This is Pod Populi podcast for the people the Great Love Debate. It's the
Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Toba.
Hi again, everyone's Brian Howie. Welcome to The Great Love Debate, the
world's number one dating and relationship podcasts since twenty and fifteen. I am outside
here in a fairly nondescript part of Florida, and there's a lot of critters
crawling around. You know, in the Everglades, they have so many giant
pythons. Now that the pythons have eaten all the deer, which is really
bad, and they've eaten all the alligators, which is probably worse or at
least scarier, because the pythons have no natural predator, which means they are
coming for you, Sarah Soda. Anyway, on that note, a quick
no poor we get into it because it's it's semi related to this episode.
The next episode we are doing it is the Breakup Diaries. It is the
best of the breakups, your breakups. So not that we want to necessarily
get into the the sad or the macabre, but we are doing a listener
letters devoted entirely to the how, when, why, where, you broke
up, So whether you were the breaker upper or you were the breaker up
e. And this means a significant relationship, not someone you had like nachos
with three times. So it's got to be a real relationship. This was
my boyfriend, this was my husband. Okay, So you're like, why
are we doing an episode like that? And my answer is, I think
we can learn. And if you're sending one of these in, I think
you hopefully are pasted it and hope you can in fact learn from it and
maybe laugh at it. And in learning and the healing and the sharing,
we'll bring everyone a bit more I don't know forward, because there's this collective
sense of solace in the misery and the camaraderie in the commonality. So we
all went through this and we all will get through this together. So send
those in and we will deal the deck. Send them in Great Love Debate
at gmail dot com. This isn't a loser's lament. It will be more
like a survivor's sequel. Okay, on to the next. So why do
I bring this stuff up? As I have said many many times on this
podcast that I believe I do not offer advice, but I do offer opinion,
and my opinion is not just rooted in my personal experience, but in
the collective experiences of the millions of people who have listened to this show over
eight years or so, and the tens of thousands who have come to one
of our live shows. We listen and we learn and we share. So
you can call it advice if you want, and you can do whatever you
want with this information. At the end of the day, it's for entertainment
purposes only. We're not writing out any prescriptions here. But when I do
these episodes solo, and I'm more and more frequently doing my podcast solo,
I think I really need to be inspired by a guest to have them sit
down at one of these chairs. You know, I don't want just any
person there. So when I when I do an episode solo, I'm speaking
to you from a place of at the very least passion. You know.
I like to get into stuff because I care about this stuff. And if
you care about this stuff, you are listening. And you can call it
advice or you can call it opinion or just a really strong statement and whatever
you want. But here we go. So I lead a very minimalist lifestyle.
I initially got my inspiration from our friend James Altitcher, who some of
you probably know who he is. He's been on this podcast, she spent
our stage a bunch, he's a writer, he's a renaissance man, etc.
Etc. And he's suddenly, at forty eight years old, decided to
throw out or sell everything, and he was left with pretty much one suitcase
and one backpack. And he found the exercise of doing that and the reality
of the result of that so liberating and such a sense of clarity just by
being uncluttered by a bunch of stuff, and he became more productive, and
he felt things and experiences and people a lot more deeply. And I'm just
like that. Minimalism doesn't require you to have nothing, doesn't mean I have
nothing. It means you have as little as you require. And that could
mean something different to you than it does to me. It might mean something
to James as it does to me. I require very little. You guys
heard me do an episode a whole a few months ago where I laid out
I only really need to hear five things from my partner, just cut through
all the rest those five things. That's all I need, and the rest
is just a bonus. So, like James, one of the things I
need is my laptop, and of what I care about are words I've written
or things I've recorded, or feelings I've felt, or relationships I've formed or
something I've created, and a lot of those things live on the laptop.
And I'm not even sure if I need the laptops, and those things are
probably on the cloud, and if you hack me you have access to any
of them anyway, But the laptop also gives me access to those things,
so it's a means to an end. It's a portal into something. But
for some reason, even in twenty twenty three, even with the cloud,
the laptop slows down and the things clog up, and you have to every
once in a while clear the catch to get it to run smoothly aha metaphor.
But when you do that with your computer, it's such an oddly frightening
proposition, because you're terrified that the wrong thing will disappear. You'll lose a
file or a browser history, or a password or a page or something you
might need. And every time we do this, or at least every time
I do this, it's such a tortuous and stressful set of decisions. It's
so fraught with peril, even more so than the pythons and the ever clades.
