to take care of your nervous system. It
also includes building more resilience so that you can stay

(24:42):
more and more in the fire and feeling safe by
learning how to regulate your nervous system in the face
of an onslaught of upset or anger. So if I've
had to build both tools, so I'm sure over time
you've built the ability to tolerate someone's upset, but also
you've chosen partners or pick people who have maybe more
sophisticated ways of expressing their anger as well, So we

(25:06):
could go into like how to handle those like I
don't know where you want to go with it, but
like we can dive into collaboration or what to do
with anger or how to be your feeling.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
I think I just wanted to affirm that that is
a you know, it's a pathway to developing that willingness
and that comfor level, and that it has profoundly shifted
for me over the years. But I want to talk
more about thee You mentioned the technology of collaboration, yes, juxtaposition,
conflictent collaboration, but you just mentioned self regulation, and it
seems to me like that is so foundational that if

(25:37):
we're going to have a healthy relationship and we aspire
to do the work of relationship, not being a tolerated relationship,
but really do the work, that both partners learn good
self regulation skills because otherwise, you know, being a relationship
kind of like walking through a mind field blindfolded and
have no way to retain our balance. Right, So there's
like learning something about self regulation and even regulation on

(26:00):
a neurophysiological level are really important skills to have to
then do the work in relation.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
I would say it's not just an importance. I think
it's the most important skill to being an effective human.
Definitely the most important skill for being successful in relationships,
in a relationship at all, and the king of skill
for being a successful parent. So learning it the reason
why it's so required to learn in your romantic relationship,
because if you're going to have kids someday, if you

(26:28):
don't know how to create safety in your body when
you're scared, angry, overwhelmed, then your child will never feel
safe around you, and they won't learn how to do
it by proxy. They learn my being trained in your
nervous system. And you know, for anyone who's listening. Regulations
is like a buzzword right now. It just means regulating
your own nervous system with intentionality. Our nervous system gets

(26:50):
tense and contracted and scared automatically and unconsciously, something happens
a loud noise. We go disregulated in order to regulate.
That takes conscious intentionality, So we get disregulated and stressed unconsciously.
Every other animal in the world goes after a stressful
moment and shutters out their shock. We are the only

(27:12):
animals that get contracted and do not have systematized, structured
ways to shut her out our distress, our shock the
after waves of a difficult situation, and that accumulates and
produces disease. Robert Sepolski writes a lot about this his
book Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. But let's come back to
what self regulation is. So first of all, I think

(27:33):
it's the mark of being an adult. My definition of
adult is someone who realizes a nobody come and to
rescue you. Ever and your emotional state, how you're feeling,
is your responsibility to be tracking you. Being attuned to
your nervous system is the one single job you have
on this planet. That's it. If you can just do

(27:55):
that job, everything else falls into place. Attuning to your
own nervous system in real time. And when you attune
to your own nervous system and track, oh, I'm contracted,
I'm a little scared, I'm a little nervous, and starting
to even calibrate. I calibrate and my three out of
ten anxious and my seven out of ten upset. In
our family, everything's got a number. If my daughter gets hurt,

(28:15):
she's like, mom, I got hurt, you know, a six
out of ten, or she's hungry three out of ten.
I really like calibration because it allows you to bring
more consciousness and granularity to it. But tracking your nervous
system so that you can notice when it starts to
get disregulated. By the time it hits five out of
ten disregulated, triggered, overwhelmed, it goes from five to ten,

(28:38):
like in microseconds. So you want to be tracking it
at zero, one, two, three, because then you still have
some sanity, and you're still driving the car, and the
lizard brain hasn't hijacked taken over, and you can still
do some conscious intentional self regulation like breathing. This is
the most simple self regulation is three or five deep

(28:59):
breaths and ideally through the nose, long slow exhale through
the mouth. That's the easiest, most portable. There's many other
tools and technologies. There's there's many self regulation techniques. There
are human imagination, you know, there's one self soothing tool
where you like smooth down the outside of your arms.
There's AMDR, there's ef T, anything that gets you into

(29:23):
your soma, literally wiggling your fingers and toes, exercise dance.
Of course, meditation is basically a practice of self regulation.
And I think this is the mark of being a
grown adult, is that you take responsibility for your own
emotional state. And most people in relationships have not realized,

(29:43):
and I understand it, have not realized that your partner
isn't there to regulate your nervous system. This is a
little bit controversial. I'm not a big fan about teaching
coregulation because I notice most people make a bypass and
they go straight from I don't feel regulated to it's
your job to regulate me. This is what I mean
that you have to become your own attachment figure. That

