Paul McKenna - How Communication Can Save Your Love Life

Full transcript: Paul McKenna on London Real

3:45 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Paul McKenna, the British hypnotherapist, behavioral scientist, and bestselling author. For the past 30 years, you’ve helped millions of people successfully lose weight, quit smoking, and gain confidence, including David Beckham, Ellen DeGeneres, and Stephen Fry. You are the UK’s most successful nonfiction author and have sold over 7 million books, including I Can Make You Rich, I Can Make You Happy, and I Can Make You Thin, which is the best-selling self-help book in UK history.

4:16 Your latest work, Seven Things That Make or Break a Relationship, uses scientifically proven strategies to provide practical techniques designed to transform romantic relationships. Paul, welcome back to London Real. It’s great to be here. I’ve got to say, I really enjoyed the last time, Brian. It was fantastic.

4:32 I got asked a lot of things no one’s ever asked me before. It was fun. I can’t wait to get started. I want to dive deep into this book. But first, I want to find out, how are you doing? I think last time you were here, you would kind of just come back from L.A. and you were like, I’m back in the UK for good.

4:47 What’s the last year been like? What’s it been like getting reacquainted with the British Isles? And are you here to stay? I’m here to stay. Yes, I love London. I think it’s my favorite city in the world. I love, say, New York. I love L.A. I love, you know, Milan.

5:01 I love Barcelona. But I really love London. I suppose I know if I mentioned this last time I was here, I was good friends with brilliant Hollywood producer guy called Robert Evans, who made Love Story, True Grit, The Godfather. And Bob sadly passed away last year. But I used to go and hang out with him. And I remember one day he said to me, he had these great voices, Henry Kissinger said to me, make three circles.

5:33 A big one, that’s your acquaintances. A smaller one, that’s your friends. A real small one’s your real friends. People will be there for you. You got to be there for them.

5:41 And so I went away and did it. And I thought, oh, I’ve got more real friends. And I realized, but the majority of them back here in Europe, particularly in the UK, but France, Spain, Italy. So decided to move back and we really liked it. So decided to stay. And I had a great time in Hollywood, obviously for 10 years. But I love being here. I love the British countryside. I like my friends.

6:04 I can’t say I love the weather. People say, do you ever miss being in LA? I went, just the weather. But my wife loves the seasons. I could do without them. I had enough of them growing up. Just give me the sunshine.

6:15 Yeah, the last few months really reminds you that London is not always sunny, is it? But you haven’t been to LA just to get some sun or anything. You’ve stayed in Europe. Well, I’ve been and visited friends. And the nice thing is, because Los Angeles is an ontology. It’s not just a location. So it’s a state of mind. And when I was there, I was staying with some friends and I’d wake up in the morning and I thought, it’s nice to wake up here different. Because when I was living there, I’d wake up and I’d go, right, I’ve got to call my agent. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to write a book. I’ve got to do a TV show. And that overachiever mindset was great for when I arrived, because that’s the kind of guy I was.

6:53 That’s not really who I am now. You know, I don’t really have anything to prove these days, as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I like achieving. But I don’t feel like I’m in a race to compete with everyone else. But at the time, I did.

7:03 Did you get all that out of your system in LA? Yeah, I think so. And then some. Oh, yeah. Okay. Now you’re the new media guy. So I’m loving your podcast, the positivity podcast. You’ve got some great guests on there. Jon Ronson, who actually just saw in New York City and had him on the show. That guy’s just amazing.

7:20 Alain de Bataan that we just found out as well, Heston Blumenthal. Are you enjoying this new media piece? Because, you know, you’re a classic kind of older media guy with books. But what’s this like? Well, I did a show for Hulu, did a couple of seasons where I interviewed people as a psychologist, not as a journalist. And the gist of that was, how do you do what you do? So I would interview Roger Moore or Richard Dawkins or Lulu or Rachel Ray, you know, who’s a very eclectic mix. Ryan Seacrest, Simon Cowell, Tony Robbins.

7:48 And I loved doing it. I had no idea if it’d be any good at it. But apparently I was. And I moved back here and Global, a big media company approached me and said, we were looking to do podcasts. And we’re wondering if you’d be interested. So I went away and I researched it and I found that it is, as you say, one of the fastest developing new mediums in media. And so I said, yeah, I wouldn’t mind interviewing people and discovering their success mindset.

8:17 Without actually asking that question, but asking questions that lead around it. So if you’re listening to it eventually, you just go, oh, I see how they see the world, or I understand how they think now, or I’ve got a glimpse into that success mindset of this person. It’s made me feel more uplifted, more positive. And so I usually come away from it feeling pretty up myself. And the people who I interview say, well, I’ve never been asked that sort of stuff before, kind of like your show here.

8:45 And so I’m loving doing that. It’s become a huge hit. It’s in the top 10% of podcasts worldwide at the moment. And your show with Mel B really popped off, right? Because she talked about some serious stuff.

8:55 Yeah, she talked about, yeah, I mean, again, she was incredibly, I suppose, authentic and very, she’s very real as a person. And I don’t know her, but she was just so candid. And, you know, she talked about her ADHD, about also some of the tough times in her life about some of the things that really work for her now. And it became a huge hit. Yeah.

9:19 It’s because it’s almost because it was probably you and her in a room, right? And so it just allows people to let their guard down. And also, I think audio only just lets people relax. I think it is that. But also, this is something that I’ve had, which is pretty much a blessing. It’s not really such a burden. But throughout my life, people tell me everything about everything.

9:40 So I sit down on a park bench and people start talking to me and open up about their life, let alone when they sit in my study and I’m doing therapy with them. So it’s kind of got a flavor of that in as much as I’m not trying to be penetrating in my questions, but I just can’t help. I’m fascinated by people. I want to understand how they tick. You know, I’m not looking for a scoop. I’m not a journalist. I’m just fascinated by interesting people. It’s funny, my wife said to me, well, if you get somebody who’s not that interesting, I said it’s not possible. Everybody’s interesting to me.

10:10 And if they’re interesting to me, they’ll be interesting, I hope, to the audience that are listening. You know, a lot of people will be fascinated by that, Paul, because a lot of people don’t find anyone interesting. They find them irritating. How do you find interest in everyone? Are you just always curious how they tick? Was that always something?

10:25 I mean, I definitely can find people irritating. There’s no doubt. But no, generally, I find people interesting. Even people that everybody else doesn’t, or they find really irritating, I’ll say, no, no, no, because I’m looking at them not just as a person. I’m looking at them structurally in terms of their thinking and their behavior, because I’ve spent decades in the trenches having to figure out two things. How is it that somebody is doing what they do to upset them to make their life dysfunctional?

10:54 Or how is it that somebody is doing something that’s making them exceptional, that makes them absolutely amazing? And as a behavioral modeler, I then want to unpack that so that I can codify it and then teach it to other people through my books or apps or at my seminars and things like that. So given I come from an NLP background, and as Richard Bandler described NLP as an attitude of curiosity, a methodology that leaves behind a trail of techniques. And that’s something I work towards as an ethos.

11:23 And I remember your mind programming CD, and I talked about this before. But Paul, I used to take a taxi from Notting Hill into the city every single morning, and I would strap my seatbelt on and listen to the 28 minutes and 31 seconds of the mind programming CD. And this is before I started meditating, because you couldn’t find meditation back then. And it was your way of doing. There’s so many techniques in there and so many things that you would have me do, whether it was visualizing the bad things in my life and making them small and visualizing the great things in my life and seeing the future. And I mean, that stuff was really revolutionary.

11:56 Well, thank you. I mean, that was my objective. When I first started working as a hypnotherapist, I thought I could probably work with a few thousand people in my lifetime. But I had a background in radio. And so I thought, hey, why don’t I record a trance and make it really good using all the technology of a modern sound studio.

