free meditation
photo of two people in silhouette

embracing vulnerability in relationships

In this episode I’m joined by Humble the Poet, author of the bestselling book How to Be Loved. Together we delve into the emotional intricacies of relationships, offering advice on how to cultivate the loving relationships we desire.

In this episode you’ll learn:

  • How to shed our protective armor and share honest truths in relationships
  • Why your ego could be blocking your ability to receive love from others
  • How to cultivate compassion through vulnerability
  • A secret for fostering intimacy
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This podcast is intended to educate, inspire, and support you on your personal journey towards inner peace. I am not a psychologist or a medical doctor and do not offer any professional health or medical advice. If you are suffering from any psychological or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified health professional.

dear gabby #191 Feb 12, 2024 relationships

how to get the love you want: big talk with humble the poet

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): [00:00:00] so humbled. This is a big talk where we don't do small talk and we just jump right in with the big talk. And you're definitely one of those folks that I would love to be in LA and sit down and have a Canadian coffee with you.

I don't even know what a Canadian coffee is. and just to sit down and just riff with you. And so these moments on the podcast are so fun for me because I get to take a half hour and be with someone who I think is cool from afar and then make friends with them. It's like the coolest thing ever. So funny, right?

How

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah. No,

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): connections now.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): definitely, I think it's the best part of this super connected world.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Mm-hmm. . It is the best part of it. Yeah. And so you've got this book out and it's called How To Be Loved, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. We're gonna talk about relationships, our relationship to ourself, and what it means to you to be loved [00:01:00] and. I'd like to start with one personal question before we get into the topic.

Okay. Because you're a poet, you are a master of spoken word. You have had that, art within you for many years, and I've always admired people who can get up and just riff with. Their words. And so for someone like myself who may wanna be able to do it in a more performative way, in a way of being able to almost create a one woman show or something like that, what would be your best advice?

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): start with the things that are really bothering you.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Hmm. Okay.
020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah. There's this idea, I think it's a Jim Carey idea, which is, art is the art is what we get as a trade off for suffering in life. So we can't avoid suffering in life, but [00:02:00] we have this magical ability to create something that's never existed before.

And that in itself can be the definition of. , like great art is something that you've just never seen before or heard before, or experienced before. So I think very often, there's this kind of derivative, idea with anything, whether it's you make a podcast or write a book where it's let me give the people what I think they want.

And what you realize very quickly is what they actually want is someone to take a human experience and go deeper with it than anybody else ever has.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Mm-hmm.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Realizing that, if Gabby talks about love and if humble talks about love, it'll be two very different perspectives and they'll connect with people in different ways, at different points in their life.

So, I view it as, more of an obligation than a privilege. and it's, I have to paint on the caves for future generations. and that's how we, as an entire species has evolved. So I think the first step is always just take something that's really eating you up and [00:03:00] start with that.

and then, if you wanted to sound really good, it's going back to high school English, plan it all out, make your hamburger method, do all of that, and then. Start from there and then realize that people aren't gonna always remember every exact word,

But, the visceralness of it, the honesty, people feel that immediately,

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): that's right.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): that's, that's really what it boils down.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): it's not your words always. it's far more your presence than it is your words.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): 1000%. And how you say something is way more important than what you say.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): That's right. That's right.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): it is doing that. And then obviously storytelling as a part of it, I think is super important. understanding that, we learn our own stories through hearing other people's stories and some of the most impactful moments we've had have been hearing or witnessing somebody else's story.

that's really just about letting go of this idea that your story is worth hearing. I think so often, that's probably one of the roots of, imposter syndrome. We think, everybody else is an expert. Everybody else needs [00:04:00] to, deserves to be on this stage except for me. And it's really an understanding that it's not a question of deserving, it's a question of who's willing to serve by sharing their story and realizing that the only way to establish a meaningful connection with anybody including ourselves is through vulner. and, build ourselves up with that. We don't have to start with our deepest, darkest secrets. We can start with small light pieces of vulnerability. My therapist has recommended that I have at least two stories of vulnerability in my pocket that I could tell a stranger that wouldn't scare them off the first time I met them.