I am terribly stressed out to let that stuff go. But when you
do it, everything runs smoother and you're like, Oh, that wasn't so
bad at all. I guess I didn't need that stuff. I don't even
know what disappeared. It seems fine. So what does all this amateur tech
talk have to do with love? Dating, relationships? Everything? And I'm
going to tease you with that, and we will dive into all of this
and more right after this, and we are back and we're talking about clearing
the catch, and we're talking about it in terms of relationships. So think
about how many relationships you have had, and, going back to our definition
at the beginning, something more substantial than three plates of nachos. I'm talking
about people you dated, people who have been your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband,
wife, partners some sort for at least I don't know, one hundred
days. And I think all of those people and experiences and relationships those shape
a ton of our dating data moving forward, whether it's the pain of it
or the asshole part of it. Crazy bitches, the narcissist at center.
We care them around in our cookies, and they really clog up and skew
our vision of our opportunities and possibilities, whether that's not getting into a situation
that has potential or not sticking with the relationship that might work out. You're
still mad at him or her or that time or that thing or those words,
and you carry them around, and everything from those things you carry around
turns out to be a trigger that could set something going in the wrong direction.
And I can't say that you can just delete those with two clicks of
a mouse, but you do have to do the work to get past them.
You have to clear them out. And we have done whole episodes of
this podcast on this nebulous concept of closure and how I believe it doesn't really
exist because when you're seeking closure, you're never going to get the answer you
want in the way that you want it, or the satisfaction that you seek,
or the revenge that you desire. It. Life doesn't come wrapped in
an eat little bowl like that. So how do you balance learning from the
past, nodding at it, acknowledging it, accepting that it's real, and
then letting it go so you can look to the future. So I got
my own set of issues and baggage and ship to work through. Clearly,
you guys know that if you're listening to four hundred so episodes of this,
very well documented on this podcast. But all of my stuff, I believe
stems from a lot of childhood issues. Actually, and fortunately, if I've
had, say, I don't know twenty five thirty girlfriends in my life,
give or take a dozen, and that really sucks that I'm like, give
or take a dozen, I should I should know a little bit closer than
that. I can honestly say that I don't have anything but good feelings about
any of them. None. I think they all are or were great.
And part of that is probably my stubbornness to admit that I may have been
wrong about their awesomeness, or that I had bad taste, or that I
made a bad choice. But part of that is a choice that I made
that was, you know, fairly actually prescient. It was like, yeah,
I see the good in them, and I still see the good in
them. Part of that, in a bad way, is that I think
I was never deeply emotionally involved enough unfortunately where I would have feelings of anger
and resentment. Part of his luck. I think I dodged the true total
psycho bullet, But I think most of it is mindset, because I don't
see the point of harboring, you know, anything bad about somebody who went
out with that was then, this is now, and you're probably like,
well, you harbor resentment towards your family members who may have let you down
in emotional and loving situations, for sure, absolutely, and maybe that's it.
Maybe because I couldn't past that, I couldn't get anywhere truly substantial with
any of these thirty give or take a dozen girlfriends because I failed to clear
that catch before I got into the relationships, which definitely wasn't fair to them,
and it isn't fair to you if you're operating the same way. This
leads to this, leads to that, or doesn't lead to that, means
you get nowhere productive. So when I self analyze, it's easy for me
to let go of the stuff that didn't truly matter and be an emotional minimalist
on the surface, but still have those giant files and elaborate browsing history going
way way back that you need to deal with and delete if you want to
move forward in any meaningful fashion, because so many of our relationships and so
much of our pain and our issues are derived from what we are bringing forward.
And unfortunately, almost all of what we bring forward is bad, the
bad baggage, not the Louis Vuitton luggage. Because if all you're getting out
of these past relationships was good stuff, you'd probably still be in those relationships.
