My feeling exactly.
I found out yesterday that one of my best friends, Amber Rae, is engaged (!!!!!!!!). She’s getting married to an incredible man named Farhad, and I couldn’t be more thrilled for her. If you saw my reaction, you would’ve thought I was the one who just got engaged. I am so ridiculously happy and excited for them. Also, they are going to make really beautiful babies.
Amber and I have known each other for a while, and we’ve been there for one another through a lot of relationship highs and lows. We’ve laughed together, cried together, been confused about relationships together, and learned a lot about love together.
I’ve seen her be excited about love before—but not like this. When she told me about Farhad for the first time, I immediately knew this guy was different. She had this incredible combination of assuredness, confidence, excitement, and peacefulness about him—about them.
She just knew. And I knew she just knew.
If you’re reading this, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. Have you ever seen a couple together and you thought to yourself, “YES—THOSE TWO WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER”? Sometimes, you can just tell. You can see it in the way two people communicate, the way they fight fair, the way they dance with one another, the way they talk about and to each other. You can tell by the way they steal glances from across a room, how they hold on to one another, how they support each other through both triumph and hardship, how lovingly protective they are of one another.
Every now and again, you look at a couple, and you know that they have eyes only for each other.
That’s what I see and feel whenever I look at Amber and Farhad: a best friend who has found a love big enough to reflect her huge heart, and a man who is totally committed to and in love with the woman of his dreams.
I think it took both of them by total surprise. But of course, that is how all great love stories unfold—part of the reason they are so great is that they completely surprise us. And all of a sudden, the world looks different. More beautiful. More exciting. More comforting. More like a warm blanket you want to constantly wrap yourself in.
As I watch Amber and Farhad begin to dance through life together, I see the greatest kind of love unfolding before my eyes. It is magical and inspiring to watch. And it brings tears of joy to my eyes just thinking about it.
Because I’m so excited for them. Because I love them both so much.
But also because, when I get to see a love as powerful as theirs, it reminds me of what’s possible. What true love is supposed to feel like. That two people can become best friends, lovers, and only have eyes for each other.
Couples like Amber and Farhad remind us that if we are patient and learn to truly love ourselves first, someone will come along at exactly the right time, for exactly the right reasons, and love every ounce and inch of who we are, for exactly who we are—past, present, and future.
If you’re out there in the world wondering if and how and when the love of your life will come, stop. Stop worrying. Stop waiting for someone else to make you happy. What you really want is to build a life you’re really damn happy about, so that the right person will be able to spot you—because he or she will fall in love with your confidence and happiness. Stop asking your single friends for love advice—they have no idea what they are talking about. Stop surrounding yourself with people who are in unhappy relationships.
Whatever and whoever you surround yourself will be your future reflection.
If you want to find the love of your life, surround yourself with couples like Amber and Farhad. Couples that really get what it is to passionately and authentically love each other. Couples you look at and honestly think, “THOSE TWO WERE MADE FOR EACH OTHER.”
Watching them will be like mental love practice. And when the love of your life stumbles in unexpectedly, you’ll recognize it immediately. You’ll feel it with all of your heart and your gut. You’ll be thankful that you patiently waited. Your heart will swell with love, and life as you know it will never be the same. It’ll be a whole lot better.
You’ll just know.
The way Amber and Farhad just know.
A&F—I love you two so, so much. Thanks for being a shining example of what true love really is. You inspire everyone around you.
And thanks for reminding me of the kind of love I’m waiting for.
<3
When it comes to choosing who to be in a committed relationship with, it all starts with the rightness funnel above.
Before you choose a relationship, you need to whittle down your pool of options. You start with “everyone in the entire world,” and that pool goes through a ‘Demographics Filter.”
Demographics Filter
The demographics filter weeds out anyone who you will literally never have the opportunity to fall in love with due to factors like geographic location, language barriers, and unbridgeable cultural differences.
You’re left with the population of people on the planet who share enough demographic similarity. That factor alone whittles the selection pool down quite a bit.
Next comes the interests filter.
Interests Filter
Interests can range widely, and the desired ratio of common-to-dissimilar interests varies greatly from person to person. The purpose of this filter is to weed out people who have very different interests from you, to the degree that it inhibits the growth of a high-engagement relationship between you and another person. For instance, if you’re really passionate about your area of work and it’s important to you that you have a partner who is also passionate about and understands the kind of work you do, that is a highly desired common interest. Interests can relate to a whole slew of things, including:
The interests filter whittles your “potential” pool down to only those you share enough and/or the right common interests with to make a high-engagement relationship even possible. What I mean by “high-engagement” is that two people can experience and enjoy enough things together, which allows them to develop an important closeness and high level of mutual understanding between each other.