and that's helped a lot because again, we're not here for small talk. we're here for deeper conversations. And so telling somebody about my first experience owning a dog and, having him for 11 years and then losing him, having to put him to sleep, not knowing if I made the right choice the day that we decided to take him to the vet.

and then how many years I spent avoiding dogs after that because it was so heartbreaking. Yeah. And then finally getting a new one, she's actually asleep behind me right [00:05:00] now.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): This is, the first new one since you were a kid.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): yeah,

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Wow.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): that was everybody else's, backseat dog owner telling them what to do. And then, somebody, during Covid, somebody had, Put it on my radar that somebody ordered this puppy through a breeder and it came out a color she didn't want.
And so it was available and I was like, oh, that's so interesting, dog racism.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): dog racism.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Total dog racism. they wanted her to come out red or brown. Cause the parents were brown and she came out black. And he's like, do you, do you want the puppy? I know you love dogs.
And I was like, well, no, I plan to, I was living in Toronto during the pandemic and I was like, I'm planning to move to the states. I don't think I can bring a puppy with me. That might be too much work. . But then, as the night progressed and the tequila was flowing, by the end of the night I was like, I need the puppy.

Where's the puppy?

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Mm-hmm.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): And, I got her a month later. she had just been born, so I might even got her two months later. So it was an impulse buy that I had to still sit there and wait for, but, she's become the love of my life and. [00:06:00] Taken over 10 flights together and she's been easy to bring around.

but then also during the pandemic, everything was shut down. So whenever I took her to the vet to get her shots, I would always leave her at the front door. And what ended up happening was when things opened up, I took her inside the vet for the first time. And it was the first time I was in a vet's office in over 10 years.

And I saw that big metal.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Yeah,

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): had an emotional reaction cause it reminded me of my last dog putting him to sleep.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): yeah.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): So what I realized is sharing a story like that is being vulnerable. And I can be vulnerable with somebody, a stranger for the first time. And I don't have to be too concerned about being judged.

I don't know what type of person would judge me for a story like that. but that is such an integral part of being vulnerable. and connecting both with an audience, but with people, you're still, we're just establishing a relationship. We're creating a pathway of love between us and the people who are watching us on stage.

and that applies

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): with me.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): e Exactly. And

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): with, I mean, you and I have only met [00:07:00] one time in person. and your energy was really moving to me even then. But to be able to come on here and first of all, your advice was ex extraordinary. talk about what's bothering you most.

It's very much how I would create a motivational talk as well. And then leading just very naturally into the dog. You just pulled me in because you were telling an honest story of vulnerable.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Mm-hmm.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): And I like what you were also saying, my friend, about, we all have a story because when it comes to whatever it is that we choose to bring forth in our life,

It's about just getting the truth out, and that's. Story is what heals. And so those of us who have the courage to be vulnerable enough to share those stories in written word or spoken word, or in art or in any form, are really contributing a lot of connection in the world,[00:08:00]

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah, and there's a great line by Jay-Z that says you can't heal what you don't.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): that's right.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): And I think sometimes what you're actually doing is that you're going through this healing process with an audience and it's encouraging them to do the same thing. And at the end of the day, the details of our stories are all gonna be completely different, but the bare basics are the same.

regrets about yesterday, anxiety about tomorrow, not spending enough time in the presence. . And that kind of sums up all of our stories. And I remember years ago, speaking to Rui Cor about this, another amazing poet. And asking her, how do you figure out what to write about?

And she goes, I don't figure out what to write about. I write about things to figure them out.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Cool.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): And that was something, because I I used to do a lot of stuff in, in activism. So if I was to write a poem about, a human rights issue, I would sit there and research it like I was writing an essay first.

and then when I got into more, complex things like emotions and the human experience, then you realized that you're not supposed to research that the writing is the research. You're exploring [00:09:00] yourself and you're just doing it out loud. And, a beautiful poem is pretty much a journal entry that rhymes, it is, or it has a certain cadence and rhythm to it.

And, That's been a really interesting thing, especially as you go deeper into this and it becomes part of your job and your career, you have to continually fight that urge to be like, oh, well, let me give them what they want, and the truth is, and even in the most commercialized businesses, the most successful companies, they're not giving people what they want.

