 Thank you for joining us, David. Thank you for having me. Yeah. We met a number of years ago. We've talked about having you on the show and now that you've been in Turkey for a little bit, it's always tough to get the schedule together. So thank you for stopping by here in LA. Of course. And we're just going to jump right in. As a successful entrepreneur, husband, father, one of the things that we all struggle with is juggling and wearing that many hats. I'd love to hear from you how you've been able to manage growing a business, growing a family, as well as staying healthy and happy yourself. Has been definitely a long road, you know, at finding a lot of habits and processes and systems. I think that's really the key to being able to be successful in all these areas, right? And I think your habits and these systems determine pretty much everything in your life. If you're fit or if you're overweight, if you're broke, or if you have a lot of money, if you're happy or unhappy, I think this all comes down to what happens to you cultivate. And in my personal life, there are a lot of things. One thing that had a big impact was the in the engineering course from Satguru. It's a three day course and they teach you how to do a certain meditation and yoga practice, which I do every morning. This has been very impactful for me. And on the work side, you know, I've been pushing you to do this while the EOS system, the entrepreneurial operating system from the book, Traction from Gina Wickman for all the entrepreneurs on the show, please do yourself a favor and read this book and implement it has been a real game changer for me. And on the family side, my wife and I came up with, if you with a system that's applying business principles to your family life, that this works wonders a few years ago. And let's dig into that because I know we have a number of parents and entrepreneurs listening who struggle with that balance, who find themselves leaning in very strongly in one area and not finding the balance in their lives that they need to really be happy. Yeah. I think first of all, work life balance, I think is a bad word in the first place because this means like it's always a tug of war going back and forth, right? Work life integration, I think is the key that you just really make it all one, you know, and you integrate the things as much as possible. And you also put the same emphasis on family time, family meetings, like you have with business meetings, you actually put them into the calendar and you're very intentional with all the things that you want to do. You know, just like small example, going on vacation used to be always, we went on vacation when my wife lost it because we haven't been on a vacation forever because I was just headstone working. And as always, you know, then I made a knee-jerk reaction, booking something way overpriced, not planned, you know, and all the projects I've been working on are going down the drain because, you know, and all the meetings have to be rescheduled, it's just a nightmare. And now we just like plan this way in advance, you know, so my calendar's blocked and nothing happens. But going back to the initial idea on applying business principles to family life was I came home from a meeting about the roles and responsibilities at Maxidien, my business back then. And I was sitting on the couch and my daughter had a full diaper and I pointed this out to my wife and said, hey honey, look Emma has a full diaper and she blew up because she thought, you know, I told her to change the diaper even though I was just making a statement. And then I was wondering why are we fighting about this? She changed the diaper in 90% of the time and I'm totally cool with doing it. But how should I know that it's my turn at 7.30 PM on a Wednesday? And then I realized we never talked about roles and responsibilities in our private life. And the next morning we sat down and just listed all the things that, you know, I expect of her and that she's doing and vice versa. And this took away 80% of the friction we ever had in our relationship because all these unspoken expectations were just clarified. And when this worked so well, I thought, huh, maybe we can take other aspects from business and apply it to our personal lives as well, like having family core values, having a regular meeting, having everything in our calendars, having a to-do software to just keep track of things. And this was such a game changer for us that after selling my last business, I focused on putting this together into a course, it's called managinghappiness.com, to share this with other entrepreneurs and other people. And now, do your family meetings have agendas? Oh, yeah, of course. And who's in charge of the agenda? That's me. Okay. And do you try to keep the meetings nice and tight, like you would a business meeting? Yeah. I mean, even with a business meeting, I like to go in with having an agenda, but then you can kind of deviate from what's on there. But like always, I like to be prepared, even though if we change a plan, but at least having a plan. And I would imagine sitting down and determining roles and responsibilities of the family, were there surprises along the way that you weren't maybe prepared for or thinking about? No, there were no surprises. Just like known friction points had to be cleared out. You know, like, for example, who who brings now it's, you know, who brings our daughter to preschool, who picks her up, you know, who puts her to bed in the evening. And once you have like the system down, then just you don't have all these discussions, just like clear who does what. Right. And then walking around with the unsaid can lead to a lot of unhappiness and even resentment at times. Yeah, just just imagine your business when it's not clear who does what is just going to be, yeah. Can I say shit show? Yeah, you can say shit show. I would to go along with you were saying I was I was thinking about this in a manner of I can see one of the partners who would want to implement this to make things easier, to have a schedule, to have some routines, to integrate this properly for both parties to be happy. And I could see the other half of the party possibly saying, well, now you're taking all the romance and the chemistry and all of these magical things, the surprise out of our relationship. And to to convey why those things would still be there, even in implementing this, because I think for a lot of people, when we talk about structure, immediately they go to where you're taking out all the fun. And it's like, well, it's going to allow us to maximize our fun by having this. So do you have anything to say to that other partner to get them on board with such a thing? I mean, just what you just said, you know, it's like you'll have way more time for fun stuff because you're just not fighting over stupid things. Right. And also with with fights in the relationships, usually you you just want to win the argument. You don't really want to solve the issue. Yeah, it's you would never go to your head of sales and yell at them like, why are the numbers not there, right? You would sit down with him in a solution-oriented manner and figure out like, hey, man, what's the problem? Don't we have enough leads or do you need more money or you need some, you know, SDR sets up a drop. But with your spouse, it's often very different. It's emotionally heated up. What we found is that we just take notes in our family meeting agenda for the next next one, a friction point that we had. And then we sit down after, you know, the heat is not supporting anymore and we have a solution-oriented discussion on how we can fix this bug in our relationship. But otherwise, if you don't fix it or if you only fix it with duct tape, it's always going to come up over and over and over again. Yeah, I mean, in the wanting to win the argument, kicking the can down the road, the problem persists, but we feel emotionally charged and one of us feels like there's a resolution. Usually when we're winning, we feel like, oh, that was resolved. Great, nothing to see here. And then a couple of weeks later, we're in the same argument again. Yeah, so my wife and I have or in the system, we we list the things that annoy us about our partners and then the partner can pick one of them that they want to work on. And that's the focus for the week and then at the end of the week, we grade each other and like, hey, how did I do with this topic? Because most friction points are just habits or patterns that you have. And it takes some time to to work them out. And it's like a way of like focusing on this issue and eliminating this bug in your software. Yeah, it's it's funny. I can't help but picture coming in and say, listen, honey, you know, I know we've had a lot of issues and some problems and I want to work this out. So moving forward, we're going to put these meetings together. I got these and we're going to work on these issues. I could just say, like, well, you should just know. Right. And it's like these past it's like, well, there's