You're not leaving a good relationship most of the time. So if you're
focused on the good, you're probably like, you know what, we can
work through the bad and we'll stick with the good, and you'd still be
with them. So we've probably said on this podcast once upon a time or
twice upon a time that every relationship should be a learning experience and provide wisdom
and experience and positivity to bring forward with you. Blah blah blah, And
I say blah blah blah. But do we mean that we do? I
do? But is that easier said than done. Absolutely, So we carry
this big bushel of blinders and barriers and red flags and sensitive guts I feel
in my gut, and all the stuff that probably should just be cleared out,
start fresh, brand new browser, bringing the firefox. And so you're
like, how do how do we do that? I'm getting somewhere with all
this, I promise therapy. Sure, yes, time, yes, all
of it. But the wisest person who ever came through this podcast, Planet
of Ours was na Is I Guess, our long time producer, the two
time Emmy Award winning Kekuf. She's very zen woman, she's very calm,
she's very stupid. She has lots of Eastern sensibility, and she is absolutely
convinced of the healing power of gratitude. And back when when I first met
her, I found out that she starts every single day with this this ritual,
this ritual of things. It's sort of between a a prayer and an
inventory of the good in her life. And so she likes birds and she
would say thank you for the birds, and she might even say thank you
to the birds. I don't know same thing about sunshine. She was grateful
for sunshine and so on, not things that she owned, not cars,
not houses, gratitude for things in her world. I went for she first
described it. I thought it was a little nutty, seemed like talking to
yourself. But I'm always curious, so I dove into the people who practice
gratitude the way I dove at one point into the people who practice stoicism.
I'm like, hah, stoicism. I want, I want to see what
that is. But stoicism requires too much listening to others instead of yourself.
So obviously that wasn't the one for me. But this gratitude thing, I
didn't really understand it between sort of the surface of saying thank you. But
as I dove into it, gratitude as a core essence, it can clear
the catch, it can delete the bad and let the good flow through everything
more than anything else. So I have you know, like most people,
I have a deep desire to be appreciated, and I think as appreciation flows
into you, it can also flow out of you, and vice versa.
And this might all sound a bit woo woo for me, but you have
to think about it practically and the positive effects of it. I hear some
birds right now. Being appreciative and understanding and grateful of what surrounds you in
the present goes a long way to blurring and distancing from the noise of the
past, and all of it opens up these areas for imagination and understanding because
you are focused on the now, not what they did then, what you
are doing now. I am grateful for this, which can lead to that.
It's much better than if I'm angry about that, which gets in the
way of this now, today, tomorrow. And as I dove deeper into
it, I found that the most grateful people in the world tend to be
the happiest and the most resentful people. The people who are hanging onto that
stuff, they're not so gratitude By definition, if you look it up,
it means a readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness, and that
is probably the best mindset to get into a relationship or to stay in one.
Even go on a first date. You're ready to show appreciation and return
kindness. That's probably gonna go a long way to get in a second date.
It influences mood, it influences action, it influences possibilities, and it
influences happiness. And happiness is where love is most likely to be incubated.
And that might sound a little creepy pickup line, baby, would you like
to come incubate some love with me? Probably creepy, but you know what
I mean. But I learned that Gratitude is infectious. It's contagious, just
as negativity is. You can definitely spread negative energy. So when you clean
out the catch, going back to that, I think you're eliminating things you
don't need anymore. You're a Microsoft minimalist, if you will. And what
you're left with is what is important, what matters, what is now,
what is present, and what brings you into tomorrow. So I can't tell
you to go to a hypnotist to forget about all the jerks and the assholes
and the incidents and the narcissists and the crazies and whatever you want to call
them, the liars and the cheaters and the dickheads. And I can't even
really tell you to go to a therapist, although you should. I'm telling
you that you should just focus on the good of right now. What you
have, not what you want or don't have or missed out on, or
was denied to you or denied from you. What do you have that you
are grateful for? That's what you remain in the Catch this podcast, in
the Catch, the possibilities on the dating apps this upcoming weekend tomorrow tonight,
none of those things should be influenced or impacted by any of that stuff in
your catch, clear the browsing history of all the nose and the nonstarters that
are in there. The cookies, I don't know, Go eat some good
ones, be grateful for those. Because it's all about mindset. I think
you can call that opinion, you can call that advice, or you can
just label that is something that will probably benefit all of us. So next
week we will exercise the x's and throw all the breakups in the bin,
and we will collectively clear our catch. That is a very alliterative setup to
what we're doing here. So send those along Great Load Debate at gmail dot
com. They can be good, bad, funny, strange, sad,
but most of all, they are meant to be liberating. That is the
point of this today, That is the point of next week and every week
after that onward and upward. Please like, share, follow, and review
this podcast. Your reviews mean a lot still after eight years in the podcasting
ecosystem. Go to our website, Great Love Debate dot com. Check out
our live tour schedule. There will be some on there by the time you
listen to this episode, So do that. Raley's gonna be on their Phoenix
is going to be on there a couple more because, as always at the
Great Love Debate, we never stopped making love. See you next time,
The Greatest Love Debate. It's a great love debate. The Great Love Debate.
It's a great love debate.