12:15 So some messages go in the right brain, some in the left brain. So we do these audio splits, and I mark out certain suggestions. And so it becomes almost like a holographic experience. And I put it onto a cassette, as it was in those days. And I started advertising, and lo and behold, I was selling rather a lot of them.

12:34 And then then they became CDs. And now, of course, everyone wants an audio download or they want something on their phone that they can. So nowadays, yeah, people buy either one of my techniques or an app or they get it with a book or something where they can just hit a button and I pop out and I make them feel better. Or I pop out and I give them some insight into this and that. Or I ask them questions that get their brain to find solutions to their problems.

12:57 And do you miss the old days in the naughties where you kind of own the bookstores? Or do you enjoy this new media days and the fact that someone can pop on an app and see you? Like, you know, how do you feel about it? Well, yeah, a bit of me does miss the old days. I miss, you know, when I was a radio DJ because it was a lot of fun.

13:15 You know, there wasn’t that many radio stations and we could play what we wanted and things like that. As you say, the old days, in terms of books, you’re absolutely right. There was only a couple of TV shows you had to do and be in the windows and the high street. And that’s it. You’re done nowadays.

13:29 You saw hundreds of thousands of copies and boom, as long as the work was good, which yours was and it was resonating with people. These days, it’s a different ballgame. It is. There’s more democracy now. You know, the Internet equals more democracy. So it’s good and bad things from the Internet.

13:43 But what it means is that you end up doing lots of different genres of program. You know, I mean, there was nothing like this back in the naughties, which is a brilliant show, I think, as much as, you know, you’ve got plenty of time. The questions allow you, you know, to really to talk rather than, you know, if I was doing daytime television, you’ve got six, maybe seven minutes, if you’re lucky. And it’s all bumper sticker wisdom. You know, you’ve got to hammer it home like that rather than actually be able to explore in depth some of the things you’re talking about.

14:15 So, sure, I don’t mind doing those sorts of programs, but I also like doing this. And of course, now you have podcasts, you know, which are listened to by millions of people and they might be in a specialist genre. You know, so NPR, for example, who the largest podcast maker in America has 42 different genres, self-help, religion, politics, you know, all kinds of different channels, if you like. So people can, sure, they can listen to the broadcast and get the highlights and then go to the narrow cast, the long tail, as it were, and decide what it is that they specifically want.

14:46 Yeah, it’s a beautiful thing in that way. But it also means that when you do the book, there’s also other things that you’re doing. So you do live events and you do all sorts of other things. It’s not just about publishing. Yes. Oh, no, no, it was the that that is a separate business, but they interlink.

15:01 So people might read a book and go like, well, this guy has to say, oh, wow, I actually got a benefit from this. I’m going to go see him live. So they might come and see I sometimes do evening events, 90 minutes of rah, rah, you know, it’s like an evangelist rally, but without the religion. I walk out and I say, right, who here suffers from a trauma? It holds them back in life.

15:19 They cannot get over it. A few hands got like to come and join me. Step forth. I’ll do something like this amazing new havening technique. 10 minutes, 15 minutes later, bam, they’re cured.

15:28 Then I turn and I do it to the entire audience. And so it’s a bit like having a personal coaching session with me. There’s just 500 other people present. And so that’s the that’s the sort of live evening events I do. But then I also do I teach hypnosis with Richard Bandler. We do a weekend of teaching people how to hypnotize other people and themselves and they go do cool stuff with it.

15:52 And then I’ll take it. I’m a hired gun these days. So people hire me all over the world to go in and teach confidence, persuasion, influence, NLP, hypnosis, et cetera. And and I love doing that. You know, I like traveling around. I mean, the hard work is doing the 500 selfies at the end.

16:08 I mean, my face by the end of it. You’re such a showman, Paul. So that’s that’s really you. Right. I mean, you love being on stage. You love doing that stuff. A lot of guys like hiding behind books. You don’t. You like being out there.

16:20 Yeah. I mean, I started as an entertainer, although I always had an interest in psychology and meditation and Buddhism, things like that. But I was primarily an entertainer. And then I became much more interested in the academic side and the scientific side of hypnosis and and modern psychology. And I like to think what I’ve done is apply the two. So it’s a form of edutainment. You know, it’s a sort of stand up therapy, if you like.

16:45 And so I’m actually using comedy and using my interpersonal skills with people to to create change. And usually in somebody I’m demonstrating upon then en masse, or I set up, you know, a sort of a series of exchanges with people in the audience to create a sense of interconnectedness. And these people in the room start getting breakthroughs. Everybody else does. And this won’t become a Netflix show at some point.

17:14 Well, it could. I mean, somebody actually came in to film one of the seminars and they’ve made it into a little movie. I’m just waiting to see what happens with that. But yes, that would be. I mean, Tony Robbins, I thought, did a brilliant job with his movie where he allowed the cameras in.

17:27 And, you know, Tony’s awesome. Fantastic. And they genuinely captured the magic. And that’s quite hard sometimes when you’re taking something that’s that big. I’m making it that big now in a widescreen. But, you know, you’re condensing it all. And does it stay true to it?

17:41 Well, yes, I think it can do. So that’s absolutely something I would love to do in future. I think for people like me, we’re content makers. The more platforms there are, the more technology there is to deliver it, the better. OK, but no more Hollywood and no television shows.

17:57 I wouldn’t say no to television shows. In fact, a couple of producers in the last few months have approached me and said, got an idea for this. And I thought, oh, yeah. So I mean, that happens a lot to me. People say, we’ve got an idea. It doesn’t always happen.

18:10 But when it does and it happens well, it’s very good. So, yeah, I’m going to live here now. I’m not going to live in Hollywood, although I still visit it from time to time. But we’re actually thinking of moving to the country and, you know, maybe get some more dogs and maybe not go at life at breakneck speed. Although I said that I was going to calm it down last year and I ended up doing more live events than I’ve ever done in my life.

18:33 I mean, I know I see a lot of pictures of your dog on your Instagram account and your podcast guests, but I don’t see you slowing it too far down there. I know I’ve tried to. The problem is I think it’s just inherently who I am. But there’s no doubt that I’ve taken a slightly different approach to life. Whereas I used to do things, you know, I’ve done things over the years for the money or I’ve done things I thought they were a good career move.

18:58 Now I only do things I like and work with people I like. And it’s amazing to me. People go, why wouldn’t you? No, no. You know, I got caught up in the business of it all. And, you know, I got convinced to do things that later on I hated.

19:11 And I thought, actually, that’s a year of my life I’ll never get back. So now I’m much more selective. In fact, there was somebody said to me many years ago before I became I suppose I got well known and successful. They said you’re going to find the hardest thing to do is say no, because when you’ve strived so hard and been hungry and you wanted it to happen when it does, yes, yes, yes to everything. And then, of course, you get overwhelmed. And I used to burn out and think I’d treat life as a marathon and, you know, just burn out, burn out.

19:41 Now I treat it as a series of sprints and I put I build in recovery time. Yeah. Well, you’ve been there and done that. I mean, most people, if they were offered a television show, they would go running after it because it seems like something they’ve been waiting their whole life for. But you’ve seen how that can go wrong or how that can just be like you said, a year of your wasted life. And you’re like, I want to choose my things. Yeah.

20:02 Let’s talk about this book, because last time you were here, I really appreciate your honesty about your own relationships and what was going on in L.A. and your recent relationship. And so I thought it was quite refreshing that you were going to write a book about this stuff. Why write this book now, Paul? Well, I can only write it now. In fact, about 10 years ago, my publisher said, could you write a book on relationships or big genre?

20:25 I went, well, if I could stay in one, you know, and was it that bad? Yeah. Well, it wasn’t bad. It was just different, but it’s better now. And so I could make a relationship last a whole week in those days. And, you know, it’s partly my mindset because I had my heart broken before.

20:41 So even though part of me wanted to get into a relationship, another part of me, that subconscious part was going, Helen, we could get hurt here. You’re falling for this person. Oh, I don’t think so. I think we’ll sabotage it and keep you safe. But that also means keeping me out of the delights and wonders of a fulfilling relationship by staying in the same Groundhog Day type situation.