a reason why those past relationships didn't work out. I'm still trying to figure out. I think and that's the great part about the grading system is you actually get the feedback you need because a lot of us are trying to change things and implement things and we're not getting the feedback loop complete where we know. OK, this change that I'm implementing is working or this change that I'm implementing is not working and we're missing the mark. Yeah, that's that's the important thing that you actually have like a habit, a recurring thing that you can, you know, look at, you know, what you measure will improve business 101 and the same thing in relationships. Otherwise, you know, you have this talk and you think it's better, but then the habit creeps in again. You know, so you just I kind of have to stay on the ball to make sure it's really eliminated from from behavior. And we we talk about business and traction system, EOS. We talk about family now. What about personally, because I think a lot of us when we're juggling those three things, personal definitely falls to the wayside. And you were even talking about being so focused on work, hyper focused on work, head down, I know a lot in the audience can feel burned out at that point because they're not taking care of themselves personally. Yeah, I think you have to taking care of myself, you know, having work life integration, not a tug of war between like, hey, I'm doing something for me that I need to function, it's not it's not not working, you know, it's just like I kind of have you have to need an holistic view. Like when I go to the gym three times a week and then also go into sauna every time and this takes time, but in this time I'm kind of grinding through work issues, whatever, and I'm resolving stuff. You know, it doesn't work that you always go, go, go, you need some time to think as well, right? And also you have to, you know, you have when you're on the airplane and the oxygen masks come out, you have to take it first before you give it to your kid even, right? Because you have to be able to function. You have to be strong to be strong for somebody else. And so some form of healthy egoism, I guess, is a good thing to have. Yeah. And it's it's easy for a lot of us to be busy with our work because that's just a nice outlet and then let, you know, our nutrition slide, our fitness slide and you were even talking about your yoga meditation practice in the mornings or there are other rituals that you've built up to create that space for you personally to be a high performing executive. Oh, yeah. That's, you know, over the years, I've been a personal development geek for many, many years. I've read pretty much every person development book under the sun. One thing that's been really impactful to me is having a gratitude rock, which I always have in my pocket and, you know, pick it out every morning and go through the things I'm grateful for. And during the day, I have it in my pocket and sometimes I feel stressed and then I feel a stone. This brings you back to like, you know, actually you have so much beauty in your life and this little problem you'll, you know, you'll go through as well, because often the big problems of the moment, right? You don't even know that they existed three months from now. You know, this is like, kind of take an inventory on like actually how much good things you have going for you, right? And in the evening when I come home, I take out a stone and I go through the things that went great this day, because often you have a productive day, everything's good. And at five PM, you have an unpleasant conversation with a customer and employee, your spouse or whatever. And you think everything sucks, but did not, you know, and I've been doing this for many years and I've built up and a pretty extreme gratitude muscle that allows me to go through a lot of stuff and I've been through a lot of crazy stuff already. Yeah, I mean, we talked about the gratitude rock years ago and how impactful it's been in your life. And I think when we're so focused on the immediate results and solving the problem and a lot of us in our work are rewarded for solving problems and you view everything as a problem, you can lose sight of just the magnitude of the problem, right? Everything becomes the biggest problem in the world when in reality, it's the problem this week, another problem that's always going to be a problem. Right. As long as you have new problems, everything's good. The systems are broken if it's the same problem every time. Now, you built a course managing happiness and being able to build amazing companies, sell companies, reach success that I know a lot of our listeners would love to reach. What is your definition of happiness? First of all, happiness comes from insights has to do only with you. It has nothing to do with external forces. I mean, of course, the basics have to be there like, you know, shelter and food, etc. But everything else is just gravy, you know, kind of by doing the gratitude exercise, you kind of see how much beauty you actually have in your life. And yeah, I think it really comes down to the essentials and seeing that everything aside from the pure essentials is just gravy and when you in this mindset, you know, kind of having a stoic approach to life, being happy is much easier. Actually, I never, I found out about stoicism, like maybe five or eight years ago or so, and I was like, holy cow, this describes me. So understanding stoicism, some of our audience may not be familiar with it. What's your biggest takeaway from stoicism? The biggest takeaway is that you just like need very minimal things to be actually happy. You know, like when you're, when you're outside in the woods, have no clothes on and it's snowing and you find a hut where, and you're starving and you find the hut and somebody gives you a bowl of soup. This raises your happiness level by crazy magnitudes, but everything else that comes thereafter, you know, like a little bigger house, et cetera, doesn't really change that much. You know, also like when you think you can motivate people by just paying them more money at a certain point, it's, you cannot tickle more results out of them because just, you know, it doesn't make a difference anymore. Yeah, as a manager, we need to realize that there's a threshold to motivation based on financials. And most of us, when we think about happiness, we're not thinking about the resiliency that comes along with it, right? We're not focused on the definition of happiness is not living in happiness every moment. It's understanding that you can be happy and unhappy at times and managing the unhappy moments so that you can return and not lose sight of the grateful things you have in your life. I think another really important thing we just, just remind me of something, being in the moment, being in the here and now is like also a super big key to being happy, the Eckhart-Toler principle, you know, power of now, like every anxiety and fear comes from thoughts of the future and every anger comes from thoughts of the past. And if you're just like in the here and now, everything's beautiful. Right, we don't realize how much of our emotions are tied to that trying to forecast the future and avoid the pain potentially and then dwelling on, you know, past grievances. I read somewhere like a quote like I'm a wise old man and I lived through many horrible things and only a fraction of the things actually happened, you know, but you kind of lived through them anyway because you imagine that they happen, right? Absolutely, and I know we met each other, I want to say it's like almost nine years ago now, and I've been struck by just how much of a, how much of a super connector you are. I feel like everywhere we go, you know someone or know someone who knows someone and you've expanded my network immensely. And I found it so interesting that you describe yourself as an introvert who's struggled a bit with social anxiety and working through these things. So let's talk about that process because I certainly don't see it in my interactions with you and I'm sure all of your friends in your network don't see it either. I'm a recovering introvert. I used to be super introverted, just like being on a conference call freaked me out. You know, it was pretty extreme. And I've realized how much this is holding you back in business and in life. And I, you know, knew I have to do some changes. And the first thing that it was exposure therapy. I went to Toastmasters, which was really amazing. I went twice a week to Toastmasters and I went twice a week, I went to random networking events and just talked to everybody and their mom until, you know, I just didn't care anymore. And then I had a really big epiphany. My yoga teacher said, every decision in life, you either make out of love or out of fear. And if you make them out of love, you're on the right track and if you make them out of fear, you're on the wrong track. And this was so profound, something I always knew. I almost fell out of the