Chemistry Filter
The chemistry filter is exactly what it sounds like: do you have a physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual chemistry with someone? It’s rare to find all four of these things in one person, but they are all critically important for long-term relationships. If you’re not stimulated and there isn’t a shared chemistry in those four distinct areas, at some point, you’re going to feel like things are missing and try to fill the gap, probably with other people. This is what people refer to when they talk about “emotional cheating.”
I certainly don’t think it’s realistic that anyone would never be physically attracted to another human being again once they get into a relationship. But, I’m just going to go ahead and say it: I think the right person is someone you can deeply connect with on all four levels. When I say “connect,” I do not necessarily mean “agree.” It’s entirely possible to have very different opinions from someone else and still feel a ton of chemistry. In fact, I’d argue that a little bit of disagreeing is important because it allows two people to learn from and growth with one another.
Any way you spin it, chemistry matters.
Values Filter
Once you get through the chemistry filter, you’re left with only the people you’re attracted to romantically, and share enough common interests with.
Now comes the good stuff.
The values filter is perhaps the most important one of all. Values represent everything that you hold in the highest regard. They are often a mix of dreams, goals, beliefs, and personality traits that make up the foundation of who you are. They are the parts of yourself you don’t want to compromise on, even when you’re in love.
For instance, say having children one day is critically important to you—one of your values is building an incredible family. If that’s the case, you would not want to end up with a partner that does not want children.
Or, say one of your values is kindness—you believe in treating everyone around you with upmost kindness, and it’s important to you that your partner does the same. That means anyone who didn’t highly value kindness would probably not be an ideal values fit for you.
Values and interests can overlap. For instance, for some people, building a family is an interest more than it is a hobby. For other people, having common career goals in a relationship is a value rather than an interest.
Values often tend to include the following:
The values filter gets you down to a list of only the people who have pretty much matching and/or complimentary value sets. This is critical. If two people have misaligned values, it’s not going to work. In fact, I think misalignment of values is by far the major reason most marriages fail. Most couples don’t talk about all of their values to make sure there is alignment; they wait until it’s too late. The bigger issue is that many of us don’t take time to sit down and really map out what our values—our non-negotiables—are.
If you want to be in an incredibly successful relationship, it’s critically important that you understand your values, share them with your partner, understand his or her values, and truly see if there is a long-term match.
After you go through a values filter, you’re left with the very small number of people who you can actually build a happy and meaningful life with.
For some people, this number is in the thousands. For others, it’s in the single digits. I think it totally depends on your filter mechanisms.
“X” Factor
This is the very last filter. The “X” factor is the immeasurable experience you have with another human being on this planet. You meet that person, and you just know. You just get this sense that he or she was built for you. That you’d fit perfectly together. That if that person asked to marry you, you’d say yes. No hesitation, no second guessing.
There’s no way you could ever put a finger on exactly what the “X” factor is. That’s what makes it so special.
I don’t think this kind of love comes around very often. I don’t necessarily think many of us find it at all over the course of our lives. And it’s very possible that there’s more than one person in the world who you could find the “X” factor with—I have no idea. But, a quality of the “X” factor is that, once you experience it with someone (and you’re able to pursue it and allow it to flourish), you just know you’ll have eyes for only that person. Maybe you’ll find other people physically attractive or emotionally beautiful along the way. But, nothing will compare.
When you meet someone like this, you can look at that person and see the whole world in his or her eyes. You are immediately captivated. There’s no doubt—you know you’ll be in love forever.
The “X” Factor love is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, if you’re lucky. It leads to the most spectacular, long-lasting, meaningful kind of love. I can tell you for sure that this kind of deep love is possible. And so you can, of course, hold out for it. But you’ll need to consider how long you’re willing to wait.
That’s what we’ll talk about tomorrow: the risk/reward of relationships, and how to make smart decisions when deciding whether to get into or stay in a relationship.
Love this. Never give up on your dreams.
Love.
We fall into it in many different ways.
Sometimes:
Any kind of love is a total blessing. Love in it’s purest form always teaches us, embraces us, warms us, and helps us grow. Being in love is the best feeling in the whole world, no matter how you stumble your way into it.
But, there’s another kind of love; and if we’re lucky, we get to experience it during our lives.
I call it the “You Just Know” love.
Due to my insatiable curiosity about love over the years, I’ve asked many couples who have been happily married for 15+ years how they knew the person they were with was the one. They’ve all said some variation of: “When you know, you know.” I’ve spent pretty much all of my dating life trying to find a loophole to this answer. It seems so obscure and unmeasurable. And I don’t like obscure and unmeasurable things, especially when they are so important.