(30:04):
means you have to become able to regulate. So self
regulation is actually internalized coregulation. So you learn from a friend,
a teacher, you're a parent, a therapist, what it feels
like for someone to hold space for your feelings, to
dignify an honor your experience, and then you learn how
to do that internally for your own younger self. Then
when you do that, you no longer put the burden

(30:26):
of needing someone else to regulate you, and you're more
powerful because you're not contingent on someone's presence to be okay,
which means you're now an adult. And there is nothing
more romantic in relationship, No flowers, no Hawaii vacation, nothing,
Nothing is more romantic than you're a partner being able
to regulate themselves and not put the burden of their
emotions onto you. Once you are proficient at regulating yourself

(30:49):
and you get philosophically that if I'm feeling scared, angry,
or upset, I need to either take space or go
use my tools or call a coach at get support
that doesn't come from my partner. Once you're there, then
as a gift the way, like if I'm sick with COVID,
I've been sick with love last week, not COVID, but
just with a flu. And my husband would just like
bring me food and take care of me and just

(31:10):
love on me. And he doesn't owe me making me lunch.
I receive it as a complete gift from his heart,
and he treats it like a gift, and I take
it like a gift. I don't go where's my lunch?
I'm sick in bed. I don't have many food yet.
And most people relate to the regulation of their partner
supporting and soothing them as an entitlement because the young

(31:33):
part of them that didn't get that regulation from their
parents when they should have is expecting it understandably because
of the young kid, you should have been soothed and
loved down by your parents. So the young part of
our partners is going, you owe this to me, and
I have compassion for that. But your partner doesn't see
you as a young four year old anymore. They see
you as a grown up adult. And you have to

(31:54):
realize that you literally picked someone who doesn't know how
to regulate you on purpose so that you could learn
how to do it yourself. That's actually what happens.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
Yeah, and I love that, and obviously I love this
approach about what it means to be an adult. I
love David Ricco's book Being an Adulting Room.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
Oh, I love it too.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Read that years and years ago. You know, I think
expecting cold regulation or being dependent on cold regulation from
others is obviously not helpful. But I would think that
if we're able to do a good job with self regulation,
if we develop a baseline of good self regulation, then
when we are in the presence of others, just by
practicing good self regulation and self awareness and embodied self awareness,

(32:32):
while we're in the presence of others that has a
cold regulating impact problem, that's a copy.

Speaker 1 (32:37):
You're literally energetically demoing what it looks like to be
owning and honoring your feelings. And whether you say a
word or not, the other person's body can pick up
the demo. So if I go into a restaurant and
I heard baby crying and it's someone in the corner,
I feel the part of me that gets like the
mom and me. But if I regulate my nerve assystem,

(32:59):
I literally then that softness out into the field, and
I know it'll get its way to the mom and
to the baby. There's no faster way to regulate another
human being than to attune to your nervous system. Take
some breaths and regulate home. Most of us are trying
to regulate our nervous system the scenic route through other
people's nervous system. I can get everyone else to feel

(33:20):
calm and happy, then I'll be okay, instead of going
directly to our own nervous system making that feel okay.
So now you're a resource to support everyone else. I mean,
that was me for many, many years, thinking I'm loving everybody,
but really I just can't hang when they're angry or upset.
So I became a professional mediator of upset people. But

(33:40):
you know, my marriage has fixed that. I definitely married
the person who did not know how to regulate me,
and thank goodness, I hated it at the time, but
now I'm so glad that I've learned how to do
it because it makes me a way more extraordinary mother
to my child.

Speaker 2 (33:54):
So let's talk more about what you described as a
technology of collaboration, and also maybe as part of that understanding,
you know, I mean, I think there's so much shame
in our culture, in the way that we're enculturated as children.
I just personally feel one of my life goals is
to grid our culture of shame and blame. Very small
little project, I.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Have you help, I'm on the team, I'm on the
same boat.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
It comes up all the time. So it seems like
if you're talking about effective collaboration and helping working through conflicts,
somehow we're able to transform or transcend shame in some way.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, I mean, shame is underneath a lot of aggression. Shame, jealousy, envy, guilt.
These are all status reducing emotions. When we confess them,
we apparently lose status in most culture, and so human
beings don't like to give up status. And so what
happens when you have shame and be jealousy or guilt
is it masquerades and dresses up as aggression, criticism attack.