almost facing dog. And this is like kind of my mantra in everything. If I, before I always made about me, like meeting a new person, you know, I thought like, oh, do I walk over to this person and talk to them? They probably think I'm a weirdo. They probably think, whatever, the kind of stuff that you make up, because I made it about me. Versus if I make it about this other person, like, hey, there's another person that see how I can provide value to this person. And it's like my go-to thing. And then it becomes super, super easy. Or being here on this podcast or speaking at a conference, you know, I prefer before I would have like smiled and shot myself in the face versus doing that. But because I was acting out of fear, you know, standing on and I was making it about me, standing on stage thinking, do they think I have a weird German accent? Do they think I'm an idiot? Do they think whatever, right? But now I just turn around and think about them and what I have to say could potentially help them in their business, in their life or whatever. And then it all of a sudden becomes easy because it's not about me anymore. Now, Toastmasters for our audience who's not familiar is public speaking, essentially. It's groups that assemble to become better at getting in front of a room and talking. So what would you say your biggest lesson from Toastmasters was going twice a week sounds pretty aggressive? I think the biggest lesson I learned there was just like to just do it, you know, to do it over and over again, feel uncomfortable. It's fine. Just, you know, back to ecatology, just be the watcher, see the unpleasant experience and just like don't give it too much value and keep on doing it and then it's just gonna disappear at some point. One of the things you were mentioning there about how in the past you had made all these moments about you and it made it difficult for you to work through them. And one of the things when we're doing the classes and a lot of the guys who are putting that hindrance those hurdles in front of themselves, it's because they're thinking in that manner. It's all about them, what this other person's thinking what this person might think about them. And always the thing about it is none of these people are malicious or selfish. But when you lay it out, how selfish you're being by making this about you, all of a sudden that whole thing flips. Like, well, I don't wanna be selfish. I'm not selfish. I'm not that way. Well, you're acting that way. And they're like, oh my God, I've never seen it in that manner. And now all of a sudden because they're so wrapped up and not wanting to be selfish, they're able to now start finding other ways to look at it outside of that. And I always laugh about the audacity that you have to make this about you. And they're like, well, no, I didn't. And then the other guys in the room are like, wait, you are making it about you. It's a great realization. And it will instantly change you once you see how you're positioning yourself. And we just had an episode today where I was like, well, aren't you the special little snowflake? And he's like, well, I'm not. And I'm like, he's like, oh, but I guess, I guess I'd pay to myself though. I'm like, yeah, you did. It's interesting. And another crazy advantage I had from acting out of love, another fear was sales. I used to hate sales for the passion. I couldn't self or could not close deals for the life of me. Because I always felt like odd by doing this. But if your motivation is just to make money, right? If you just see the dollars or you want to pay a mortgage or you want to hit your numbers, then you're acting out of fear and that becomes super hard. But if you see yourself as a doctor, hey, I have this solution, you have this pill for you, take this, it's gonna make your life so much better than I can be even pushy, which would have been never possible before. Yeah, and that belief in what it is that you have to offer goes a long way. I know the people listening who are in sales right now when we don't believe in our offer. It doesn't work, yeah. Exactly. Look for a new company. Exactly. But when we believe in the offer, then what we're offering is a solution that is a form of love, right? We're loving the other person enough to offer to them. I think as someone that I've relied on over the years to mentor us on sales, I know that when we go into sales situations, a lot of us feel like we have to just blurt out everything that we have to offer and try to convince the other person of something. Can you speak to, in your experience in sales, how that conversation is different? Oh, people want to buy. They don't want to be sold to, right? So you just, you know, consult the sales, work much better. You just like ask the person, you know, like a doctor, like, hey, where does it hurt? What can we do? And then you tell them how you could solve their pain. You know, that's... And focusing on the benefits instead of the... The features. Okay, exactly. We have all these different things this offer has to offer. Most of us, we just want our problems solved, right? We don't care about the bells and whistles. Now, this month is our toxic relationship month and we have a mailbag here full of questions that David's going to be helping us out with. The first one is from Matt. Hey guys, I need some help. I struggle with conflict and I avoid issues instead of talking to my partner about them. She sees it as me being dishonest and withholding information, but sometimes I'm just trying to protect us both from the conflict. It ends up blowing up because she pushes until I finally tell her what I'm avoiding. I don't want to lose her, but I don't know how to change my behavior. How do I become more open and comfortable with conflict and how do I build trust with her now that she started pulling away? Hmm, there's a lot going on. My mother always said be soft with the person and hard in the case. You know, for example, I'm always tied back to work because I'm a workaholic. Let's say you have an employee that's always late. I would never yell at this person. You know, my father always said, if you have to yell, your arguments are too weak. Right? So I just like to say, I'm like, hey, because of X, Y, Z reasons, you know, this is bad when you come late all the time. And if you don't change this behavior, then we can't work together anymore. You know, I'm really nice. I have no negative emotions. I don't yell, but I'm very strict in the case. Like if this doesn't change, we can't work together anymore. Same thing, like when you talk to your partner, just be very direct and, but be nice and strict. This is something that has been working really well for me. And I would say, obviously it sounds like, you know, what he's withholding, he's having enough time to stew on and really think about. So instead of in the heat of the moment here, I think it's important to find a time and a space where both of them can be more comfortable and not as emotionally charged. But if there's something that he's been holding onto and feels that this is continuing to be an issue, you can't kick it down the road. Yeah, it just gets worse. Also, when you don't, same with in your company, when you have like whatever issues and you want to cover them up, it just, if it's a little thing, people put their own interpretation in it and just make it way bigger than it actually is. You know, so like transparency has been something that we've been practicing in all of our companies that just makes life so much easier when you're just like always hyper transparent with everybody. Then there's no, you know, cause it's funny what people make up in their mind when they interpret. All right, that's why we called the elephant in the room, right, it's not the mouse in the room. Everyone blows it out of proportion if we're not talking about it. And it sounds like he is in a situation where now it's blowing up because he's trying to tell her I don't want to talk about it and she's pushing. What can he do to start rebuilding her trust now that she feels not as close to him? Well, you know, at least he admitted it to us, right? That's the first step. How about admitting it to your wife? This is a problem I want to get better. I need your help and empathy here as I tried to work through this. And I'm sure they can find a way through communication that they can put together some transparency in that these matters and something to allow him to work through this. I have a feeling that because of how she has blown up with Adam in the past that a lot of times he's avoiding some of these conversations because he thinks that's going to happen. And it's like, well, she's seeing me as being dishonest. Well, if you're not being open about these things and you are hiding these things because you don't want her to blow up, you are being dishonest. It is a dishonesty, right? And he's somewhat admitting it. Yes. So I think to restore trust, we have to come from a place of honesty first. We're not going to start building trust by telling her, hey, look over