21:02 And the next and next and next. And so I had several epiphanies. And there’s a very interesting study into happiness that shows that initially it showed that people that were married tended to be happier. So the researchers concluded that marriage makes you happy. But because it was a longitudinal study, they found that actually the people that are happy in themselves tend to get married or form functional relationships.

21:28 And it was only when I got happier in myself, cleaned up the past, you know, the fear of getting hurt, so all that sort of stuff, that then I was able to properly relate to somebody else and for it to work and be functional. So I decided, because people say, how long does it take to write one of these, to physically write it a year? But to research it is decades. So having been in the trenches and worked with people, you know, very often, even though they come to see about one thing, it ends up being relationship related in some way.

21:57 So I also was aware that there’s a lot of scientific research now that shows us why certain patterns that people engage in means they’re likely to form a lasting positive relationship or certain patterns that don’t. And so I took a lot of this very complicated psychological research and distilled it into user-friendly, straightforward, I suppose, wisdom. Ways that people can understand how it is they do what they do and why they might get those results.

22:28 So when people say to me, what are the seven things, they’re seven processes, really. So, of course, one of them is communication. And people go, yes, communication, right? I go, well, hang on. You know that good communication is a good thing, right? But do you know how to go create it? Well, I think so.

22:44 Well, let’s look at the scientific research. So even a very straightforward example, so I’m always being asked about this. Give us an example of how you can communicate better. I said, well, we know that we all think in pictures, sounds and feelings, right, amongst other things. But we know also that people will prefer, definitely prefer, one modality. So my wife is a visual, for example.

23:08 She likes to, if I tell her I love her, it’s OK. But if I take her a bunch of flowers when I tell her, or I bring her a cup of tea in the morning, so an act of service or something, a present, something she can see, that has more impact than just telling her. Now, being auditory myself, it’s nice when somebody gives me a present, I’m not particularly fussed about it. But when they tell me in a voice I really believe, I go, oh, yeah, they love me. Kinesthetics, you’ve got to touch them meaningfully when you tell them.

23:35 And so people go, well, how can I figure out, you know, I said, well, it’s obvious, the predicates tell you. So people that say, I see what you mean, that looks good to me. They prefer visual. By their job, you can tell, like a TV producer will prefer visual, will prefer pictures. Radio DJ that I was, obviously, audio.

23:53 And so I’ll use predicates like, that sounds good, that rings a bell. The kinesthetic people will say, we touched upon this. So a simple love strategy like that, understanding the modality in which someone prefers to get the message that you love them, enhances the communication. Wow. I never thought about that. But yeah, I’m not much for presents. But that always confuses my family because they’re always bringing me these things.

24:17 I’m just like, this is silly. I almost give the worst reaction because I’m just unimpressed at Christmas and that makes them feel bad. But I guess I’m probably one of those things that maybe I’m auditory. Well, OK, so when you think about when you meet somebody, is it the way they look? Is it what they say and the way they say it?

24:33 Or is it how you feel about them? Gosh, can that change over time, too? Because I don’t know, but I imagine it can. I’ve got much more in touch with my feelings as I’ve gone on in life. Probably when I was younger, it was maybe visual.

24:48 And then now I trust my sense more than anything. Like, does that person have good energy? And if they do, it just goes a long way. There you go. Yeah. So if that’s the way you prefer. See, I’m very much about what people say and the way they say it.

25:00 One of the other things I know that’s interesting, visual people, they like you to look at them when they’re talking. Whereas I like to look away and listen. And they want you looking at me. You’re not paying attention. I repeat back everything they said.

25:11 And so there are differences like that. I mean, the other way to do it is, if I say think of a childhood memory, what comes to mind? Could or bad. Well, you went straight for visual. Your eyes went up. Yeah, that’s visual is up, auditory side to side, and then kinesthetic is down.

25:28 So you went to a picture, first of all, then. Which means maybe I’m more visual. Well, visuals might be your preferred, your immediate. I need to ask you questions for a few minutes. Because again, you think in all three. But when you eventually get a feeling about something, it might be because you’ve looked at how things are.

25:45 I’m going to guess it’s visual myself. But that’s just my intuition. I think you might be right that I’m visual. But I guess now I’m maybe trying to incorporate other things. Yeah, my intuition. I’m trying to trust my intuition more where I never have most of my life.

26:00 Because I think I know that makes more intelligent decisions. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a visual person. No, but I think that’s wise because a friend of mine has written a book about this, about how we’ve stopped trusting our intuition because of the way our society has developed. And it makes a lot of sense to me. And I suppose as I get older, I trust that instinct a bit more than I used to.

26:24 I used to ask other people’s opinions and almost make it like an equation and go, OK, there’s nothing wrong with upside-down siding. That’s one of Richard Branson’s things. He decides the upside has got to be massively more than the downside before he’ll go forward with a venture. Well, we’re kind of taught that the brain is everything and logic is everything. And mathematics skews that more than anything.

26:47 And this is a very scientific world, whereas 300 years ago, it probably wasn’t. And yet you would probably ask people for those decisions they made logically, did they regret over time? And a lot of them would say yes, even if they are business decisions. Well, we are a left-brain dominated, you know, logic linear culture. And that’s why artists are often seen as these, you know, magical figures.

27:09 They can just come up with stuff. Whereas, you know, when we logically try and figure things out, it’s not the same as when we arrive at something through the abstract or through our emotions. And basically, if you want to be if you want, we should be using both, right, both the sides of the brain, the left and the right. All great geniuses will be left and right brain. You know, Leonardo would be a mathematician, the scientist and yet a painter, you know.

27:33 And so he’s ticking all the boxes. So communication, we talked about that right away. That’s one of the seven pieces. And again, know what you are and your partner is and try to have this conversation. Yeah, but there’s loads of ways to communicate. For example, you know, even the way you disagree is interesting.

27:48 I mean, I used to just argue with somebody to give up. And my wife does a great thing. She goes, let’s agree to disagree. I can do that. And in conflict resolution, we find that usually the conflict comes down to somebody’s needs not being met.

28:03 It’s unmet needs. And the way this can happen in a communication is something like this. Somebody says, one person says to the other, should we go on holiday this year? And the other person says, well, I don’t want to go abroad. And they go, oh, why are you always so negative? So they jump from a request to have a vacation and straight to a personal criticism and also the language of permanence.

28:26 Why was so negative? So the first person says, I need his need. Their need is a vacation. The others is their need is not to travel too much. That could be negotiated.

28:35 But as soon as you go to the level of personal criticism, bam, it’s into an argument. And that is a very common phenomenon that I see and again comes up in the research. Yes. I mean, John Gottman, who’s done the he can sit in front of a couple within a few minutes, tell them whether they’re going to stay together or not. And he comes down to years of having studied the communication, not just what they’re saying, but the nuances in the tone of it.

28:58 And as soon as a couple’s got to contempt, it’s over. Finish. And so you don’t want to get there. But the route to that is things like continual personal criticism rather than actually just stating what your needs are. You could actually just say to the other person, what do you need from me? And this doesn’t have to be in a romantic communication.

29:16 It can be in all relationships. One of the things I’ve noticed since I wrote this book and began using the system myself is I’ve had a lot of spontaneous attacks of reasonableness. You know, in the past where people say, oh, there’s an error. And I go, hey, we’re doing it my way. I just go, well, let’s give it a go.

29:34 Let’s see. Why do you think that’ll work? And actually, I’ve noticed that there’s been a change in my communication. And that was my next question. This doesn’t only apply to romantic relationships, this book.

29:43 No. I mean, that’s going to be the first and foremost. The people who will buy this book, the majority of them will either be single wanting to be in a relationship, being self-saboteurs, repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Is that most people? That’s a lot of people. Well, that comes from we seek the teeth that made the wounds. When we grow up, we watch a training video of mom and dad.