(34:49):
We don't say I feel jealous because you're looking at
the waitress who's skinnier than me. They say, why are
you disrespecting me? Why don't you go home with her?
Like you got to look behind aggression, and a lot
of times you'll find hidden shame, and the shame is
hidden from the person in whom's body it's happening, like
nobody usually knows they're feeling a shame. The way you
know you're feeling a shame is usually you're either angry

(35:11):
or you're hiding something. That's one of the indicators of
shame is secrecy. So there's a lot of ways I
handle shame. First of all, well, I have a couple
of tools. I'll give you a tool, a round shame
for conflict resolution. First of all, I'm always scanning for
where my client or the human in front of me
I'm speaking to might be having shame energetically, like before

(35:32):
they say anything, like maybe they're fixing their hair or
they're like uncomfortable. I find the part of their being
that is terrified of being marginalized, which is what shame is.
Shame is hailed from our original tribal ancestry, where if
there's ten pieces of food and ten people in the
tribe and you ate two pieces of food, someone would starve,

(35:52):
and so you were shamed and shunned for doing anything
that was out of report with the tribe because it
would compromise the integrity of the tribe, and so you
can be like cast out into the desert to dialogue.
So shame is always on pain of death. That's why
it feels monolithic and terrifying. So I send a message
to the part of that person that might be feeling
in terror or having that shame, and i'd literally I

(36:15):
just send love to it. I just go, I see you,
this is not verbal, and I just like send love
to all the places where the person might be having terror,
and I notice that some part of their being receives that.
But I'm also more explicit. So when I'm working with couples,
there's often like deceit or if you're a shamed of something,
you might fudge the story about how the argument went.

(36:36):
I try to write like a victory letter or see
the innocence of the person who's feeling is shamed preemptively,
and then I give them an out, like I write
a narrative that gives them reprieve from the shame so
that they don't even have to unconsciously dodge it. Of course,
I understand exactly why you wouldn't have told her that

(36:57):
on the text, it makes sense, and then give them away.
I'm basically saying without saying explicitly, I know you feel ashamed.
It's okay that you have shame. You still have dignity
and here's your innocence letter. And if I can do that,
I can often make this shame tolerable enough for them
to own up to a new, improved way of doing

(37:20):
it or take responsibility, because most people have take responsibility
equal to shaming themselves and making themselves bad. And I'm
always trying to scrape off the shame, blame and make
wrong between my clients or when I'm talking to them,
even a should is a could with shame smeared on top.
So you want to scrape off all that shame. And
one of the ways I teach my clients to do

(37:41):
this is to when they have criticism, so they have
feedback or complaints, and every complaint is usually in the
form of some kind of WTF stance, So you might
not say what the fuck, but you're like, did you
forget to get the almond milk? Were you late picking
up the kids? It's gone WTF infused into it. And

(38:03):
so if you could take all your complaints translate them
from WTF to what I call MLK, which stands for
Martin Luther King. And if anyone ever had a reason
to be what the fuck, it was him. But he didn't.
He said, I have a dreamed about a future, and
he inspired an entire nation and invited them to their
higher level selves with an invitation to greatness. And so

(38:26):
every complaint has a commitment to greatness behind it. So
if you can translate your WTF complaints into MLK speeches
instead of like why did you leave your dishes on
the table, I have a dream that you take your
dishes and you put them stray into the dishwasher because
you want to collaborate and be part of this team,
this family keeping the house clean. Like there is a
way to show your partner how their behavior could be

(38:49):
even more aligned with their values and not add to
their already existing shame. You actually have to give them
a way out of the shame away into hero And
that's what the MLK stance is. How can I paint
a future where they win, not complain about where they've
screwed something up, So it's future focused and possibility driven

(39:11):
rather than past focused and shamelate. That's one tool I
used to scrape off shame.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
I just want to re affirm that just that sort
of MLK stance that you're using and that shift that
could be a north star in relationship, that could take
us a whole long way.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
It really does, and we use it in our family system.
If I say something my osand will be like, can
you mlk that, which means can you translate that into
an inspiration instead of bitching? And I'll ask him to
mlk it too, And it forces development for both because
who you have to be to inspire your partner into
a developmental change is a higher version of yourself. It's

(39:49):
someone that you would sign your name to more triumphantly.
And your job, is romantic partner, is to stand fiercely
for the greatness of your mate and to emancipate them
from their small, wounded, defended self into their their essence.
You're not trying to change your partner. You're trying to
scrape away everything that isn't them, like barnacles on a ship.