here, don't look at what's going on over here. So, and I love what you said there, Johnny, being open of, hey, I want to work through this and I need your help working through this and now be open to the feedback, right? That's the other thing. When we avoid it and we avoid it and now we feel attacked over it, well, we're not going to be as open to that feedback because we're going to go into defensive mode. So it comes from you being honest with her, one, two, saying, hey, I actually want to work on this and opening that feedback loop and being comfortable with hearing some things maybe. You don't really like that. You don't like about yourself, right? Because you're going to have to change in the situation and guess what, avoiding conflict, something that I've struggled with too, the conflict always gets larger. That's worse, yeah. Always. No one, and no one wants to hear that you're wrong or that you messed up. And especially if you haven't realized it. I have a silly story that I was laughing about because it goes along with this. So just recently, as you know, I've been working into a new band. They're working on a record and because of that and with my obligations and attention towards AOC, it's an afterthought. I show up, I learn the songs, I play but because it's an afterthought for me and more of a primary thing for them, they were a bit down on my progression over the few weeks and I wasn't where they thought I would be. Now I didn't think anything of it because I'm like, hey, the show's not in a couple of weeks. I got plenty of time and then I got sick. Now I was going to rehearsal knowing that I wasn't near where I wanted to be but I wanted to be at rehearsal anyway and I fudged through it and I was laughing because I laughed. I was like, well, I wasn't as bad as I thought I was. So the next day I get a phone call and it was, hey, we need to talk. And I was like, oh, here we go. So I tried and it was one of those, we'll talk later, what time are you free? So there was about four hours of letting my brain go through all the different problems that I thought it was. Exactly. And so we have the talk and there was some issues and I, of course, I took responsibility for not knowing the parts and I was like, I'm sorry. Yes, I wasn't where I wanted to be and that's on me and I will fix that. But there were some other issues going on that I wasn't aware of. So now it was a criticism of some tonality and some other things that as a musician for playing since I was a kid and being 45 now and playing in a million bands throughout my life, my ego took a hit. And I was like, whoa, what? So now my initial reaction was, fuck you guys, I don't need this. So I got emotionally and I had to eat it and I was like, yeah, I could see that. Yeah, okay, well, I'll work on that. Yeah, if you want to get together tomorrow, well, let's hash it out in the room. And I ended the call and I was able to override my emotional response with logic and understanding but I was laughing off how emotionally pissed off I was and then I was like, let's explore your emotions right now. And I was like, did you show up unprepared? Oh yeah, okay. Had you made an attempt to think about what you were bringing into band and if it's fitting, what they're already working with? No. So you think that they have a point that what you were doing wasn't quite fitting in the way they thought it was going to? Yes, absolutely. And I go through this whole thing and I was laughing about it and there was this having to admit they were completely right but for two, three days, every time I thought about the problem, though my first thought was, fuck those guys. Knowing damn well that it was all on me and of course we hashed it out, we worked it out, playing this weekend, I'm really excited about it but it was just funny also understanding human nature as well as we do, talking about these things as much as we do, still having to go through it and going through the emotional theater because you can't stop that process, you have to allow itself to play out so that you can get okay with it and I was laughing about even after all this time, I still have to play this game with myself. It was interesting. Ego's always gonna be in the way. I mean, there's no getting around it and his ego is a little bruised and he knows that in her coming at him that he's gonna have to eat some of it and he's gonna have to open up to her and I think the other thing when we're talking about trust here is the more you kick this can down the road, the harder it's gonna be to get that trust back if it's even repairable. Well, imagine I kick it down the road a few months, how many new things are gonna be built up so then when it finally blows up, now everyone's like, but you did this and that led me to do this and then I did that so you went and did this and now I had to do this and now we got- Danger. Try to fix that. Thanks for getting us started, Matt. All right, Sarah sent us a question through thearticharm.com slash questions. Hey guys, after hearing you talk about toxic relationships and people I started to search for what would be considered toxic behavior and unfortunately I find that I actually show some of that in my relationships. I don't wanna hurt the people I care about so how do I change my behavior to become a better friend? So now there's some self-awareness and that was really one of the reasons that we wanted to do this entire theme was because we've been on the other side. We've been toxic in relationships. We've shown darker sides, worse sides of ourselves and we wanted to allow all of us to not only recognize it in others but start to recognize it in ourselves. That's a great first step. Well, anytime you feel that you're under attack it's easy to lash out. Even me and the story I just mentioned, the minute my ego took a hit it was not reflect and fix my problem, it was go on the attack and I had to override that natural response and here at least she's able to see I've exhibited some of these behaviors and even in my story at this point I still exhibit these behaviors. We all still exhibit these behaviors. It's our response, right? And we talk a lot about habit building. There's a trigger and there's a response. So number one is recognizing what is that trigger? What is the thing that gets you to then go to the dark side? And for each one of us it's gonna be a little different. Maybe it's your friend making a comment about something you did that makes you go negative towards them and push back. Maybe it's when something at work doesn't go your way and all of a sudden you lash out at your friends and you bring your work drama into your other relationships but it's first identifying what is the trigger that precedes the bad behavior that I'm trying to remove? Then once we recognize the trigger we can start attaching a good behavior to that. Like that trigger could mean, okay, now I'm gonna actually give her a compliment. Now I'm gonna tell my friend what I like about her instead of all the things that I hate about her, right? But we need to find that trigger that is creating this toxic environment. And sometimes it's okay to understand that we've been conditioned this way, right? A lot of us are learning these toxic behaviors at our childhood. Well, they're replicated behaviors, right? I have a good example for this. My parents were total hippies. So in our household, there was never any yelling when we had an argument, we talked the way we're talking right now, you know? And my wife family, they're originally from Turkey, they're way more emotional than Germans because we don't really have emotions in first place. And in their household, it was normal to yell, right? And I think yelling is a form of violence and I don't want her to yell at our daughter, right? And she also doesn't want this but it's a learned behavior. And this was something that we did in our family meetings was like, you know, I had this as a point that I wanted to address, but addressing this in the moment when she was already yelling at our daughter, if I then, you know, like, why are you doing this? Then she blows up even more, right? So, and then we sat down and we're brainstorming how we can solve this, right? And we decide to use a safe word. We're standing in front of someone else and they had some spots and I said, okay, if I say foul about none, which means like rotten bananas in German, this reminds you that you actually don't want to yell a daughter and then brings you into the awareness and then we'll see how this goes. And it worked like a charm. Like I'm working in my office and I heard her yelling at Emma and I just have to yell foul about none and it stopped before it was like always, you know, the spiral went down the drain. Yeah, so understanding the trigger and then ultimately allowing yourself to replace that negative behavior with a positive behavior, we can start to condition ourselves and build the habits towards being more positive and being more uplifting and collaborative with the people around us. And it's certainly difficult because