It wasn’t until quite recently that I understood what it meant. Which sucks when you’re the kind of person that likes to have a neat answer for everything.
Sometimes, you just know. It doesn’t take years or months. It takes a few days. Sometimes, it happens in just a moment.
You just know.
You know when you lock eyes with someone and see his whole heart and soul—and you fall in love with what you see. When you can be completely and unabashedly yourself with another human being from the moment you meet. When you can cry in front of that person and not feel bad about it. When you want to cry in front of that person. When he completely breaks down your walls. When you’re very conscious of being in the same space, even if you can’t see each other.
He calms you down when you’re upset. You give him energy whenever he needs it. You make each other laugh. You think he is goddamned beautiful, inside and out. You study every inch of his face so you never forget it. You can look at each other and know exactly what the other person is thinking. You can listen to a song and know exactly how it makes the other person feel.
You can be standing on opposite sides of a room full of people, and still feel his heart beating.
He fits into your world like the last missing puzzle piece.
That person completely envelops you, and it happens in a look. A moment. An instant. You just know he would make you better, and life better. Not just for who you are right now, but for the woman you’re going to become in the future. He makes you want to be the best version of yourself. You know you’ll disagree and sometimes even fight, and in the end, you’ll just love him more. You both feel the same internal twinges of intense loneliness, even when life is full—and somehow, that makes you feel completely not alone.
He’s your mirror.
He quickly starts to resemble your ultimate best friend, and you wonder how you’ll ever find strength without him. You wonder how you’ll ever be the same.
And if he asked you to marry him, you’d say yes, in a heartbeat.
Without hesitation.
Sometimes, you just know.
If you’re lucky, you’ll find a love like this at exactly the right moment.
But, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes, life gets in the way, commitments have been made, history and space has come in between.
I think it’s a lie that love conquers all. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it shouldn’t. Even with a “You Just Know” kind of love.
In my opinion, commitment conquers all. When you fall in love, regardless of the type, that commitment is the only thing that matters. You made a bet, even if imperfect or with incomplete information or too soon. And the most honorable and loving thing you could do is stay committed once you do. Your word is your bond—with yourself, others, and the world. I deeply respect people who stay committed to their big decisions, no matter what.
Your trust and integrity are all you’ve got—break those, and nothing else matters. Not even love.
If you’re someone who’s made an important commitment, please stick with it until you just cannot anymore under exceptional circumstances (like someone breaking your trust, or you getting to a point where you are a lot worse off, for yourself and the people/things you commit to). You’re doing the right thing.
But if you ever find “You Just Know” love, and you’re free to pursue it, don’t ever let it go.It’s exceptionally rare. It’s worth hanging on to at just about any cost. Get over your bullshit, your fear, and whatever else is in your way. Just go for it. Don’t hesitate. Don’t let them slip away. If you do, you will regret it for the rest of your life.
And if you happen to find “You Just Know” love and you can’t pursue it, let your heart break. Don’t try to rush out of it. Feel the total depth of that pain. And then be deeply grateful for it. No matter what, finding a love like that is a total gift. It reminds you of how connected you are. How alone you’re not. How it’s supposed to feel. That changes everything.
You just know.
And sometimes, that’s all you need.
It is never lost on me how fortunate I am to be a journalist—a storyteller. While it is one of the more ethically and intellectually challenging (and sometimes draining) jobs I’ve ever had (especially as one who is part of a startup), I am ridiculously grateful every day for the opportunity to make a living by learning and sharing other people’s incredible stories.
It becomes even more obvious to me how much I love my work and feel blessed to do it at an event like Big Omaha this past week, which is pretty much the best conference in the country for entrepreneurs. The event is thrown by a truly spectacular team, and it is evident the moment you walk in to a Big Series event that they really give a shit about creating an unforgettable event experience for everyone who attends one of their events.
I had the privilege of interviewing some incredible entrepreneurs and investors, including: Tony Conrad, Dave McClure, Marc Ecko, and Gentry Underwood.
I learned an enormous amount from each one of them about investing, startups, building a brand, and design thinking your way through problems.
But, as is often the case, when I’m interviewing someone for a story, sometimes it’s not the words they say that impress or teach me the most.
It’s often the set of intangibles:
Every single one of them gave me the best of all of the things on the list above. Here are some of the specific lessons I learned about those intangibles—and on a top-level, about becoming an incredible starter:
Because everyone’s story matters.
Tony Conrad’s, Dave McClure’s, Marc Ecko’s, and Gentry Underwood’s….