30:05 And we learn that’s how we relate. And we decide, well, I’m never going to be like those two. Or we’re exactly like those two. Or we’re like one of them. We go, I’ve had enough of dating this person. I’m going to date somebody different. And then we become the polar opposite.

30:16 So this is how people end up repeating the same things over and over again, over and over again, or they have inside themselves. No, they don’t think of themselves as worthy of love or they think they’re not a great person or their self-esteem is low. So they find people to go confirm it. They go find bad boys or people who are abusers or whatever. And so part of it is fixing you on the inside because, as we mentioned earlier, when you’re happy, the world’s a better place, you’re more likely to find a functional relationship.

30:45 It’s amazing that anyone gets together ever. There’s any positive relationships. I mean, it sounds like a just a big messy sewer out there, Paul. Well, you could look at it like that or you could take another view, which is because people have said, isn’t this all a bit mechanical? I go, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is stacking the cards in your favor, right? But love is still mysterious and amazing.

31:05 You can’t put it under a microscope yet. We know it exists. And I’d say it’s one of the most powerful forces in the universe. I worked with somebody this morning and him and his partner clearly love each other. They argue about this and this because some certain unmet needs, which was pretty easy to spot.

31:20 And so once that’s cleared up, oh, yeah, of course, I’m coming from a place of insecurity. So I’m being needy and then they don’t like me being needy. So then they reject me. And then this self-fulfilling prophecy comes about. I’ve been rejected again.

31:34 Yeah, instead of coming from a place of security, which is, by the way, it’s not easy for people to go fix this themselves. And insight sometimes is enough. Sometimes it isn’t. That’s why this book comes with a trance. It comes with audio and video. And so, as I mentioned earlier, Brian, people want me to pop out and do it to them.

31:52 So with something like a self-saboteur, I do a simple parts negotiation. I say there’s a part of you that wants to be in a relationship. There’s another part that is terrified that as soon as you fall for someone else, you’ll lose control. You’ll get hurt. And so they sabotage it to stop the pain early on.

32:09 Now, both of them have got a positive intent. They’re doing what they think is best for you. Get them together and get them to work for you. And when they do that, you can find, if you think, oh, this person is taking advantage of me, you can withdraw. But if not, you go with it. So you surf through life with that in mind.

32:29 And having that outside help is really important because it’s very hard to figure this stuff out between two people in a relationship. Because you don’t know what you’re doing and you’re in it so you can’t be objective about your own behavior. That’s right. When you’re inside it. And then you have a man and a woman, too. A lot of times, not always.

32:43 But then it’s completely different. Who think differently? Mars and Venus as well. So it’s important to have something like a book, a trance, something to separate you from the situation. Well, also, you are the expert on you.

32:55 So what I don’t want to do is install my model of happiness in other people. I want to elicit from you what it is that you want. Because ultimately, you’re going to be with somebody who you share values with. So I’ve heard it said that opposites attract. But that may seem like it is true on the surface.

33:12 You might have a husband who’s outgoing, man of the house, strong, wife, who’s more of an observer, quiet, but supportive. Now, even though their styles are different, at the level of values, they might have the same idea about the husband’s role, the wife’s role. And they might value that. So I think that’s where you’re going to connect with people, who you’ve got shared values with, who you communicate with in a way that creates rapport. When you’re in a good place and you know that you’re going to disagree, but if you disagree in a way that allows the integrity of the relationship to stay stable, then it’s going to work.

33:50 Particularly if you’ve got a shared vision of the future. Because that’s very important. I used to be a relentless goal setter. And I moved over to values. So my values being love, health, happiness, creativity.

34:02 If I can tick the box every day that I’m living those values, then my life’s worthwhile. But also, in a future now, I have like a direction. So I believe it’s important to have a direction. Because if you set off in a boat without a rudder, you could end up anywhere. And so have a direction.

34:18 So if I look into my future, I see a lot of good things. Some of those are things I know are going to happen. I know I’m going to be on vacation in a few weeks. I know I’m going to be in the summertime seeing some friends. I know that Christmas, I’ll be with my family, et cetera, et cetera.

34:32 But in the meantime, I’ve got loads of work events and things. But I see me in my future. And this is real important. A lot of people look in their future and they see themselves earning loads of money. But all they do is they see a big house, a car, and a boat.

34:45 But they don’t see themselves looking healthy and happy. What they could do is burn out trying to get that. So I make sure I’m in the future, in my pictures, in my head, looking good, happy, smiling, enjoying life, that sort of stuff. Whereas in the past, it was very much about the status stuff. You know, I shall have another Bentley here.

35:04 You know, that sort of thing. Right. And you avoid that now because that didn’t get you where you wanted to. Well, what I would say is I don’t avoid it because I do like nice things, particularly toys. But I don’t make my life about status symbols.

35:19 I make it much more about the love and happiness I share with those people I like. And also, I really get a thrill out of creating a positive change in the world. You know, that’s my thing. And sometimes that’s with one person at a time because I still work with people one-to-one. Sometimes it’s with big groups when I do these live events.

35:40 And then sometimes it’s, you know, some mass thing that I do online or, you know, a new book. And I can reach millions of people with that. I had my wife come into the office a few months ago and we, on a Sunday, and I pulled out a big whiteboard. And I wrote down 2020, 2030, 2040, 2050, 2060, 2070. And this was the future.

36:00 And I said, I pointed all those things, I said, 2070, I said, and we’re dead. And of course she starts crying. And I was like, okay, that wasn’t what I was trying to do. But we ended up talking about what we wanted on each decade, like where the kid’s going to be and what do we want to do with our lives and what do we want. And it was a great point where we actually kind of got on the same page about the future.

36:20 And it was a really powerful thing to do. And I think you talk about that as well, about making sure you have that vision. That’s an important thing for relationships work. Well, it is. You know, there’s a friend of mine.

36:30 He’s a brilliant man, General Sir Graham Lamb, who’s the director of Special Forces. You know, field general’s the smartest soldier in the world, right? And he said to me, you know, Paul, there’s only two big decisions in life. Who are you going to partner with and who are you going to be in a relationship and how are you going to die? The rest is noise.

36:50 Wait, wait, wait, wait. Back up, right? This is big. And of course who you partner with, who you marry or is your partner, they’re going to be 50 percent shareholders in the decisions and the direction of life. So, you know, it’s good that you get along and it works.

37:04 That’s got to be a foundation for it. And not just they’re pretty or something like it used to be for me. Right. And how you’re going to die determines when, where, et cetera. So for me, it’s of old age and, you know, in a nice place, you know.

37:22 After a career you’re proud of with people surrounded by people you love. There you go. Yeah. Whereas before, I was thinking, yes, I will achieve, achieve, achieve, but I wasn’t taking into consideration what it would take to continue to do that. You’d be alone in a mansion in Hollywood is how you would die.

37:37 Yeah, exactly. That’s right. I’d be alone in a mansion in Hollywood. Yeah, it was kind of like a, yeah, it’s like I’ve seen, it was a movie in the 70s, David Essex, and he’s there in this great grand, you know, castle, I think it is. All on his own.

37:52 And sure, he has a lot of money and fame, but he’s not connected with everybody, anybody. This is not him, this is the person he’s playing. Right. And that’s probably where I was headed, yeah. So think about how you want to die and that will change how you live.

38:05 When, where, yeah, exactly. When, where, and all that stuff. Speaking of you and your relationships, you called yourself a commitment-phobe in the past. Yep. And your current wife, right, you chose, you said by mental spreadsheets.

38:17 Well, I need to put this straight because whilst there’s some truth in it, what actually happened was my friend Michael Neal, who’s a brilliant life coach, he said to me, he said, you know, I noticed you day a lot of hot women, right? I said, yeah, he goes, but you don’t like them, right? I went, well, that got to do with it. They’re hot. He went, no, no, no, stupid thing, stupid.