you have a trigger, you have an emotional response and that emotional response has been programmed in you for how long? With all the biochemistry? Until you decided to now make this change. So please have some self compassion in knowing that this is going to be a challenge, this is going to be difficult and this is something that we're going to be working towards and then practice a bit of that stoicism of emotional charge, let's watch it rather than act, be moved by it and try to rise above it. And the thing is, you know, a lot of people get in their mind now that they have identified it, I want to change it. So I'm going to flip this switch and I'm just going to be this new person. It just doesn't work in that manner. However, let's say if your emotional response is this way and now we're working on it, well, you know, even if you've went through this trigger and you've stopped yourself and doing this response, 50% of the time, well, that's much better than you were last month. Right, that's working on it. You're getting there and it's a mind-blowing, it takes time. And raising your self-awareness, which is why being someone who practices journaling consistently so that you can look back and reflect on these behaviors, right? You've identified you have toxic behaviors. Part of identifying the trigger is going to be looking back and reflecting on all the times that these behaviors have presented themselves and journaling that over time, as Johnny said, you're going to start to see some movement in the right direction, which is going to empower you to work further on this. The other thing I would say is be honest with people and say, I don't like these behaviors in myself. I'd like your support, right? So your example is great. In your friends and the people who care about you, they know you want to work on this. They can give you that safe word. They can give you something to replace the trigger so that it raises your awareness in the moment, catches you before it does real damage to the people you care about. So that was a great example. Thank you, David. Here's one from Haley. I'm currently listening to the podcast episode 722, What Matters Most in Difficult Conversations, and I have a question regarding emotional bids and personal boundaries. I have a friend that I've known since third grade in the past four or five years. She has not been the kind of friend I would like to have in my circle. However, since I've known her for so long, I feel that I have to be loyal to the friendship. In the past, she has expressed selfish behavior and whenever I have tried to have a constructive conversation with her, she gets defensive and starts emotionally attacking me. I don't get anywhere with her and I bottle up my problems with her because of past conversational trauma. Within the past year or two, I've started being more conscious of her behavior and I've noticed that she only reaches out to me when she has a problem in her life and she never reaches out to genuinely see how I'm doing, which makes me feel used and abused. Even when I respond to her messages, she never says thank you for the listening and never turns the conversation over to how I'm doing after she has her rant. It's as if she opens the conversational door simply to dump all of her crap on my lap and then walks out the door and shuts it without a thank you. So my question is this, how do I bring up my issues with an emotionally sensitive friend and how do I set boundaries without seeming harsh? Thank you for taking time to read my question. Keep up the good work. Can I just say, I wanna read this. I wanna quote this. It says, it's as if she opens the conversational door simply to dump all her crap on my lap and then walks out the door and shuts it without a thank you. No, that's not what, that's as if, that is exactly what she's doing. And okay, let's unpack this layer by layer. I think the first thing is you have been friends for a very long time. So it is worth attempting what we're gonna lay out there. But I will be honest, setting boundaries has to involve some level of harsh. It has to have something on the other side to change this behavior. And that example that David gave earlier about the coworker coming in late. I can't be your friend any longer if this behavior continues. Not yelling, just like saying calm. I would love to be your friend. I've enjoyed being friends with you since the third grade. In fact, we've had a number of great times together. But your behavior towards me, when you yell at me, emotionally manipulate me, dump all of your problems on me, makes me feel unsupported in this relationship, makes me feel like an unpaid therapist in a lot of ways. I don't think I could be your friend any longer if this behavior continues. You're absolutely correct in that. And I wanna also add that it's going to take a lot of courage to do. And this is gonna come out of nowhere because in the past you haven't done this. It's gonna feel harsh. It's gonna feel uncomfortable. And I'm gonna say that you will be getting a emotional response that you're going to have to weather through. Now, this person could actually hear that, take it to heart and apologize. But from reading this, this person is going off. Now, and I expect her to go off and you should as well. And just say, I want you to sit on that for a few days and then we're gonna have a conversation moving forward. Actions speak louder than words. Someone who is a sociopath, someone who is a severe emotional manipulator is gonna say, oh my God, I'm sorry, is gonna do everything in their power to salvage the relationship through words. So look at the actions. Is there movement in the direction of the behaviors that you'd like to reward and you'd like to be around? Or is it just lipstick on a pig? Is it just saying it so that she can alleviate this conversation? And then next week, she's back to dumping her problems on you. Boundaries have to have some teeth to them, which means when this happens again, you've laid out the boundary, it happens again. It's saying, okay, I'm not gonna answer her phone call. It's texting her, we can no longer spend time together. You continue to exhibit the behavior that for me is a deal breaker in our friendship. And in that moment, this is when real friends start to change their behavior. Behavior does not get changed with soft boundaries, no boundaries. Behavior gets changed when the one thing that that person wants, your attention, your support is now removed from the equation. That now allows the person to see, hey, I have to do something to change my behavior, or I'm gonna continue to feel bad in this relationship. There's, first of all, I'd love to hire you as a copywriter because this was like really well written. When you let an employee go, that's a very tough thing to do. Like I've been doing this many times and it's always very unpleasant. In some booklets, they call it the 48 hours of pain. You kind of feel really shitty leading up to this and then you don't feel really good afterwards. But you have to make these drastic steps because you're the sum of the five people that you surround yourself the most with, right? And you cannot have somebody on the team that's dragging you down. So it's really important that you make these tough choices. See, like your business, you cannot afford to have an employee that's not performing at all, that's even negative towards the outcome that you desire, like let's say happiness or whatever. Absolutely, and cultivating, as we talked about earlier, the thoughts that you consume, the news that you consume, the positivity that you surround yourself with is a big reason that successful people talk about ending up on the show here. That is that cultivation and that discipline of surrounding yourself with passionate supportive people, making sure that we're not just constantly consuming the negative from social media or the news allows us to feel happy, allows us to move through some of life's hardships with resiliency. But man, if you got a friend like this who's just piling all of her problems on your shoulders, it's gonna be tough for you to deal with your own problems. Lance asks, A.J. Johnny, I love your show and listen to it a lot. I'm currently struggling finding a good community of friends and hope you can help. I wanna find good friends who are positive and share my values, but I don't know where to start. I'm 25 and I'm not religious, and it seems like most people start with their churches. I'm out of the phase of my life where I wanna go drink and party. I just wanna find accepting people who wanna better themselves too without having to pretend I'm something I'm not in a religious house. Any ideas where to start? We talked about toast masses before. I think toast masses are a really great place. You will only find people who want to grow, who want to improve, nobody else will go there otherwise. I know, well, you moved to Turkey, you're building a new social circle and you'd shared a story of what you did to set up some meetups in Turkey. You wanna elaborate a little