They're giving people what people don't even realize.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): that's.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Steve Jobs given us the iPad. That wasn't something that we could have even imagined when he did it. And I think it's the same thing when it comes to us sharing our art, us sharing ourselves and our stories. We don't know who's gonna connect with our stories when they hear them, and they may connect with them later.

You've probably heard an album from a musical artist that five years later has a whole different meaning to you now that you've gone through new heartbreaks or a movie or what have you.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): a book for that matter of book.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Oh, definitely, definitely with the books. And I think that context, I always think about the Golden [00:10:00] Girls. I used to watch that as a kid and never understood the adult jokes.

And then you watch it as an adult, you're like, oh my God, these are such inappropriate women.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): my four year old watches this show on Netflix. He shouldn't be watching. It's called the Thundermans. It's not bad. It's just like a family. And he quotes a lot of these moments and it's not a violent show or anything. It's just like he doesn't get it right.

And he comes into a dinner party one night and he was still awake watching the Thundermans cause we couldn't put him to bed. And he walks in and there's a whole bunch of adults in my kitchen. Chatting and he sits down on the sofa and he goes, mommy, I wanna tell everybody something. I said, okay, everybody.

Ali has something he wants to say. He has something he wants to tell everybody and he. Tonight, I'm a man. Tonight. I'm a man in my pants, . And we were all like, oh my

BLEEP

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): fucking God. At the time, he was three years old when he said this, and it was just like, first of all, God, I gotta stop giving him this stuff to watch.

But second of all, it was like this moment he is doing too what he's saying. It was so cute, you

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): And it's also those odds where you [00:11:00] have to like try your best not to laugh in those experiences, I think. Yeah, that's hilarious. Cause they soak it all in and they're always paying attention and it's super hilarious. Yeah. That's a really

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): well, we, well, we laughed. We laughed with him. We laughed with him. We all thought that was quite amazing. So,it's beautiful that you've taken on the topic of relationships and love because the career path that you've been in of telling the truth and being vulnerable is the secret to genuine.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): I've really learned that in a very heart-centered, physical somatic way recently, like really getting that without shared truth, authentic truth
and vulnerability, intimacy cannot occur.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Exactly.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): so I'd love to hear your riff on that.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah. I think what I'm learning is, the reason we avoid being vulnerable is cuz we are afraid of being hurt. and to be vulnerable is to give [00:12:00] somebody a piece of information or show them a side of you or let down a wall that completely puts 'em in a situation where they can harm you.

And very often when we're. , we express a need, potentially to an adult like our parents or somebody, and the need wasn't met and we're too young to have context. So we don't know, maybe our parents were having a bad day at work and they snapped at us when we asked them for something. We internalized that and we start to tell ourselves that our needs don't matter.

don't ask for what you want. don't express what you want cause you're gonna hear a. and that's that first kind of signal to us that, let's put up these walls. So we start building these walls and thinking that we're creating a fortress to protect ourselves. And some of us, the older we get slowly start to realize that these fortresses are not what they seem and they're more like prisons.

and we're trapping ourselves in, and yeah, we're keeping people out on the outside, but also, that denies us their love. we, the walls are closed. The doors are closed. Love can't flow into us, [00:13:00] and it takes that uncomfortable and unfamiliar, move to be vulnerable with somebody and be vulnerable with ourselves, and feel a little bit icky and uncomfortable.

Knowing that is the first way to establish a pathway for love. I think so often people think they have to find love. They have to earn love, they have to win love, they have to qualify for love. But that's not what love is. Love is is always existing. love is always flowing. What we have to realize is we've just done so much to block that flow from our lives, our insecurities, our protective mechanisms, our outdated beliefs around love.

These are the things that are. , walls and rubble and everything to keep this love from flowing. And the moment we decide to be vulnerable is the moment we start establishing a clearer pathway. And when I reflect back in my life, when I've been the most vulnerable with people, very rarely has that led to judgment.

and most often it's given them an opportunity to be vulnerable with me as [00:14:00] well. Cause now we have an opportunity to build a genuine connection, versus that surface level stuff. I'm even learning. there's been times even very recently where I thought being vulnerable was not the right decision and, I kept things quiet.