38:37 How did he know you didn’t like them? Because he was obvious. Are you complaining about it? Well, I said I don’t like him. Yeah, I was complaining.

38:43 But they did because it didn’t last long, you know. And of course, I was being a victim, not an owner. Because I would go, like, if you ask me about business, I go, yeah, this happens, you know, and some of you win, some of you lose, I’d be responsible. But around relationships, I go, go back to dating these psychopaths, you know, and not realizing the common denominator was me, right? So what I did was, so when he said, you don’t like them, yeah, but, you know, that’s stupid.

39:05 I said, well, tell me what, you know, what advice have you got? And he said, think about who you love to be with, spend time with, and who you’re attracted to. So being a hypnotist put myself in a trance, popped the two ideas in my subconscious. And my subconscious has got a sense of humor. But, you know, the language of the subconscious is imagery and abstracts and things like that.

39:28 But it drew, it did an Excel spreadsheet. And they do a graph, right? And the graph went, I went, Kate, went, huh, right. So that’s, that’s awkward because we work together. Hmm.

39:39 And suddenly my mother had said to me a few days later, she said, I think you want Kate to it. I said, I know mum, but if I got that one wrong, it’d be very awkward and we get on great. Because you know, for a long time, and she was big part of your business and she was like your assistant. She’d been my assistant. She ended up running the companies.

39:54 And so you’re thinking if I, if this is the wrong move, this is messy. Right. So anyway, but you also were a little sick of your own choices. Oh God. Yeah.

40:05 Not a yet another model in Hollywood. Yeah. You knew that that was just getting old somehow. Yeah. It just wasn’t for me.

40:11 I mean, it’s, you know, I, I mean, I’ve got to say most of the women I dated, I’m a lot of them I’m still friendly with and they’re lovely. You know, there was one or two bad choices. But anyway, we want to tell us more about that. Well, uh, yeah, bad choices in they, they matched a picture in my head because they looked a particular way, but I didn’t go on how they behaved or how they treated me. And so, cause I, you know, wasn’t really thinking about that being an important part of the equation.

40:35 All I was thinking was, was instant gratification, not long-term happiness. And the hotter they are, the more bad behavior you tolerate. That’s right. Which makes you feel bad about yourself, drops your own self-esteem and gets you maybe back in old weird loops. Have you been there as well?

40:48 No, but I’ve heard your stories. I can’t say I have. Well, now I got to think about this. So, all right. So, but this can, this can be destructive.

40:58 Oh, no, it is. It’s, you know, and things I would put up with, highs became higher, the lows become lower. And so, it’s actually, it’s a really bad equation. And so, after this revelation from my unconscious with what has now become known as the spreadsheet of destiny or something, I was sitting in my kitchen with Kate. We had a bottle of wine.

41:18 So, inhibitions load. And I said, tell me something about you that I don’t know. And she said, I love you. I went, oh, goosebumps. Wow.

41:27 Did you know that was going to happen? No. Were you doing some projecting NLP stuff on her? No, no, no. I hadn’t done anything.

41:33 But the bottle of wine was there, so. That helped us, yeah. Okay. And it was, yeah, it was quite, I mean, so after that, we then thought to ourselves. Then you told her you love her.

41:46 I said, well, I feel the same way. Wow. And one thing led to another, and then we thought, we got to stop doing this. But love being the most powerful force in the universe overrode it all. So even though we brought our baggage, our concerns, and our worries, and all that stuff to it, love overcame all of that.

42:03 And we then decided to get married. And I’m not just married. I’m happily married. And my point is, if I can do this, anyone can do this. So that’s really what was part of the thrill for writing this book.

42:18 Also, it’s because when I write a book, I think, what have I got to bring the world? What’s the world need, and what can I bring to it? And I don’t just do it by thinking what would be, certainly in these days, I don’t think what would necessarily be a commercial success, although obviously the books have been. But I think you’ve got to come from a place of, do I have something to say? And I try and write the definitive book on that subject.

42:42 So I set the bar high, right? So when I wrote my first major self-help book, Change Your Life in Seven Days, I thought, I’m going to write The Roadless Travel. Now, it’s nothing like The Roadless Travel, right? But it’s something as impactful as that. And so with this, I thought, I want to write the definitive book on relationships in fairy tales they usually end with, and they all lived happily ever after.

43:05 But they don’t tell you how to get there. And so this isn’t just a how to get there. It’s how you, I suppose, you get insights into yourself, into other people, and into the process. Because this is the other thing I’ve noticed about relationships. People talk about a relationship like it’s a thing.

43:20 Like it’s a destination. I want to be in a relationship, and everything’s going to be fine. Well, no, it’s not quite like that. Relationship is not something you can put in a wheelbarrow. It’s a dynamic process of relating.

43:33 So every day, me and my wife are relating to each other, and some days are different to other days. And so, you know, and life happens. So we then have to adapt to those things, and it’s often in those moments that you find out who you are. And, you know, give someone a crisis. You’ll find out who you are.

43:51 Give somebody, you know, a million bucks, you’ll find out who they are. Give somebody, you know, all sorts of different things around us shape us. And I like to think that in a way, it’s almost like a spiritual experience, being in a wonderful relationship. Because you certainly get reflected too. This is funny, actually, when I first got together with Kate, Richard Bandler said to me, he goes, well, of course, the good thing is she knows you.

44:17 The bad thing is she knows you. And that proved to be so true. Right. So on one hand, she knows who you are. On the other hand, she knows all the bad things about you.

44:27 The bad things. Or certainly the things that people wouldn’t necessarily want to admit to. You certainly wouldn’t want to date, you know. Right. Right.

44:34 And what did she think when you decided to write this book? Well, she… Because this could get personal. Yes, there was that. She was concerned about our relationship being put under a spotlight, a microscope, even.

44:46 But she was concerned about… So originally, I was thinking of writing How to Meet the Love of Your Life, that sort of thing. And she went, it’ll jinx our marriage. And I said, well, I really want to write this book. And she actually said, look, I’ve got these concerns about our relationship being…

45:04 Because when you write a book on, say, I’m asleep, all I do is I have sharpened. I say, look, this is what the research says. And I explain it in a user-friendly way. And that’s it. This is always going to come back to, well, let’s see if you’re claiming this.

45:17 How does it work for you then, Macey? And so, you know, you’ve got to be able to write about what you know about. I mean, I remember a few years ago listening to Howard Stern interview Barbara de Angeles, who’d been married, I think, three times by then. And halfway through the interview, I was, honey, I think you need to read your own book. And she said, no, it’s because I’ve been through the meal a few times, I can write this book, you know.

45:38 And so I suppose there is, certainly for me, there’s some truth in that. Because I have been where it isn’t. And I am now where it is. I’ve figured out the difference for me. And if I can do it, other people can do it.

45:50 And you’re the first one to admit that just because you’ve written all these books about how you can fix yourself, then you’re not the shining example of anything. You said you’re still a work in progress. I am. I’m not a guru. I’m, you know, I have problems.

46:07 That’s, you know, part of the nature of evolving through life. However, do I have some solutions? Yes. And I have them in specific areas, in confidence, weight loss, in things like sleep, motivation, these sorts of things. And I make those available to people.

46:27 I usually sell either two categories, solutions or aspiration. And this is a mix of both. This is both solution and aspiration. And also, you know, in the same way that somebody like Malcolm Gladwell, who’s a brilliant psychology, sort of, social science writer, his are not really focused on solutions. They’re more about insights into the way that we are and society is.

46:50 I’m much more pragmatic. I’m saying, look, this is how, I think people operate generally. And this is, if you do this and this, you’ll get this kind of result. And we know from the research, most people, most of the time, do from my books and apps. Yeah.

47:03 All right. I want to get into some of the other points. But, you know, I just recently had Alenda Bataan on, who you had on your podcast as well. Yeah. And he talks about this whole concept of romanticism and how it’s ruined relationships.