(40:11):
I think of the Michelangelo metaphor, where you hire your
partner to be Michelangelo, and you're the block of marble,
and they see David inside the marble. That's what they
fell in love with, not some other version of you,
the real you. What your partner's trying to scrape away
or curb is your unconscious, wound driven patterns, your defense
strategies not you, they love you. They're scraping away everything

(40:33):
that's not you to emancipate the magnum opus of who
you are from the block of marble. So choosing your partner,
choosing your Michelangelo, your sculpture carefully. That's why it's the
most important decision you ever make, because you will fall
in love with another person. You fall in love with
who you get to be because of them by being
with them, because they're going to stand for the highest

(40:54):
vision and carve you into it.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
Would you repeat that, But you don't fall.

Speaker 1 (40:59):
In love with You don't fall in love with another person.
You fall in love with who you get to be
around them, through them, beside them. You fall in love
with the vision they have of your greatness, which supersedes
the vision you even have for yourself. You fall in
love with who your partner sees in you at your greatest,
and they become your Michaelangelo. And then they carve you

(41:21):
into it. And sometimes they carve you with poor bedside
matter and harsh criticism. And I try to teach those
partners how to mlk their invitations to greatness. And even
if partner does give you feedback, that feels critical as
the one that's receiving it. Your job is to remember
that you are already a masterpiece. You're the Mona Lisa,

(41:42):
and they're just dusting off the Mona Lisa with their feedbacks.
If you remember your own dignity and greatness and then
look for the golden nugget amongst all their grumbles. Is
there an iterative upgrade in there that would make me
an even more extraordinary version of myself? And the question,
if you ask yourself, is the complaint my partner's making
of me? If I fulfill the thing they requested, would

(42:05):
it make me fall more in love with myself? Would
I be more proud of myself? And if the answer
is yes, then your partner is doing exactly the job
you hired them to do, which is be a mirror
for your magnificence and poetry, but also a mirror for
your madness and wherever you fall short of your greatness.
So they're just doing their job.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
I bought power struggles. Power struggles can get pretty deadly
as long as people stay locked. And now I used
to have a lead a training before the pandemic. We
haven't been able to do it really since pandemic. Well,
hopefully we'll do it again some day. But very intense
in person group work, like thirty poor people with a
training team of six people true primary trainers and taking
people deep into their family awards and stuff, and a

(42:47):
lot of intense sitting role plays and a lot of stuff.
And sometimes we would have a couple in the training
or sometimes someone with their adult child and they would
be just locked into such a power struggle, just the
horns locked that neither one of them was going to
of an inch. At some point myself or my coul
trainer might say to one of them, what do you want?
You want to be a writer? You want relationship? Do
you want a win or you want relationship? You don't

(43:08):
get to have both and others because power struggle thing
can be and of course goes way back to our
attachment issues in our childhood and so forth.

Speaker 1 (43:17):
But if you I just co opt the whole thing,
I just literally when my couples have power struggles, I
build a culture where the most spiritually developed, sensitive, loving,
attuned partner is the winner. So I fetishize that. So
if they're in a power struggle, I start talking to
them about who's willing to be the hero, and there

(43:40):
you know, they're in and in, in and in. I'm like,
it's okay, and I can tell which one has more
resource than the other. But I often let them self
select and I go which one of you wants to
be the hero right now? So I'm already framing the
one that leads with the olive branch or softens is
the hero, and I'm turning and co opting. The competition
is in a fight. They're trying to fight who's right.

(44:02):
They want to win, so I don't want to take
that out. I want to let them win, But let's
win a new game. Who's going to win the game
called badass partner? Who remembers the importance of us? Who
comes back home to love. Sometimes when I'm angry with
my husband, we'll go into a little tiff and then
I'll come back into the kitchen once I've like regulated,
and I'll be like, I remembered. And I remembered is

(44:23):
code for I remember that we're in love and that
our relationship is bigger than this grumble. But when I
say it, I have a little bit of I'm remembered.
What you doing? You still grumbling over there? You still
often your little grumble because you ain't as spiritually developed
as me. Like I take it, I co opt the competition,
but now we're competing for who's going to come back
home to us faster, and so I find that really