And yours.
Never give up on any dream that represents the heart and soul of who you are.
No matter how hard it seems. No matter how bleak the outlook. No matter how limited the resources. No matter how badly the odds are stacked against you. No matter how few hours in the day. No matter how small your network. No matter how much others say your dream is irrelevant.
There is literally nothing more important in the realm of work than pursuing the thing you must pursue, and building the thing that would not exist in the world if you don’t create it.
You simply must create what you were born to create. The world needs you to do it.
So what are you waiting for?
Keep passionately chasing your dream.
Don’t give up on it.
And don’t give up on yourself.
Everything you believe about yourself is made up. Literally. Your stories about who you are, how people perceive you, what you’re capable of, how beautiful or handsome you are? They exist only in that head of yours, and no where else.
If you are very perceptive, some of what you believe about yourself might generally match up with how others perceive you. But at least half of the time, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You believe something to be true, you think others think that thing is true, you behave in a way that reflects that made-up “truth” (we humans don’t like cognitive dissonance), and then what happens? All of a sudden, without even consciously realizing it, you take on a trait you feared you had, but never really did in the first place.
Some people refer to this as the power of storytelling. “Storytelling” is one of those words that has gotten a lot of air time recently, and for good reason. Our lives are stories—mental constructs that we create, use as decision-making filters, and assume to be true.
The problem with the growing trend of “storytelling” is this:
The focus becomes about the story your telling rather than the story you’re living. It’s kind of like a physical fitness trainer who spends 80 hours a week on the road talking to people about the importance of health and fitness—but not getting enough sleep, nutrition, or exercise as a result of an insane travel and work schedule.
The problem with storytelling is that the focus is on the “telling” and not the “doing.”
Personally, I don’t think telling a better story is what matters. LIVING a better story is what truly counts.
So how do you live a better story? Start here:
1. Identify exactly what negative “stories” you have about the way you are, the way the world is, and how other people perceive you in it. Any story you have about yourself that does not make you feel like your best, write it down.
2. Once you’ve identified what your negative stories are, take a trip back in time. Figure out the moment(s) that contributed to the story. Where did you learn it? When? From whom? It’s important to understand exactly how you got to where you are. It’s much, much more difficult to turn a story switch on and off quickly if you’re in a pitch black room.Understand why you believe what you believe about yourself.
3. What are your triggers? What situation(s) bring up the negative story? For instance, if you have a negative story that you aren’t beautiful, when do you feel that way? Every time you look in the mirror? When you’re drinking? When you don’t exercise? When you eat certain foods? Write a detailed list of your triggers for each negative story you hold to be true.
4. When do you feel the opposite of that negative story? Using the same example above, when do you feel beautiful? Who are you around? What are you doing? What are you working on? What time of day is it? What time of year is it? Get as specific as possible about the happy triggers that help mitigate or deplete your negative story.
5. Next is a visual exercise. Imagine yourself in trigger situations. Play the scenario out in your mind with the negative story. Then, recall a happy trigger. What does it look like, in that same situation, to switch the belief to be incredibly affirming and positive? What are you doing? What do you say? What is your body language like? Envision the positive-outcome version of the negative trigger incident in your mind in as much vivid detail as possible.
6. Practice this exercise for 3 minutes a day. Choose one negative story to change, and focus on changing it for a few weeks by meditating on a different outcome. All it takes is 3 minutes a day. If you have trouble remembering, learn to be conscious of when you are in a negative trigger situation, and use a real-time example to stop and take 3 minutes to envision a much more positive storyline, feeling, and outcome. Repeat this process until it starts to become second nature. It sounds crazy, but I’m telling you, that visualization shit works.
7. At this point, you should be well on your way to reversing the negative story. By doing this simple exercise, you’ll learn how to spot negative story moments more quickly, and stop them in their tracks. But, every now and again, you’ll come into a situation where a deeply seeded negative story is plaguing you and you can’t pull yourself out from the mud. In this kind of moment, be extremely patient and kind with yourself. Don’t try to surpress or ignore or numb the feeling. Observe why you feel that way, what’s triggering the bullshit, and just engage with the moment as an active learner-participant of your own story constructs. What you resist persists, so if you want something to be different, you have to let yourself be comfortable with that icky feeling first.
8. Find people you admire who have a very positive story version of your negative story. So, for the beauty example, the person you might admire is Beyonce, or a very confident friend. Study what those people do. How do they carry themselves? How do they speak? What is their body language? How do they engage with the people and universe around them? Keep these people in mind. They will serve as very effective, in-the-moment inspiration.