And then later on, when the conversations had to happen, I realized I should have just spoken my truth. I should have just been as vulnerable as possible. I should have looked at my history with the people that I was afraid to speak to, seeing that they've never tried to harm me in the past.

And just because I thought I had. too much heavy information for them that they wouldn't be able to handle it. But that's not my decision to make. And also, I'm not saying it's perfect. Sometimes you are vulnerable with people who are hurt themselves and they may use that to hurt you. But here we are, we've both survived

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): every shitty moment we've ever gone through, and we're okay.

And I think that's just a good reminder to keep doing it. and that vulnerability it also allows us to realize that's how you become seen. Being seen is more important than being perfect. as I said, the [00:15:00] people that we genuinely love deeply in our hearts, we don't see them as perfect.

we know all their imperfections. We could write a book about it, but those imperfections don't deny or disqualify them from love. So we have to abandon this idea that we have to be so, or earn something or become something or be completely perfect, to deserve love. And we know that in our current relationships.

I think what ends up happening is the courting process and the romantic world is where I think a lot of this gets jumbled up. So what you have to do to earn a second date or to get her phone number is very different than what you have to do to establish a long lasting relat. with her. and I think that's the thing.

but we just have to realize that like the attention, the affection, the sex, the power, the control, the admiration, the adoration, these aren't love, these are other things.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): It's, it's funny you said that because I just read this article last night about lust. I and. talking [00:16:00] about what happens in the brain and the oxytocin rush that you get, and you go into this place of almost dissociation, like separation of being in, this state of perceived love and romance when you don't even necessarily even know someone just because the hormonal effects of that lust.

And then what it went on to talk about that was so beautiful was that. Well, many long-term safe relationships can lose that lust over time. The way to really build that lust back is by strengthening the vulnerable, authentic connection.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Mm.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): So you're right, love isn't that moment of lust. That's just a really good oxytocin high.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah. the lust is delicious, But the love is nutritious. Yeah.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): and the love is nutritious. But there's a way back to the lust, and this is my listeners are gonna all be like, mm-hmm. , let me hear this, Gabby. There's a lot of married women out there, have probably been with their partners for a long time. Men and women, [00:17:00] and the way back to lust is through authentic vulner.

Connection, everything you've written about in this book, and when I say authentic, it's the bravery and the courage to speak for all That there is there to speak for all of it, to deepening your connection to whoever that partner may be through that authentic vulner. Relationship and that creates more space for safety, that creates more space for those same hormones to be alive and present. So yeah,

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah, there's a really good idea. I think it's a Peter Cro idea. the kind of concept that right now we so often chase pleasure, to medicate a lack of peace. . So we're not even chasing pleasure to feel good. We're chasing pleasure to feel less bad, but if we are at peace, then our pursuits of pleasure are that much better.

[00:18:00] And. , I think he even uses the analogy of sex with a condom, sex without, he's like that layer, that thin condom layer is our lack of peace. And when we, can get that off, everything feels so much better. and if you take that into a day-to-day world, especially with a married couple, sometimes it's really about.

understanding that as a partnership, it's you and your partner versus the problem. It's not you versus your partner. And, I believe it was, Jordan Peterson that said, step one is to cheat on your partner with your partner, so he goes, both of you. Completely different outfits, different makeup, different clothes.

Go to a hotel and have a completely wild night knowing that you don't have to clean up in the morning and take care of the kids. Cuz sometimes these are the barriers. Sometimes the life is the barrier that allows you guys to have spontaneity and all of that. And knowing that. , having sex in the bed that's not yours might be what can reinvigorate that excitement, but the vulnerability doesn't come through the sex.

The vulnerability comes through the conversation, which is, I maybe I just want to see something new.
And that's the [00:19:00] reason I find myself looking at women on Instagram. And then okay, well let's figure out how we can do that within the familiar, or, let's, yeah, let's figure out all these different things.