47:14 Yes. And it’s actually a recent phenomenon. In the last few hundred years, we got in touch with this romanticism. And you could be the hardest bloke in the world, but you still grew up with romanticism around you, whether it’s the fairy books or the Disney movies or whatever. And we all expect the love of our life to be everything in our world.

47:32 Yeah. We expect to be loved for who we are. Yeah. And all these other things, which Alain says, are ridiculous. Yeah.

47:38 And not practical. How much of that stuff do you think is true? And how much does that taint what we bring to a relationship and what we expect a relationship to be? Well, see, I think it’s a brilliant question. And Alain is right.

47:49 I mean, I’m a big fan of the School of Life. I think he’s absolutely brilliant. And what he’s doing is, in a way, is not really killing off the sacred cows, but he’s taking away the sort of rose-tinted spectacle stuff, which is nice and gooey, but it also can lead to trouble. Because, I mean, in a very simple sense, people have a happy-ever-after kind of view, and that’s my princess looks like that. I must now go find a person who looks like it and will never have any problems, because once we’re in the relationship, everything’s fine.

48:21 And so it sort of ties up with what I was just saying, which is, first of all, if you do it purely on the way someone looks and you expect it all just to be perfect, how much you’ve arrived at your destination, that’s it, then you’re in for trouble. And he does it in a very eloquent way. He shows how poetry, movies, music, you know, lots of songs we hear about falling in love with somebody, oh, baby, she broke my heart. It’s all that sort of stuff, which is, again, the unrequited love stuff.

48:48 It’s, again, it’s all just flowery, romantic stuff, which is sweet, it’s nice, it’s probably nice on Valentine’s Day, but it’s not a realistic template in terms of a perceptual filter in approaching life. And in a sense, what I’ve done with the book, which is a system, it’s seven processes that are also supported by already a video. But in that, you literally shape your perceptual filters so that you look at the world differently in a way that you can see whether something is in line with what you want or not and or, you know, something you need to address in your communication, et cetera, et cetera.

49:26 So Alan is right. And the perceptual filters that we are sold, if you like, through mainstream media. You know, even something like a woman’s magazine is really all about, it’s basically lose weight, you know, style stuff, and then it will be, you know, some fashion tips, and there will be stuff like Secrets of a Fantastic Sex Life. And it’s been like that for the last few decades. And are people necessarily any happier for reading those?

49:52 I think if you see them as anything other than entertainment and you start to buy into it and think, no, this is the way I should see it. I mean, it’s astounding to me that over 90% of the population in the world does not have the genetics to look like a supermodel. But yet, we have women starving themselves to death, literally, to try and look like somebody who’s airbrushed on the cover of a magazine. And, of course, a massive rise in eating disorders as a result of all this, or partially as a result, let’s say.

50:21 And so the dream that we are sold all the time through the media, you know, and we see this when young people were interviewed recently for a study. They were asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? Now, instead of saying a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, a teacher, they said, famous. They think it’s an actual job title, you know? And that’s, I believe that’s a very unhelpful mindset that is being sold not through some sort of conspiracy.

50:48 I don’t think all the TV chiefs say, we’ll get together, right, let’s get them to think that everyone’s got to look like, no, it’s just that the people in those worlds are subject to the same constraints and rewards. And so for whatever reason, they end up portraying people in a particular way. And then people think they need to conform to it. When they can’t, they feel unhappy. And that is, you know, a source of unhappiness, if you like, that’s beginning to prevail now.

51:13 It’s really getting a grip in social media. And particularly, you know, these coaches on social media that basically are using brainwashing tactics to get young people to conform to a particular visual stereotype. I think it’s very dangerous. And so this is meant to get in there with practical pieces and just say, look, start dealing with your relationship with these seven things and forget about the Hollywood and all this other visual. Well, you don’t have to forget about it, but what you would do is approach it as a benevolent skeptic and just read the words.

51:44 It’s written in hypnotic language. So once again, as you read it, the sequence of the words gets your brain to search for what will be best for you. Right? And as you do that, you’ll begin to get insights. Obviously, oh, I do that.

51:57 Oh, no. And then when you do the processes, because very often, even if you don’t read a single word, but you just do the processes, you’re going to be different. Because this is everything that I would do with you if I was working with you either individually or as a couple on relationships. And so this is a distillation of all the best techniques. Some of them are mine.

52:19 Some of them are not. Some of them are other people’s techniques. Havening’s in there. Some of Richard Banders stuff’s in there. And there’s some hypnosis in there.

52:26 To get you to be able to be the best version of you and also to get rid of any of the baggage from the past, any negative stuff that you’re carrying about not being worthwhile or good enough or love being. Some people have got really harsh beliefs about love. They believe love is for losers. Love is not something I deserve. Love makes people unhappy, that sort of thing.

52:48 And maybe there’s some truth in that for them, but I don’t believe that’s the case anymore. Even once upon a time, I believe, these people in these relationships, they’re trapped. I’ve got my freedom. That was the story I told myself over and over again, happily commitment-phobic. And it was funny, actually.

53:10 I was with a friend of mine a few years ago. A couple of years ago, we were sitting, we were on vacation again in a pool, and we were both in happy relationships. And he told me, he goes, who would have thought? I said, no, who would have? We were bachelors happily not to be tied down.

53:28 However, I now have endless variety in the same person. My wife’s like a Mandelbrot set to me, that infinite fractal set of patterns. Wow, that’s fascinating. That’s because you also can see those things now. That’s right, because the perceptual filters have changed.

53:41 Yeah. Now, something you talk about in here, and something I talked about in one of my movies, you saw me crossing the finish line of the Iron Man race, but that whole movie is predicated on a very difficult year for me in New York City in 2001 where my girlfriend of four years left me. Now, she left me because I was a mess. And you talk a lot about, in this book, about you working on yourself in a relationship. And I think a lot of times it’s very easy in a relationship to point the finger and say, this person isn’t doing this, you don’t make me feel good, you don’t do this, and we forget our own ownership.

54:12 And I always say, I wasn’t ready at the time to have that relationship with that person. And sometimes they say, it’s not like you marry the person that’s perfect for you, you marry the person when you’re ready at this point. How do you explain to people that it’s important to constantly keep working on yourself? Because I think a lot of times, especially the stereotype Hollywood version, you get married happily ever after, you don’t think, oh, I got to keep working on myself.

54:39 Yeah, well, you know, I agree. I mean, years ago, I went to, actually, sorry, can we stop for a second? I’m gasping for a glass of water. Yes, get this man a glass of water. We’ll get where we’re going to bring water.

54:49 Thank you. Then I’ll pick up straight away on that. Yeah. Thanks. Maybe you’ll have another question.

54:54 No, I’ve been, I don’t know why I normally, I’m okay about this. You usually have a glass there. I don’t want it, don’t worry. It’s just right outside. I’ll get that there.

55:01 And then I want to talk about some havening in a bit. Yeah. I know Justin Bieber is a fan of havening as well, right? Yes, he’s just gone public with it, but loads of people have used this that I know, well-known people. I’ve demonstrated it to them, and they loved it.

55:17 But, yeah, Justin Bieber, his therapist talked mostly about it, and Hailey Baldwin, I believe, his girlfriend, she… Oh, his wife now, right? His wife, sorry, yes. Yeah, exactly. Thank you so much.

55:29 You’ve got a havening video that you link to in the book where there’s like a self-havening piece, but maybe we can get a little into more, into havening after we talk about… But if you want, right, what I’ll do is I’ll say, look, just try this, and we’ll do it together. Okay. I’ll explain, and if you’re watching at home, you can do it too. Yeah, let’s do that.

55:48 Then we should do it like that. Let’s do that, okay. Let’s talk about first working on yourself, and then I want to get into the havening. Or is that part of self-care? Yes, it’s absolutely part of self-care.

55:56 It is, okay. The question was about, you’ve got to be in a good place. So, yes, is the answer. In the study into happiness, they found that people that were… I’m sorry.