9. When you have a negative story moment, train yourself to think immediately about that person who has a very positive version of that story. Ask yourself, “What would __________ do?” Then behave accordingly. To be clear, this isn’t a “pretend to be someone else” tactic. Think of it as a quiet mentorship—you’re learning from people who have developed incredibly positive and affirming stories.
10. Who do you want to be? Write down, in detail, what positive stories you want to learn and adopt. Once you know what those are and you have a clear picture in your head about the woman or man you want to be, that’s the last and most important question you should consistently be asking yourself: “Is this bullshit story a reflection of the person I want to be? Not in the eyes of anyone else, but for me?”
If the answer is no, then change that shit immediately. Remember the image of your sense of self being a series of perceptions that exist, quite literally, only in your brain. While it is by no means easy to shift behavior, it is not nearly as hard as you might think when you’re clear about who you are and what you want.
Because it’s true: the only thing standing in between you and what you want to do and who you want to be is thinking that your bullshit stories are real and unchangeable.
They are neither.
So, go change the crappy ones you’re living with.
*Big “Thank You” to Amber Rae for inspiring me to write this one. Love you.
Fear is the prison that encloses your understanding of what is possible.
Fear is a reality for each and every one of us.
If you want to overcome your fear, be very clear on the inevitability of feeling it, dealing with it, and working through it.
Fear is just like standing on a diving board: the longer you wait, the harder it is to take a leap.
So if you’re heart is telling you that an outcome is worth the fear, do it as soon as you possibly can.
Leap now.
I don’t know anyone who really likes life’s inevitable rough patches. It is against our nature as human beings to enjoy discomfort and hardship.
And yet, discomfort is something we need to feel and hardship is something we need to go through in order to experience true joy.
It sounds crazy, but in order to understand the depths of joy, we must also understand the depths of sorrow. In order to understand success, we must understand failure. In order to be comfortable, we have to be uncomfortable first.
As with anything in life, the more we can understand and feel the downside of a given spectrum, the better able we are to spot and savor the ultimate upside of that same spectrum.
And so, if we could truly understand that discomfort, hardship, fear, and failure were all immensely important and necessary parts of comfort, ease, peace, and success, what would be possible for us? How would we feel about the lives we were leading if we embrace all parts of it fully—rather than be self-selecting about what we want to see and feel, and ignore or suppress or resist everything else?
I think we’d ultimately stop chasing after the (false) idea that we will ever reach a state of perfection. That we will ever achieve Inbox Zero for more than 10 minutes, be perfectly organized, have nothing on our to-do lists, be completely healthy, have flawless relationships, not be stressed, have an endless supply of money, and be doing work that we love every single day.
We’d realize how ridiculous it is that we even see these things as goals. We’d let it go. We’d be gentle with ourselves. We would embrace the inevitable ebbs and flows of life. We would love the imperfections and the rare glimpses of perfection equally.
That, to me, is ultimate bliss. Not experiencing life as absolutely utopian, but rather, loving the utter messiness of it all.
This is, perhaps, the greatest lesson we’re here to learn…
That the greatest joy in life comes not from finding a perfectly smooth sea.
…it comes from learning how to be a skillful sailor—no matter the water conditions.
I’ve noticed lately how easy it is to get caught up in a state of stress. From work to family to health to relationships, there’s never a lack of things to be stressed out about.
But, the other thing I’m learning is the importance of stepping back from the chaos that is life and taking time to just enjoy what you’ve got.
Not plan for what you want but don’t have yet. Not think about how you’ve fallen short and could to better. Not wondering when life will get as good as you’ve been hoping it will.
Just letting yourself be still—to soak in and enjoy the utter perfection of the moment, the day, the life that you’re in.
I spent a lot of time with my friends this weekend. I usually work and spin my wheels, or I’m traveling back and forth from home to somewhere else. This was one of the first weekends in a long time where I just sat, soaked up life, and enjoyed time with the people I love.
And I was reminded that the whole point is to enjoy life. It’s not getting from point A to point B. It’s simply about finding that place at the center of you that embraces and enjoys the life you’ve got, the heart and soul you have, and the future up ahead that you can’t predict yet.
To enjoy your life and be happy, even when things are imperfect? Even when things are going totally wrong?
…that, at the end of the day, is all that matters.
Everything that pulls you away from your happiness is just a distraction.
…so what’s stopping you? Why aren’t you pursuing your dream?
Here’s the thing.
No one is going to give you permission. No one is going to hand you a golden ticket to do the thing you love.
If you want something, go get it. The world is waiting for you. Go pursue your dream.
Because really, what are you waiting for?
Know what you live by.
What are the dozen things you know for sure?