And that's the vulnerability, the conversation, not being afraid of expressing that need and not being afraid of doing the work to figure out what that need actually is.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): you're nailing this right now. That is completely correct. It's the vulnerability to say, Hey, yo, I'm wanting to look at women on Instagram. Or, Hey, this way that the dynamic that we have set up is not sexy. We gotta, go to therapy and work out that dynamic. I hear that a lot with people that I work with.

and having that straight up,

BLEEP

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): no bullshit dialog. is the pathway forward. And I challenge Jordan's suggestion a bit to go off to the, date and whatever. in one instance, I think works for like a healthy couple who maybe have, just like lost a little of the spark or the, or like legitimately like the kids and the [00:20:00] life and the busyness is all in the way, but they've always had a really.

lust in connection. I think there's a lot of people out there that have a lot of core wounds and the bond and the, and has been breached. And I think when you go to a couple where that bond has been breached and there's been some, some serious. Fractures in the relationship to say, oh, go out and, get drunk and go to a new hotel or whatever.

That's just not gonna work. I don't think.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): I completely agree.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Yeah, so I think that's kind of the mistake that therapists can make at times is to give those kinds of BLEEP

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): bullshit suggestions that won't be bullshit if the couple is healthy and secure and, it just needs to really clear space, but can be completely bullshit if the couple is actually in a place of broken attach.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): and I think within that is, it is gotta be that conversation. So sometimes it could, as I said, it could simply be as if there is a healthy relationship

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): and the conversation is there and someone's I. Think we just need variety, something new to look forward to. Then yeah, the, the hotel and the new outfits is something that can happen.

But for somebody else where it's okay, my core wound, you [00:21:00] retrigger, or you reopen a core wound that I've had since childhood, which is this, that's that internal work that has to happen in the first place. And whether somebody, dealt with something unpleasant around the world of physicality or it's, as you said, within the relationship, something happened and even for me as an adult learning, it took me a while to realize that everybody internalizes everything. oftentimes if I'm having a bad day and I'm with a female, she'll internalize it like it's her fault.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Totally.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): if, if sex isn't working out, she internalizes it like it's her fault.

and very rarely is that the case. But again, these are all things that we've taken from childhood when our brains we're developing and we were at that center of the universe mentality. We think everything is about us. and that's where communication is the only antidote.

So I think more so than just the blanket. Advice about, change the color of your lipstick and go to a fancy hotel is more so about articulating the needs first and then understanding of the partnership. You guys can find different ways to address that need. and there was a chapter in the [00:22:00] book that.

didn't make the cut. It was about conversion. I think actually kept it in. And conversion is the idea that their happiness is your happiness in any capacity. And the deeper you guys create a connection, the more you guys can explore in this world.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Yeah. And for women often if you've got that belief of their happiness is your happiness, then you end up taking on a very maternal role in your marriage. And that's not sexy for either of you. And I see this a lot with women, caring a lot. Gabriel is talking a lot about this in this new book and.

It's, this idea that the woman is caring the family, caring the children, caring the work, caring and in many cases, managing everything, including the man. And that's not their authentic truth.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah. I think the big issue with the roles are. for tens of thousands of years as humans, we all live in these much smaller communities and a lot of the roles that we have, whether they were fair or not, seemed to find a lot of effectiveness in those smaller communities.[00:23:00] and we're no longer in those smaller communities now.

it's not a village raising your child and it's not a village, that you as a married couple are contributing to. Now we're living in little shelves and apartments and we don't even know our neighbors, and it's a whole different story. And now your husband or your wife or your partner is your accountant, your co-parent, your business partner, your dates, your plus one, your, all of these things for different situations.

and there isn't a handbook to be effective at all these things. And I think the interesting thing is, for conversion, conversion is their happiness is my happiness, but not their happiness is my responsibility. It's knowing that, okay, if them playing poker every Friday night makes them happy, that makes me happy knowing that they found something that made them happy versus I have to do all of these things because these roles, first off, the roles were never.

Second off the rules, don't apply to the world we live in. in doing research for this book, I first started blaming Disney for a lot of the romantic ideas that we have. But then you realize that even Disney got a lot of their stuff from real life.

[00:24:00] Like the knight in shiny armor was when people lived in futile societies. a young man, his only options to get any type of social, elevation was to join the. Because if he joined the Army and came back as a hero, then his options for marriage would increase. So then he was taught to go earn a status so you have better choices for marriage.