bit on your marketing, your digital marketing prowess? Yeah, I moved to Bodrum, Turkey, which is a really nice vacation destination in the south of Turkey, and everything's amazing. The food's amazing, the people are great, it's comparing to Los Angeles. It's very, very, very affordable there, but I did not have any digital marketer, nerds or online entrepreneurs around me, and I was really missing that. So I thought, okay, let's start a meetup. So I made a meetup on meetup.com and also a Facebook event. And then I thought, okay, let's take my phone, just make a super ghetto video of me saying like, hey, I'm David, moved here from LA, wanna meet other entrepreneurs, online entrepreneurs. Let's come to my meetup, please. Right, and I put in like 50 bucks for Facebook and Instagram ads, and I went to bed, and the next morning I woke up and I had 37,000 views in the city where I live, and I only spent 40 some dollars, which is mind blowing, so all the digital marketers out there- Don't let that get secret out of the bag yet. Traffic is cheap in Turkey. And I had 280 people who want to come to this event. And when I went to the gym the next day, everybody was like, I saw you with you, I saw you with you, I saw you with you because I geotargeted only to see where I live and we're just kind of crazy. You're blowing my mind, this is amazing. Well, and I have another friend who did this for his dating, but I'll let you finish. Yeah, and I only had a room to fit 30 people, which was kind of a problem. So yeah, I told them like, hey, it's only for advanced people, we're gonna do something for junior people. And yeah, I had a really good meetup, all the people showed up with us. The power of digital marketing. I had another buddy, Ryan, out in Denver, who loves country music, loves line dancing and he had just moved to Denver and he wanted to go on more dates and he didn't have time swiping, swipe life. So he did the same thing, filmed a very short video saying, hey, I'm Ryan, this is what I like. I'm looking for a girl who likes the same thing. He spent, I wanna say around 25 bucks on Facebook ads and it was geo-located just to the Denver area. And sure enough, almost all of the metro Denver area women saw his video. They were approaching him on the street, they were inviting him out on dates and they were even recommending him to friends who didn't even live in Denver because they found his video so compelling. And then he ended up getting invited on the local TV network. Wow. If this gets out, e-harmony stocks will pay for it. It's just like, you know, you can really geo-target and like age, whatever. It's dead simple with Facebook, knowing a few of your interests and meetup.com. We cannot recommend that enough. We've been doing some work behind the scenes with meetup.com. We've been recommending them back since our New York days, 12 years ago we were rocking meetup. It's grown tremendously since then you can find local meetups around a variety of topics that do not involve drinking or partying. Right, yeah, that's actually a great point. I just wanted to point out and hit Lance's question here as well, is he makes a just a general broad assumption of most people saying, I'm not religious but it seems like most people start with their churches. Well, some people, but not most people. Well, let's talk about some other places he can start if he doesn't have a church. Yeah. Charity, donating your time. I've gone to now three food drives. I've met amazing people who are willing to give up a Saturday morning to box food around the holidays. Guess what, Lance, they're not drinking and partying. If you're boxing food on a Saturday morning, you're not drinking and partying the night before. So if you're into snowboarding, you're into rock climbing, you wanna learn how to cook, there are meetup groups around these exact same topics. The other thing I wanna recommend, and we've had a number of alumni reach success here in building on their social circles, look for local sports teams. They have a number, flag football, kickball, you name it, bowling leagues, you join one of those, it's very social, Toastmasters is a great start and also look at improv. We've talked a lot about improvisational comedy. That attracts like-minded, fun-loving people who are into self-development and working on themselves and aren't afraid to make a fool themselves. Conferences as well. I mean, maybe because I'm such a business nerd but I've met a big amount of my, most of my close friends, I actually work related, some degree. We just went to traffic and conversion. It's almost like family reunion. See like so many cool people. And then you really share the same interests when you're in the industry, doesn't know what to do. And a shameless plug here. Check out the art of charm challenge. We have a group with over 15,000 people who love the show just like yourself, who are looking to get better, posting about their values and even meeting each other offline. So I highly recommend you check that out. Theartofcharm.com slash challenge. All right, Emmett asks, long-time listener and recently out of what I would consider a toxic relationship. What red flags do you look for when considering a partner? And what red flags do you look for in yourself to make sure you aren't that toxic person? Johnny, you snickered here. I feel like you've been with your swipe life seeing a lot of these red flags around LA. Yeah, well, you know, I think before you can start looking at anyone else, it's always gonna start with yourself. And, you know, we're gonna exhibit replicated behaviors that we have learned that we're comfortable with. And a lot of times we don't even see them as red flags because they're normal behaviors for us because that's maybe the environments that we had grown up in. The way our first partner was in a relationship. Yeah, and so first and foremost, think about what your core values are and how you're going to engage in them on a daily and weekly basis and start moving there. From there, once you're feeling good, that you're connected, you're grounded and you're doing the things that you wanna be doing to feel good, then it's an opportunity for you to look outward to see who you wanna bring into your life because you certainly don't wanna bring anybody in if you're a disaster because what is going to happen there is you're the toxic person which is going to infect the other person and now we have two toxic people now dealing with the toxicity of their relationship, trying to codependency hold on to each other for dear life and that's never a good thing. Now, that is so important that we identify our own values. It's actually one of the first challenges we have in the challenge because when we don't have our values to ourselves aligned, then it's gonna be very difficult for us to see these red flags in someone else. So for example, if you value honesty, then obviously dishonest acts around you, whether it's lying to the waiter or lying to their mother, those actions are going to be red flags but you won't see those red flags if you haven't identified that honesty is very important. Maybe it's trust, maybe you wanna have trust so that you are not with someone who needs your passcode or needs to get into your email inbox constantly but again, if you haven't identified this value, it's gonna be very difficult for you to identify the red flags that we're talking about. If you don't stand for anything. The last thing I would say is make a list of all of the behaviors from your past relationships that have bothered you, whether they've led to arguments or whether they've led to blow-ups or breakups. Then after you look at those actions, think about the values that are tied to those actions. Think about the underlying reason that that action angered you. When you've identified those, it becomes a lot easier in today's world with Swipe Life where we're just presented with endless options to know option A is a good option for AJ, option B, she's better off being single here in LA. When you have that as a guide, it becomes a lot easier but a lot of these red flags, we don't take the practice of hindsight of looking back at the behaviors and actions that exhibited early in the relationship because listen, those red flags are there on date one. People are not good at hiding their true selves for very long. We talk about maybe five to 10 minutes in interaction but after that, you're gonna start seeing some things. It's identifying your own core values that are important. How you do one thing is how you do everything. If somebody lies to the waiter, they're also gonna lie to you. If I ask what at work, I'm gonna be an asshole at home. It's just like we are who we are, we can't really change that. So this is something when I hire people, I'm, you know, his question is hard for me to answer because I've been with my wife for 20 years, you know. But when I hire somebody, I look at these little nuances on how they act because how you do one thing is how you do everything. Yeah, it's gonna be very hard to not show your true