(44:46):
works to just a kido the power struggle from who's
right who's wrong, to who's better at loving, which is
a much better game to play to win.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
It seems to be a true lie in your work.
While you're calling co opting or working with the dynamics
says you are, rather than trying to escape them or
deny them or literally change and really work with the
dynamics and some story train.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
It's a yes and right. It's yes and transcend means
include and go beyond. So I got to include what's
so and just dance it into something like love it
into submission whatever the pattern is that we want to
work through in ourselves and someone else. You can't obsolete
a pattern, lobotomize a pattern. You can only attend to it,

(45:29):
see its dignity, and then love it into submission. Because
when you love, when you appreciate a pattern, see it's
years of work that it's put in, Give it's gold,
watch for its years of service, it organically and naturally subsides.
Patterns only persist when you shame them, make them wrong,
or tell them they need to go away. Just like

(45:50):
a child. If you tell them that, they just dig
their heels in and they go I in, leave it
until you see me and love me. That's what your
patterns do. So I just find a way to love
the pattern into softening, and then what's more current and
useful and born in the moment will surface. Because those
patterns are from dead ossified experience, from your past, they're

(46:12):
usually no longer even applicable to the current moment. I mean,
to be triggered and disregulated is actually a form of
time travel. To be triggered is to time travel back
into the past to a younger self, usually under ten
years old. Even though you are a forty year old
adult in the kitchen. Your nervous system is time traveled
back to the past, so the first time you had
that difficult emotion, and so once you've time traveled back

(46:35):
to the past to a five year old version of yourself,
when you're triggered, you only have access to your five
year old files. And that's why you look like a
tantruming human with not much sophistication, and all those courses
and plant medicine and all the meditation courses you've done
help you zero because you're a five year old. So
that's why self regulation is actually a form of time travel.
Self regulation is you doing some actions breathing that time

(46:58):
travels your ass to the present moment where you have
grown up adult files and technologies that you can access
and wield creatively in resolving the conflict. So self regulation
is actually a time travel as far I'm concerned.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
A stalk romant about jealousy. Jealousy in some ways seems
almost like the dark side of love or something, But
it's a human emotion. It's normal, it's naturally it happens.
What drives jealousy and how do you work with jealousy?

Speaker 1 (47:25):
I think jealousy gets a bad rap. I think jealous
is the the very sophisticated astute emotion, and evolution does
not waste time on anything that isn't adapted. So jealousy
is in many animals a way of protecting the pair bond,
and it's a way of guarding the sacred us, a
fourth of us. And what I'll say about jealousy and
is so interesting. As a love coach. For twenty years,

(47:46):
I've never had a single client except one in the
last year, that is ever confessed to being jealous ever.
So again, memory I said, jealousy always mass craades his aggression.
People have jealousy as coded as weak and secure. You're
not confident. Here's what I think about jealousy. It's never
for no reason. I'll give it a metaphor. So the

(48:08):
way a clam makes it or an oyster makes a
pearl is a little grain of sand has to get
in there, and it's an irritant, and then mollusk goes, oh,
I don't like this grain of sand, and it excreets
All this iridescent stuff that coalis is around this grain
of sand, and it produces a pearl. So at the
root of all jealousy is a grain of sand that

(48:29):
has truth. Now, if you think your partner is cheating
on you with the secretary because he's coming home late
from work, the story that the jealous feeling makes in
your mind is almost ninety nine percent bullshit and not believable.
But the feeling that something's off is trustable. So I
trust jealousy to indicate something is off. The story of

(48:50):
what is off, I trust zero. When a couple comes
to me and one of them is jealous, usually the
partner is like, well, they're being ridiculous. All I did
is take a picture of the patapa who was a guy,
and now you think I'm dating him, And they paint
out the jealous person to be like psycho. But if
I trace it back down, there is always systemically in
the relationship behaviors that the partner who's being accused is

(49:15):
doing that is lacking in full devotion that they're not
aware of. There's something that they're doing that is not
in full devotion that, if they were doing, would preclude
the jealousy. The grain of sand wouldn't be there for
the pearl. Most of the pearl is all fake. It's
not the sand, but there's a grain of sand in it.
And so jealousy that danced with both partners where I

(49:36):
help the person not trust the story that the jealousy
is spinning, but to just come to their partner and
saying I'm feeling like something's off. My mind is generating
a story. Here's the crazy story my mind's generating. I'm
hallucinating that you're having an affair, But the fact that
your partner is jealous indicates to you that there's low
hanging fruit being left on how to upgrade your devotion.