56:08 There we go. Yes. In the study into happiness where people who were happier were found to be married, they originally thought that marriage makes you happy, but eventually found that happier people tend to get married or be in a functional relationship. So, I talked about how my fears of, you know, my baggage about being hurt held me back, stopped me. And so, when I cleaned that up, that and all kinds of other stuff, using various techniques, or people my colleagues assisted me, I then found that I didn’t have this over-protection mechanism that was sabotaging.

56:48 And also, I didn’t bring all of my past, or the majority of my past patterns there, so I was in a space where there was… Basically, the space to have a relationship took place. So, I think that’s super important that, you know, we say that when you’re working on a goal, the goal’s working on you. And if your goal is to be, like right now, one of my goals is to be the best husband I can in the world. That was not me in the past.

57:15 It was all… It was, you know, selfish, somewhat narcissistic possibly, but certainly not as selfless as I am now with regards to my wife. It’s, I wake up in the morning, I want to make her happy. And that’s a wonderful feeling, actually. Wow, and that really contributes to a successful relationship.

57:32 I believe it does. And then also, you’re working on all of your baggage and all these things. So, most of us grow up with a strange view of relationships because we look at our parents, and most likely our parents don’t have the most functional relationship because it’s random, right? It is, and it isn’t. I would say, again, it depends how you look at this.

57:50 If you look at the divorce rates, you would say that, you know, we’re getting, we’re more troubled. But it also might be that we don’t have the same social pressures on getting divorced that we used to have years ago. There’s a whole load of other factors involved in this. And, yes, you’re right in as much as there is no perfect relationship, and yet it’s perfectly the way it is, the relationship. So, again, it’ll depend upon your perspective.

58:14 So, you know, if there’s not like a manual you can read on this, well, I’m hoping there is now, but there wasn’t, you know, when you were growing up, it wasn’t like, oh, I’ll go to relationship classes. Now, there is, there are lots of great relationship books and classes online and things like that, which undoubtedly can help, but ultimately it’s going to come down to you. And you are the expert on you. I don’t believe there’s a one-size-fits-all, but there are certain things that will hold true for most people.

58:38 And that’s not just stuff that I’ve written, but stuff that other people I’ve seen have put out there. And so I think that’s a good place to start. But also, you know, when you’re clear about what it is that you want in a person, and I don’t just mean how they look, that may be important to you, but also how they make you feel, how you feel around them and who you are around them. Because if they make you feel edgy, you’ll be a different person than if you feel relaxed.

59:04 Now, it’s not their job, I don’t believe it’s their job to make you happy because that’s your job. When you’re happy, you can make them happy. You know how it is when people are angry, they make everyone else around them angry. So start with you. And that’s an important distinction, to not expect your partner to make you happy because they can’t make you happy.

59:23 You have to make you happy. Yeah. I mean, that alone would probably cure half the relationship problems in the world. Yeah, you can make yourself happy in relation to what they’re doing. So, you know, I can be unhappy if someone’s criticizing me all the time, but then I can also choose to leave that or say to them, you know, that’s not working for me.

59:40 And, you know, it’s got to start with you. It’s that great phrase. It’s saying it’s Gandhi. Be the change you want to see in the world. And so I think if I want people around me to be happier, I’ve got to go there first.

59:52 Right. All right. Should we talk about this havening? I mean, if Justin Bieber’s doing it, he just had his seventh number one album, beating out Elvis Presley, I think, as far as the age. He just did Carpool Karaoke.

1:00:03 So it must, see, something’s working. So what is havening? And by the way, people can, if they get the book, there’s a code in there, they go to the website, which of course I did because I got the book. And there’s a video of you teaching this havening technique. Can you walk me through it?

1:00:17 Sure. Havening is very good at helping people with trauma, past upset, blocks, psychological blocks, and pain. And it was created by Ronald Rudin, who’s a remarkable doctor. He’s an MD. He’s a PhD in neuropharmacology.

1:00:36 He’s one of my dearest friends, and I worked with him in the early development of havening. And it’s a psychosensory therapy. Now, there’s a number of these right now. There’s the TFT, the tapping therapy, which is great. And there’s the EMDR therapy where you look up and move your eyes back and forth, which I’m not such a fan of for a number of reasons because this is alpha.

1:01:01 We want eyes side to side, which is delta. It also involves the touch of the side of your arms here, the palms of your hands, sometimes here as well. Now, when you touch here like this, if you do this, it feels nice. It’s soothing. Because when you were a baby, your mother held you like this, and she rocked you, and you are hardwired when you do this to produce more delta.

1:01:25 Okay, more delta waves in my brain. That’s correct. So should everybody join us right now and do this? If you’re watching at home, you want to do this, just do this for a moment and notice how soothing it feels. And the way this works is, and here some people find here is quite nice, but here is where I recommend people touch.

1:01:43 And keep it going, right? Keep it going, and eyes left to right, laterally, not up laterally. Don’t move my head, just move my eyes. That’s right, like that. So if you just stop for a moment, Brian, and if you want to try this at home, think about a traumatic event, something that upsets you.

1:02:01 You don’t have to tell me what it is. This is the great thing. Some people go, there’s nothing like that. I go, is there anything that blocks you? Oh yeah, I feel blocked around relationships.

1:02:08 Well, think about that and visualise what the block looks like. People usually say something like a mound of black or something like that. Okay. Dark. I got something.

1:02:19 You got something. So is it a trauma or is it a block? No, it’s a block. I got a trauma too I could go to, but it’s a block. It’s definitely a block.

1:02:24 It’s something that’s making me angry lately. Right. Now, with something like that, okay, here we go. I just need to check something. Okay.

1:02:32 If you’re feeling angry, because remember, the job of the emotions is to signal to you. So fear says be prepared. You’re about to step off the curb and the bus is coming. You need fear to pull you back. Anger is usually because one of our standards has been violated.

1:02:44 So someone’s rude to you and you say, hey, don’t talk to me like that. If the anger is at somebody else because they won’t change, that’s not necessarily a block. That’s somebody resisting you. If the anger is towards your own block because you go, I just keep making the same stupid mistake, right? Then that’s your internal block.

1:03:01 So can I just ask, is it your internal block? Well, I mean, you know, if you really think about it properly, you know, this feeling has to be something inside of me that I’m not seeing correctly in the world, right? Anger is when you have an expectation and then the world gives you something else. So by definition, your expectation is wrong somehow, right? Yeah, I suppose so.

1:03:20 But also the anger, in this case, I think you should go with the trauma myself. Because the anger, the only reason I say this is because also the anger can be a powerful motivator. You know, it can be a highly creative emotion. You just don’t want to live in it. That’s all.

1:03:32 So in the past, I thought, you know, when I looked at the world weight loss and I saw these weight loss clubs with less than 10% success rate and, you know, people gaining more weight after they left and before they went there, I made me mad because I realized they were selling them low-fat chemical rubbish. And that made me mad enough to start my own system. And it was highly creative. Yeah? As long as you don’t live in that state.

1:03:53 I agree. I think anger is super important. I mean, anybody that ever did anything great in this world had to be angry at some point and think, I can do it, I’m going to do it even though they say I can’t do it. But you don’t want to live there because that’s not… That’s not healthy.

1:04:05 That’s not healthy. So even the chemistry of it could poison you over time. Right, right. So use it to make a decision and then stick with that decision and do it for a positive reason. And compel you to carry on your work through.

1:04:17 So I’m going back to the trauma. You’re going to go with the trauma. You’ve got something to traumatize you. I do, yeah. I talked about it in my latest movie.

1:04:22 I’m going to send you a link. Okay. So when you think about that, on a scale of 1 to 10, how upsetting is it? Well, look, I’ve been thinking a lot about it recently. But it’s still changed my…

1:04:32 It tainted my life for a long point. So it’s probably 7 out of 10 or 8 out of 10. Okay, now here we go. So here’s the magic. You can do this at home as well.