colors. I wanted to add to this as well. If you haven't picked out what these core values are and what you're going to stand for and what's important to you, then you can be easily influenced and manipulated in any direction as long as it's sold in the right manner. And because you haven't put together what you stand on and you're able to easily be manipulated and influenced, then you never truly found yourself and you're just going to move. Well, any option becomes attractive at that point because now you're just playing with brain chemistry, right? Now it's just a matter of, well, did they touch me? Did they comfort me? It's not clear. And right there saying it's, well, that person generally is going to make decisions best how they feel in the moment because that's all they have to go on. And you're a leaf in the wind if you don't have strong vision statement in the business statement, vision statement core values and every big decision you run through these points and see it's your decision filter for... And decisions become easier. Yes, that's the thing. What we're talking about here makes that decision of whether or not to get in a relationship with the next person even easier. Johnny, I had to add this question right before we started. I knew you were going to have a little bit for Janelle here. She wants to know many of us are struggling with strong expectations under the influence of the current political sphere. I feel like I need a trigger warning just for this question. I've had friends become angry with me for not taking a stronger stance on my political leanings in both social settings as well as on social media. Some have gone so far as to say it is my duty to speak up against the wrongdoings and mentality of the other side. They become very agitated with me if I try to make, if I try to take a more neutral or peacekeeping stance. I don't want to do this anymore. It just feels ugly and dividing. It's not fun. I know that irrespective of what your political leanings might be, everyone is now feeling this pressure. Agreed. In fact, 10 years ago, this was a non-issue for most of us. What in the hell happened? Considering that the culture is currently pretty evenly split down the middle on the political front, that means many of us are missing out in meaningful connections with nearly 50% of those people we meet. How can we navigate this? Wow. And I'm gonna agree wholeheartedly with everything that she had said. And yes, you are missing out on meeting some wonderful people. And it is awful. I always feel pushed and pulled in certain directions. And because of that, it is rather, it has only turned me off from both sides. You know how I feel that from the tactics that both sides have been using against each other, I now see both of them as morally reprehensible. And the tactics they're using are morally reprehensible and hypocritical and awful. This is something else that we were talking about in our relationships month, where I'm not even asking people what their social media is anymore as they would go out on a date because I don't wanna know. I just wanna have an awesome conversation and go from there. And I know a lot of our listeners are like, what, Johnny doesn't do any research for where he goes on these dates? Nope, it's a dead-end road. It's been amazing. And you're still alive? Oh, well, as I was- And smiling, look at that smile. Yeah, well- Check us out on YouTube. He's got a big smile on him. I certainly do. And it's been way more fun because there's no agenda. There's no plan for where the conversation's gonna go and try to like bang a square peg in a round hole. It's being present in the moment and enjoying the experience of meeting this new person. Now on here, I gotta say, I do not take kindly from people pushing me and trying to put me in a position. And yes, I've been in situations where people are trying to, well, you need to stand up. You need to say something. First of all, we have to understand that your political leanings are based on your temperaments that are DNA encoded. And so people are going to be leaning in a direction that it feels good to them because of how they were raised, their DNA and all these things. So, you know. And we're living in the misinformation age. There's more information that's been unvetted out there on every platform available. It's part of the reason we've been able to just walk into this room and start recording. If you look at traditional journalism, you're looking at people who go to school to study the issues in detail and then spend years honing that craft just to try to get to a deeper truth. But even journalism is a search for a truth that a lot of times they can't make. They can't get to the truth. But now it's become this tribalism that we've all sort of fallen back on. And it has been a minefield. I know Johnny and I even talk about 12 years ago doing this show, we would come in here some genitonics and let rip. Now we got producers, everything we're saying we're running through a filter. Why? Because in this climate, there are real repercussions to the words that you say that now live on the internet forever. So I don't think there's anything wrong with being metered and measured in what you say. And I think you need to draw a boundary with your friend. Same advice we had earlier. Listen guys, yes, I share these views but I'm not comfortable being a vocal advocate of it. And it makes me feel uncomfortable when you push me in this direction. If this continues, I don't think I can continue being your friend. That is not the direction that I'd like to go. Well, and just think about that. There's this whole thing about outing people one way or another so that, so they can feel pure pressure and to manipulating and influence you in certain directions. And that is just not right. That is an awful thing. I wouldn't want my friends doing that to me and I would want to do that to other people. And if you're feeling that, these certainly needs to be brought up. However, if you're at work and it seems that if you just play ball then things are gonna be a lot easier for you. Oh, that's a whole another thing. Well, yeah, there's obviously the cultural fit at work. If this is going on in the workplace, you gotta think long and hard of is this something that you want to be involved in? Are you in the right place? Unless the work is actually political activism. But I think most of us right now need to come to conversations a little more measured to begin with and a little more accepting of opposing viewpoints. Now, I know Johnny and I, we're constantly trading links from both sides of the aisle, trying to figure out ourselves on a search for truth. And I would recommend that if that's how you're leaning then try viewing it from the other angle. Try putting on some empathy and going on the opposite end and look at what they're posting and talking about. You know, to go along with that and I wholeheartedly agree with that, you should be on both sides of the aisle getting information. And what's also neat is we are now exposed to so many different ideas and lenses that part of seeing, let's for instance, let's take the Covington kid thing that happened a few months ago. You can look at that from the conservative side, from the liberal side, from the like, and that's just two, but there's multiple other angles to look at it from it as well. And all those lenses are represented on YouTube. And you can, and I have to say, from some of the ways that I have viewed these things really had shed some light that I hadn't thought about because of these two sides bickering at each other. So it's something to think about. And my encouragement is to experience multiple lenses. Yeah. I can't really say anything about political views because first of all, I'm not consuming any news for the last 15 years. That's where I need to go. Look at that smile. Well, I'm so happy. And I've not been living in countries where I can vote for over 10 years, but I can bring another hot or controversial topic to the table. I'm vegan for many years and I have pretty extreme views in why I'm vegan. You can think that maybe I get crucified for saying that, but in 50 years, we may look back at eating animals the same way we look back at having slaves, you know, because it's just like, oh no, it's just so wrong on so many levels. Puppers is happy to hear that. Yeah, we have seven dogs and there's, I think there's no difference between a dog and a lamb and a cow. They all feel emotions. They're all other beings. You know, like, why would I hurt them? But I'm not, I think being combative will not help. You know, if I want to convince you, if I want to influence you, that you eat less meat or become vegan, it doesn't help that I call you idiots or whatever, murderers or whatever. It's like this is completely pointless, right? It's just like, and this, I think this is what's happening. Like with people having these extreme opposing views, I think it's like coming together and just talking, right? If I want to influence you, I can just live by example, I cannot force you to think about that. Everything we're talking about here is turning the volume down, right? Your friends are asking you to shout more and stick up more and be louder. And if you look at every single compromise we're talking about here, it's lowering our voice. We're talking about conflict in our families. We're talking about conflict with toxic people. It's lowering our voice and being metered and measured. If you have to yell your argument is too weak, right? Exactly. And it's obvious and certainly in this country, but it seems to be, at least from my observation, happening in other places too, is that we're becoming more divided. And I think it's our duty and obligation to figure out ways to rise above that and find ways of bringing people together. 