And then women were taught, increase your beauty. So you'll be chosen by the Man of Baker status. and the knight shining armor has now changed to the pretty boy in the Lamborghini or whatever it may be. or the guy has a lot of followers of the blue, check mark, whatever has to, and Disney took that and they ran with it.

but the art was imitating life. And I think it is a really interesting thing to start to explore now when we, that hey, we are trying to live life based on traditions. Created by people who would've never understood what wifi is, and there's that funny Instagram quote, which is tradition is just pure pressure from dead people.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Totally.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Yeah. And it's just [00:25:00] really understanding that this isn't what it is anymore. And we are not just participants of culture, we're writers of culture, and the most important stories are about taking the parts of culture from the past that are valuable.

and leaving the rest behind and adding to it and evolving it. And I think, for the modern world that we live in, especially in these large metropolitan areas, a lot of these old ideas, whether it's the mama complex for the girl or the hyper masculinity, productivity for the male where he has to earn everything through his status.

with a 56% divorce rate, this clearly it's not gonna work. something's gotta give and it's gotta be this level of vulnerability, this level of connection, this level of saying this is what needs to happen. And I think we also just have to recognize, especially in this part of the world, that society is this kind of mythical creature that tells us what.

right? Society says a woman has to look like this. Society says a man has to look like this. But we can't pinpoint who society is cuz we are society. But what we can realize [00:26:00] is at the end of the day on this part of the world, society's goal is just to make us buy stuff. We have to buy stuff to keep just engine going.

that's why so many of us are trained to be more in love with getting married than actually being.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Totally.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): in love with the wedding than the marriage. and if you think about it, that's the only, it's probably the only thing we celebrate the beginning of, we don't celebrate starting high school.

We celebrate graduating high school. We don't celebrate starting college. We celebrate graduating it. And it seems counterintuitive to spend ungodly amounts of money. especially in my culture. they spent. a small wedding for Punjabis is 500 people and it's ridiculous.

Sums of weddings on

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): a Punjabi wedding once, I was in my friend's wedding and it was the outfit changes and the horse and the, oh my lord.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): It's a production. Yeah.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): It's a production. I II kind of love it, to be honest with you, but I think that that pressure, I was counseling a young woman recently who was like, I need my partner to just, propose to [00:27:00] me now.

And I was like, what if you just took 90 days to just have some fun with him and let him off the hook for a minute? the pressure of that, but that's also a reaction to our attachment wounds as well. Right.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): it definitely is. as I said, these companies, as they make a lot of money, they hired the smartest people to pull in our heartstrings. it was Edward Bernays who was, Sigma Freud's nephew who created marketing and everything was based around emotions.

lucky strikes hired him. To get women smoking, And the way he did it was, he framed it as an equity thing. He goes, why can men's smoke and women can't? And he started renaming the cigarettes, freedom sticks. . So women were smoking them in protest saying that we're not allowed to smoke them.

So here we are, smoking them and he went as far as the green packaging for the Lucky Strike cigarettes. He went as far as planting the seed for six months in Fashion magazine, saying that's the hottest color of the season.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Mm

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): so they pull on our wounds, so [00:28:00] the wound is a woman growing up already realizing that she's marginalized in comparison to a man, and now they figure out ways to use this, to make money.

And it's the same thing with the wedding. I'm not against the horse and the production, but maybe let's wait 10 years and celebrate 10 years of a successful marriage or 50 years. Throw the most lavish wedding, or anniversary party ever. You accomplish something,

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): you would elope and then 10 years later, we have our Punjabi wedding

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): yeah, 10 years later you can have your production, you can have all the jewelry, and by then you'll be in a better state, because finances is a massive cause of divorce. So why would you start your marriage and debt,

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Yeah, I know. I see people, so many people just like drop so much dough on their wedding, so first of all, you and I we need our coffee in la. I could talk to you for hours. I think you're so awesome. And I always like to ask authors this as I close conversations.

If there is a core message of your book, what would it.[00:29:00]

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): The core message of the book is, Challenge the ideas that we've been taught about love. . as I said, love isn't a prize. Love isn't a thing. love is the verb. That's why the book is called How to Be Love. And then I put the D in there cause we want to be loved. But to be loved is to be love and realizing that all the advice cuz I know people are gonna gravitate towards this book as they want more advice to either finding a perfect partner or strengthening the relationship they have with their partner.