(49:58):
And when I help that partner cl go off unconscious
sexual tentacles, they're sending out or unconscious ambiguous signals that
they may be indicating or behaviors that are not in
full devotion of the primary relationship. Once I bring that
into their attention and help them upgrade that the jealousy
goes away. So jealousy indicates an opportunity for more devotion

(50:19):
to show up in the other partner, And usually the
partner can't see where they're missing the next level of devotion,
and the jealousy is the invitation for their growth. Think
if your partner's needs as custom crafted by the universe
to wake you up to your next level self. Whatever
persistent need or complain your partner has is the universe

(50:40):
literally trying to carve you into wholeness. And never ignore jealousy.
You don't have to trust the story. Neither the jealous
person or the person feeling jealous of shouldn't trust the story.
But there is something to it. My husband likes to
go around saying, oh, I never feel jealous. I never
felt jealous once with Annie, and I'm like, yeah, that's
that's because the way I handle myself is such that

(51:03):
you will never feel it. And I know it's a
lot of times couples, you know, one partner will say
I never feel jealous, and I'm like, that's because she's
got her shit together and she's in full devotion or
he's in full of potion. So that's how I think
about it is. I don't dismiss it. I see it
is very intelligent. I think it should be always. I
basically don't believe you can have jealousy if there isn't

(51:24):
something off, even if the guy is just staying late
at work, having a marijuana took after with the guys
and not telling his wife it's nothing to do with
a woman, but something's off. And to distinguish, jealousy involves
three people, envy involves two. So I can be jealous
that my best friend is hanging out with a new
female friend doesn't even have to be sexual, and I

(51:46):
can be envious of, Oh, she published her book and
I haven't published my book yet. It's fubly different.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
We kind of idealize in romanticize long term relationships and
forever love and so forth, And obviously it's a beautiful thing.
And sometimes we see people that have been together for
a long time and they're still romantic with each other.
It's a really touching, an heartwarming thing. And I'm wondering
if sometimes relationships do have an endpoint. Oh yeah, And

(52:15):
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
how people can discern whether it makes sense to keep
a relationship.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Well, I think relationship is a school, and it's an
educational dojo. It's a school, and you graduate every relationship
I was in up until my husband romantically I graduated from.
I think if it is graduation rather than a breakup,
I think I like the flavor of that because you
get to keep your diploma, your education of what works,
what doesn't work, your own developmental upgrades, and no relationship

(52:44):
is a failure because you learned from it, and that
is hard one knowledge, and so knowing when it's time
to graduate is a skill. I think most people give
up too early because what happens is after the drugs
wear off after nine to eighteen months and all the
hormones wear off. Then you're left with a fallible, imperfect

(53:04):
human in front of you who cannot fulfill all your needs.
In fact, you picked someone who absolutely, by design, will
not fulfill your needs and exactly the way that you
most want them to, and then you get mad. So
I think any couple that's together is supposed to be together,
no matter how crazy their relationship works. They are constellating
because each person is trying to get a nutrient or
a developmental upgrade or an education that they need to

(53:27):
become more integrated in whole. That's why they're in the relationship,
and they won't break up or graduate until they get
that nutrient, that education, that upgrade. And I never break
up a couple, but I can usually sniff out whether
this is what the longevity of the couple is, and
I might ask questions to both partners, the answers to
which poise them more. Should become aware that graduation is nigh,

(53:51):
and I think it's very important to graduate in a
way that has finesse and grace because the quality of
your last breakup governs your success in the next relationship.
And so you may think, oh, I'll just you know,
get out of this and forget about it any uncauterized wounds.
If you don't think you know. When you graduate, you
want to graduate from the highest level of poetry of

(54:13):
that relationship. You want to graduate from what's the best
version of us that I remember? And you don't break
up in a fight. I don't let anyone break up
in a fight. I don't let anyone demonize their partners
to get over them. Because you once you start loving someone,
you always love them. So when you demonize an ex,
you demonize the part of you that loved them, and
you actually turn it into self loathing. So you can

(54:34):
honor again, like Byron Katy said, you love someone with
all your heart and never want to see them again
for the rest of you. It so you can honor
the love and the poetry and the beauty that you created.
And that's what I want you to put on the
cover of the book of that relationship in your mind,
because all your memories are like art pieces hanging on
the walls in your mind. You don't want to have
art that you're not proud of. They're not that's not empowering.