100%. All right, Matt wants to know, he is an ex-girlfriend. By definition, she is an all-around textbook toxic person and has been for the majority of her life. She severely struggles with depression and anxiety, which causes her to pendulum between somewhat functioning and periods of scary suicidality. She has harmed herself a handful of times and even attempted once in front of me when confronted about her behavior. Since we've broken up, she still periodically reaches out when her depression is deep enough. I'm afraid that if I don't respond to her while in this state, she could harm herself or worse. When conditions are positive, she can be very charming and fun to be around, but her unresolved issues can be overwhelming. What sort of mindset or plan of action could I look at to do what's best for both of us when suicide and self-harm are a factor? Thank you for all your work, it's much appreciated. First of all, she should be seeing a therapist. Let's just start with that. And anything that you could do to encourage that would probably be best. And I would look at your relationship with her family. You said that you were in a relationship with her if there is at least some sort of bond or connection you still have to or mother or father to reach out to them to allow the conditions to be right for her to get back to therapy if she's not in therapy. Now, outside of that, I understand that every time she says this, cries wolf at whatever you wanna say and you give her the attention that she is looking for, that behavior is not going to change. And it's going to continue. You've built a habit for her that she feels bad and you'll pick up the phone. And now she knows that she can keep using this to get you back into her life. And she will for as long as you allow her. And once again, we are gonna be having a difficult conversation of boundaries that is going to be difficult and there's going to be a difficult emotional response from the other party that you're gonna have to weather. And then being honest with this behavior is not acceptable to me. We're no longer in a relationship. I understand that you still wanna be friends with me but I can't keep doing this any longer. In these moments where you're feeling this way, I would appreciate you reaching out to your family and friends that you're close with. I can't be here for you any longer. Soft with the person, hard in the case where it is. And then if I would be in the situation, I'll probably, if this happens again, she calls me, I would reach out to her father, whatever, say that, hey, she must be not doing good. She called me again, please reach out to her. Right. And then if it continues to happen, that is unfortunately a blocking of the number. And I know it sounds awful to go that route but at this point, she's used this behavior. And yes, I know it's been scary for you but she's used this behavior now to control you. Yes. She is controlling you. And you can't find your own personal happiness and wellbeing being in a relationship that's still this toxic, even though she's your ex-girlfriend. I wanna add to this as well. A lot of these problems and issues that we come to and certainly some of the letters, if this wasn't you and it heard it from a friend, you would know exactly what to tell your friend but because it's you, you've made some mental gymnastics to make your scenario different. And keep in mind that you are painting yourself as the special snowflake, you're a situation special and keep that in mind because a lot of times we have the answer, we know what to do. And we would even think, like I don't understand why my friend is not taking this advice. I'm just, I told him what to do here. And well, it's because he's in it and he's rationalized these behaviors and made it that his case is different. And that's what makes a lot of these things difficult. Yeah, and speaking to her family, as them, is there someone that they reach out to in these moments? Maybe there's a professional that they're working with. Maybe they have her doctor's phone number or her therapist's phone number that you can immediately pass this information along to. I don't think you need to continue to put yourself in the situation. I understand you wanna be supportive but it's doing you a lot of harm. There's another thing that once you do this and let's just say that you've called family and they call her and like, hey, you call Brad and he's upset. And because he was worried about you. And of course, now the family's involved. Wait, I don't have a problem. I don't know why he called you. I don't know why he said that because you just took, you pulled the rug out for me. You took the power away. One last question before we roll out of here. This one comes from Liz. Love your show. My question is about toxic people and forgiveness. I like this one and I'm happy we're ending on it. My former best friend struggled for a long time with anxiety and chose to seek counseling to get help. We grew apart because she was really negative and I struggled to remain my best self around her. Recently she reached out and apologized for some of the things that she did and she's been sticking with counseling and actually feeling a lot better. I was thrilled to hear she's doing well and would love to become close friends again. How do we know when and if to let people back into our lives who may have been negative before and how do we keep them and how do we keep from just writing people off if they're doing the work to change? Well, I would do, I would definitely let this person back into my life but I would have very clear rules in decision tree. If this, then that, right? If you do, if you show even remotely this behavior again, you know, I love you, I would love to have you back but this is when there's a hard stop and just like communicate this from the start and also make this clear really clear to you what these things are, like make it measurable to some degree. Right, and some self reflection here, right? Obviously there's some actions and behaviors that drove you guys apart. What were those? Understanding them on a deep enough level that you can draw now clear boundaries around them so that if this negative emotional behavior is being brought back in, even if it's small, as we said earlier in the show, how you do anything is how you do everything and even though they're working on it, everyone deserves a second chance, especially someone who's seeking help for this and has identified that it's an issue and actually apologized to you for it. We're not about writing people off permanently, we're not about cutting people out of your life unless the toxicity continues in a way that keeps you from the happiness that we all deserve and we don't want anyone to be trapped by the toxic environment and the toxic people we surround ourselves with. So I'm not interested in writing people off full stop until behaviors have dictated so and that's really it, right? Words only go so far. It's all about the actions here, paying close attention to the actions when you slowly bring her back into your life. What I will say is it's very easy in these situations and we see this in our dating advice with getting back with our ex. It's very easy for us to look back and only see the positive and see things in a very rosy light of like, man, I really want this best friend back. I would ask you, Liz, are you also working enough on yourself to meet new people and allow new people to become your close friend, right? Sometimes our past needs to stay in our past and being clear with that can really help you move through it. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, David. It's been a lot of fun peppering you with questions and learning all about managinghappiness.com where all of our listeners can go to learn how to be happy in today's life where we're juggling lots of balls and trying to figure out how we can move forward and allow the people around us to support us in that. So thank you for joining us. Great German advice, great entrepreneurial advice. I know that I'm constantly hitting you up for advice and you've been gracious enough to mentor me and the business here over the years and we couldn't be happier to have you on the show. Thank you, David. Thank you for having me, it was awesome.