The first step is strengthening relationship with yourself, and the biggest section in this book is love for self and what love for self looks like is being vulnerable with yourself first, taking yourself out on dates, doing all of this stuff, and from a pragmatic standpoint, that means journaling.

writing down your innermost thoughts, it means prayer. Prayer is a beautiful example of vulnerability, irrespective of your religious beliefs because you are actually asking for something you want, you're not doing it performatively, and you're actually expressing gratitude for things that you're grateful for.

And again, those in private when it's just you and your bedroom. May [00:30:00] not be things that other people are okay with. I might be grateful for, an opportunity or a date or some money or something like that. But what you're doing is you're revealing to yourself who you authentically are, dancing with yourself, get, that's a level of physical intimacy that you can have with yourself that will allow you to understand yourself better and movement with your body and creating gratitude with your body.

Yeah.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): I add to that? So for a long time I was very physically shut down because of childhood trauma. I was taking this dance class for years called S Factor, which is a pole dancing class, but it's about allowing your erotic creature to come forward. And it's way more easy pole dancing.

It's not pole dancing, it's like therapy. And I'd have these breakthroughs and breakthroughs and then now I've done. Wildly transformational trauma therapy. I've just become very free. I am living in my authentic self and I keep thinking about how I wanna get back on that pole and how now if I step into that class, which I promise you I will do that the dance will be so much more [00:31:00] elevating and intoxicating and just deeply moving to me and my connection to my body.

And.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): And I think that's so important because right now, so often when we think about our bodies, we look at it from a critical standpoint, wishing we had a certain shape or what have you, and. Doing something like this establishes a deeper relationship. Again, as I said, everybody we already authentically, like whether it's a sibling, whether it's a friend, whether it's a spouse, we know they're imperfection, then that doesn't disqualify them.

And what our perceived imperfection shouldn't disqualify us either. And looking in the mirror and being, okay, this isn't completely symmetrical or this isn't that, it means nothing. I still love you and I'm so grateful that you've been with me since day zero. And in the book I have a story where someone shares to me that that's the antidote to loneliness.

will be your antidote to loneliness. Loneliness isn't being by yourself. Loneliness is not enjoying being by yourself. and I think lastly in the relationship itself, prioritize your self-respect over your self-esteem. , how you feel [00:32:00] about yourself is always more important than how other people feel about you.

Caring what other people think is okay. That is a survival method that we've had cuz we've lived in small communities forever. You're not a, lower person because you people please. We've been doing it for tens of thousands of years. it's outdated software. It doesn't serve us anymore.

It harms. . So just be aware of it whenever you have this need not to disappoint people. Cuz so often when we choose to be likable, we're closing pathways of love. and love means sometimes showing your teeth, standing up for yourself, establishing your boundaries, and that'll strengthen your self-respect.

And the stronger your self-respect is, the less you'll be chasing outside validation.
020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Yeah, trying to be likable is the opposite of authentic vulnerability because what the world and relationships want most from us is that truth,

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Exactly, and nobody that's perfect could be vulnerable. So you would never be able to connect with somebody who was actually perfect, even though perfection doesn't exist

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): I love imperfection. I gotta tell you. So my friend, we'll have to come [00:33:00] back on the show. I also wouldn't mind if it's but if we could put an a, caption, a passage from the book in the blog that we do for this

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Of course. Of course. Yeah.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Okay, so people go out and grab a copy of how to Be Loved and not just because the title's awesome or you need relationship advice, but because. When a book about love is written by a man who is grounded in his vulnerable, authentic truth, that energy alone is enough to heal the reader.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Hmm. I appreciate that. I appreciate that acknowledgement.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Yeah. Yeah. You are truly wonderful and I really can't wait to hang out with you more,

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): Likewise,

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): we'll make it happen, baby. This was a gorgeous conversation.

020723_Humble The Poet_Humble Riverside Track (1): thank.

020723_Humble The Poet_Gabby Bernstein Riverside Track (1): Thank you