(54:57):
So what did you learn from that relationship? What was
the poetry? Was the bet break up from that place,
which is harder to do, and graduate always conserving the
dignity and self esteem of your partner and you and
the relationship. So act as if your relationship past, present,
and future is listening to how you think about it,

(55:18):
how you talk about it with your friends, and that
relationship it's self esteem is either like this or like this,
and you want to speak about your relationship pastor present
or future in a way that the relationship feels proud
of itself, like you're proud of your degree when you
graduate from university. And so I have a lot of
different ideas on how to graduate with class, but knowing

(55:43):
really comes down to who's worth the suffering. That's my
least glamorous definition of love. Who's worth the suffering? Because
there's no relationship where you're not going to have to
do work to transcend your patterns. And the reason that
it's hard is because they're calling you to a next
level of work. And every relationship I was in had
some difficulties, but there was no one worth that level

(56:04):
of suffering, worth doing the work for. Until I'm at
my husband and he's worth the work at the skin
of his teeth, but he is and so and what
is the work? It's all work in service of my
own development. I'm using my relationship and my husband as
a gymnasium as a dojo for me to get muscles.
So when people talk about it, it's not fair. How

(56:25):
come I have to change and they don't change. You
don't yell at the training machines at the gym and
go how come you don't have to lift the weights.
You're using the gym to grow your own emotional resilience
and developmental muscles. And if my partner wants to sit
out of the sofa eating potato chips and ice cream
while I'm working at at the gym, well they can.
I'm doing it for myself. And I've noticed when couples

(56:46):
are in love, if you do your work and let
leave them, don't even need them to do theirs, just
you lead by example, they do come trailing behind. My
husband's always about three months behind me in a new
developmental pattern, and I used to get all frustrated and I'm
just like, ah, he's on his way. They watch. I
don't use my partner's suboptimal behavior as an excuse for
me to not go to the gym. I just want

(57:07):
to be acting in a way that I can sign
my name to you that I can feel proud of.
Are you behaving in your relationship in a way that
if you were on a reality TV show and everyone
you admired was in the audience, that they'd be clapping
for you. That's what you want to be running so
that you're lining up with your own values. So in
terms of knowing when to leave, honestly, I think it's
the woman that usually has the clairvoyance because the woman

(57:31):
is the female In traditional heteronormal relationship, the feminine principle,
let's say, is the visionary leader of the relational possibility.
It's the steering wheel and the masculine principle is the engine.
And so whether the woman breaks up or she subcontracts
it out to the man, she's the one that decides.
The way a woman usually does that is she's just

(57:52):
not happy. When a man loves a woman, if his
woman is continuously complaining and not happy, he will opt
out because he wants her to feel happy, so he'll
leave the space for someone else to do it. And
the woman doesn't realize she's the one that created that
by not standing for and being able to inspire and
build a relational dynamic that serves her a liveness.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
It's been incredibly illuminating and really inspiring. I feel tremendously inspired, Danny.
Thank you so much. I want to tell just about
we kind of are out of time, but I still
wanted to ask you one more thing and just catch on.
For those in our audience who are currently single and
would like to create relationship in their lives, are feeling,
you know, the loss or feeling a longing for heaving
relationship in life, what advice do you have to kind

(58:35):
of your own position that the.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
Best thing for single Yeah, I've got the best very
short relationship coaching for singles. Okay, so singles, man or women.
First thing you've got to build your You've got to
start doing your bird call. When you walk down the
street on a summer afternoon and you hear the birds saying,
what do you think they're doing? They're putting out a
mating call. Your bird call, man or woman. Your bird

(58:57):
call is you doing something that brings you into flow,
into your own aliveness. Whether it's online in person, it
doesn't matter what it is. Make sure you are in
public forums. Physical three D or digital forums where people
get to see you doing your superpower, your flow behavior.
The thing that brings you most alive, that is your

(59:18):
bird call. I literally found my husband at Burning Man
doing a talk on his favorite ideas. He didn't realize
he was doing his bird call, but he was and
I heard it. That's how your partner finds you because
when you're doing your bird call, which is mean channeling
your art, your soul is on display. That is how
your soulmate finds you, is they hear the call of

(59:40):
your soul. So it's not about going on match dot
Com and tender and getting a matchmaker. It's finding opportunities
to be in your most radiant version of yourself and
trust that you're sending the bird call out. So get out,
you know, get out of the basement and get out
in the world. That's the first thing. Second thing is
if you're looking for, say a female partner, treat and

(01:00:02):
just say you're a man. If you're a man looking
for a female partner and you're ready to find your
life mate, try this on every woman you talk to.
Every woman. Eighty year old lady in the pharmacy, six
year old girl in the playground, twenty four year old
Starbucks Buriste. Every female you interact with, treat her as
if she is an avatar of the goddess. She is

(01:00:25):
in communion with your future soulmate, and after your interaction
with her, she's going to send an email energetically to
your future soulmate, letting them know where you are in
your personal development by how much of how much reverence
and how much dignity you left them with. So it's
not just oh, this chick's pretty, I'm going to talk
her up at the cafe, it's every woman. Treat every

(01:00:48):
woman as if their father was standing right beside them
invisibly and he was watching how you're talking to their daughter.
How would you behave so you could wink at the
father after even if you didn't want to interact with
him romantically. So how would you behave so the father
would be like, thanks man, thanks for taking care of
my girl. If you run that program, every woman you

(01:01:10):
interact with will feel like a queen, which turns you
into a king and brings your highest self forward. And
she's either going to be the one or practice for
the one, and you are bringing your a game then,
So you don't want to just treat chicks that are
candidate wife potentials with your A game. You bring your
A game every time you interact with a woman. I'd
say the same for a woman looking for a man.

(01:01:33):
A lot of my female clients don't realize that when
they interact with men, they're running all kinds of lenses
and daddy issues and prejudices. And I say to them,
treat every man as if he is a king. I
don't care if it's a little boy or an old grandpa.
Treat him as if he's a man, as if his
mother is standing right there and looking. How are you
going to treat my little boy? How would you treat

(01:01:54):
that man? So you leave his self esteem intact or better,
even if you're not romantically interested in them. And imagine
that man that you're talking to is going to send
an email to your future king and say, your girl
is ready, you better come find her. And so that's
my favorite coaching for singles is if you take this
on and really treat every man or woman with this

(01:02:15):
higher level of consciousness, your partner is going to find
you very quickly. They're already looking for you. We often
have patterns that are blocking the docking station for the
relationship to port, and so what I do with a
lot of my singles will help clear the port so
that the dream relationship can dock. And those those are
usually beliefs, prejudices, wounds, or just busyness that's keeping you available.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Wow, I just love the way you kind of intertwine
and balance a very practical advice with this inner wisdom,
really deep inner wisdom, all in this kind of landscape
of adult radical responsibility. Right, So it's just so beautiful
and the advice you just gave there, I mean that
is the interview of how you attract relationship into your

(01:03:01):
life is by manifizing that kind of energy that honors
those peek archetypal energies of the king, the queen, the
goddess and so forth. And really it's cmlk you're m
malkaying everybody exactly, You're mlking everyone.

Speaker 1 (01:03:16):
Yeah, people rise to the level of your listening of them.
And so if you walk through the world leaving a
wake of people feeling loved by you, I mean, even
if it's just a smile, you can leave someone better
or worse than you found them. Just leave everyone better
than you found them, and your partner will find you.
I would also say just start visualizing them. Literally, start

(01:03:38):
visualizing when you're standing at a kitchen sink. Visualize your
partner putting their chin in the nook of your neck
and their arms around your waist. You don't know what
they look like, but the feeling is this grounded, safe
of coarseness. Just start anchoring be of coarseness. Not the
Sunday one day maybe yearning, but the grounded of coarseness.

(01:04:00):
And I think that's how they find you because there's
it shall be so's already in the vibe.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Thank you so much, Hanny. It's been incredibly inspiring, and yeah,
just what a gift, What a gift.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Thank you delighted. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
People find out more about you at your basic website.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Yes, Annie Lala dot com A N N I E
l A l l A two n's and Annie to
L's and Lawa. I've also just started a podcast. It's
on Spotify. It's called Matters of the Heart and it's
got all my edgy ideas on relationships, family of origin,
like we go into parenting, sex, all of it. So
checking that out. I'm also on Instagram. It's at lalabird

(01:04:37):
l A L l A b I R D and
I put you know reels out every week, so check
me out.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Wonderful, absolutely great, Okay, thank you, be well. Thank you
for joining me on the Radical Responsibility Podcast. Remember, real
change happens when we commit to our growth, face our
challenges with compassion, and stay open to transformation. If you
found this episode helpful, I encourage you to s subscribe
and help us spread the message of healing and personal empowerment.

(01:05:03):
Stay grounded, stay present, and stay true to you. Take
care
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