1:04:40 So what I need you to do, Brian, is close your eyes and tune in to that trauma. 7 or 8 out of 10. Begin stroking the side of your arms like this. That’s it, a little higher. That’s it, great.

1:04:51 That’s it, good. And then clear your mind. Clear your mind completely. And imagine you and I walking together on a beach with each footstep that you take in the sand, count out loud from 1 to 20. 1, 2, 3, 4…

1:05:09 I’m walking on a beach with Paul McKeon. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. 19, 20. Now keep stroking the side of your arms and then keep your head still. Move your eyes to the left, eyes to the right.

1:05:36 Eyes to the left, eyes to the right. Eyes to the left, eyes to the right.

1:05:56 Eyes to the left, eyes to the right and then close your eyes and imagine we’re walking in a beautiful garden on a sunny day and with each footstep that you take in the grass count out loud from one to twenty. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. That’s right and then eyes to the left, eyes to the right, eyes laterally the left, eyes to the right, eyes to the left, eyes to the right, eyes to the left, eyes to the right, eyes to the left, eyes to the right, eyes to the left, eyes to the right and then close your eyes and take a deep breath and gently let it go and then open your eyes and come on back out.

1:07:05 Out. Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, when you think about that thing now, what’s the difference? What number is it now? I just don’t feel like I’m engaging with all that emotion anymore. Yeah. So what this- Feels like a 3.

1:07:18 About a 3. This delinks the thought from the feeling. So you’ll be able to remember that something bad happened, but you won’t be able to feel the same way. And the reason is because, just to be quite scientific for a minute, when you’re traumatized, 100 hertz wave travels from the thalamus and phosphorates what’s called the AMPA receptors. When you do this and you do the ISA left and right, you flood your brain with delta, and the delta dephosphates the AMPA receptors. So it creates a physical change in the landscape of the structure of the brain. And so this is hard science. It’s not, well, I think I feel better.

1:07:51 It’s measurable. And it’s become, as you mentioned, real popular, particularly we’ve been doing this with war veterans. Originally we did a study with King’s College here in London, and it was a military study, so it was classified, but it’s down declassified. And it was widened then to rape victims and bereavement cases, and people that have been through all sorts of very tough things- PTSD type things. Absolutely. This for me is the cure for PTSD. And if there is one right now, for me, this is the best thing on the planet to use.

1:08:24 And you do it also intensely, where you do the havening on someone, and that kicks it up a notch. Yeah, I tend to, I like to do it, again, myself upon a person, whereas this, this is very much available on the mainstream. It’s fine for it to be on the internet or on television. Some of the stuff we do is people involved in getting very upset before they get better. But we’re talking about people that have had the most horrendous experiences, gang rape, paramedics or war veterans, you know, have seen horrendous stuff. And they may still be physically okay, but psychologically they’re very scarred. And one of the reasons I like this is it works. It works very quickly and powerfully. In fact, when we first started demonstrating this to people, particularly to psychiatrists, they would say, this can’t be, you know, but that’s because if all you have is a hammer, everything’s a nail.

1:09:14 So they are looking at it as people who medicate. And I see PTSD as a psychological issue, rather than a medical issue. I did feel a little tense there. When I was doing this and doing this, I felt like something was kind of welling up, even though I was technically in a garden and I was like touch, you know, comforting myself, but I felt a little bit of a heightening of something which was counterintuitive. Well, you know, it’s understandable. If you’re thinking, first of all, what we did was we summoned the upset to get the amygdala interested. And then there we go and changed the pattern. So it’s not uncommon for people to, by the way, often when I’m doing this, because when it was being done to me, I thought this is never going to work. And then suddenly, wow, I don’t feel the thought and the feeling of delinked. And I don’t feel upset anymore.

1:10:04 Also, this is deceptively simple. People go, well, really, so just sit and do this. This is going to make me feel better. Yes. So people should just try what we were doing there just to give yourself a taste of that’s going on. The 20 is just allowing you to kind of methodically go through this.

1:10:21 And also, I’m doing it in a way that’s relaxing, enjoyable. I mean, things like what I might do is say, if you weren’t doing it, if I was doing it to you, I’d ask you if you’ve got a dog, imagine you’re stroking your dog. Very resting, relaxing, wonderful thing, stroke your dog. Or it might be something else you enjoy. It could be, I might ask you about a time you laughed really hard. What I’m doing is I’m changing your state.

1:10:42 But at the same time, this is flooding your brain with Delta, which is actually making the physiological change that we want. Did it frustrate you in your career when people would dismiss a lot of these techniques in NLP and then you knew they were working? Because I remember watching your old TV shows where you would literally get someone who was scared of heights. I remember one of your TV shows and you brought her and you’re like, OK, before you go to the edge, I want you to get you had a like circulating these warm emotions.

1:11:08 You just spin the feeling. Yeah, spin the feeling. And then all of a sudden it works. I mean, was it hard for you when people were like, yes, I mean, I think throughout my life, you know, we’ve I’ve definitely encountered scepticism, sometimes not very benevolently. And that goes with the turf.

1:11:26 If you’re going to create a dramatic change in thinking, if you’re going to be disruptor, as it were, then that’s part of the price you pay is people will question it. Now, I don’t mind asking me questions and being sceptical. I think they should be because once people have put it through their own null set hypothesis, they will be convinced because I’m like, I’m very sceptical. Once I’m convinced, though, then then I use that conviction, if you like, to go out into the world and spread the word.

1:11:54 So I don’t mind if people are benevolently sceptical at all. In fact, we should be. We shouldn’t just blindly believe things. Yeah. Interesting how you’re talking about PTSD people.

1:12:02 I mean, I’ve had people in from this group in America called MAPS, and they’re using MDMA with PTSD victims, but they’re doing a similar process where they’re trying to get someone to revisit the memory and separate the emotion from the memory so they can process what happened. They never get to process it because every time they go near it, there’s so much emotion around it that it immediately puts them into this this kind of tension. Well, in NLP jargon, we would say collapsed anchors.

1:12:29 So you think about something that’s really pleasurable and relaxing. Then you think about the stressor and you put them together. Now, this has to be stronger than this. Otherwise, this contaminates this. So you got to make sure that the positive state is stronger than the negative state.

1:12:43 Right. And so I don’t know of this research, but I know people doing this kind of stuff, you know, doing things where they take positive states to desensitize negative ones. Let’s talk about disagreement. Another one of the seven points here. And then you had this heart math technique as well.

1:12:57 But you said disagreement is unavoidable in any relationship. How should we deal with disagreement? How do you deal with disagreement? Well, I treat it from the position of conflict resolution, which is always about unmet needs. And so we always see the couple that’s fighting and we always know they’re not actually fighting over the dinner bill, the laundry.

1:13:16 Like you were saying earlier, there’s all there’s a lot of time something else that they’re actually fighting. Yeah, it could be that, you know, you pay too much attention to that other person. Yeah. And and and actually, as you say, it then comes out sideways and they argue about something else. It’s how you disagree is important.

1:13:31 I mentioned earlier, my wife has a great thing, which is let’s agree to disagree unless there is something we’re fundamentally in disagreement about, which might have a problem for us, in which case we need to try and talk about it in a it’s hard if your your emotions are heightened, you might say and do things you you didn’t mean to. And so one of the things I find really interesting is I like Gandhi’s negotiating strategy. So he’s has to negotiate to bring about the end of the British Empire, essentially, with the British, who, you know, are in his land and think that it’s a good job.

1:14:03 They’re there, you know, we’re we’re you know, we’re looking after chaps. And so what he would do is he would step out of himself and step into the to the negotiator and see the world through. Oh, I see. They actually think that they’re doing good for us. They need to step into a third position and see the conversation from another position.

1:14:21 So I think if you look at, say, the law of requisite variety, which is very simple, the part of a system that has the most flexibility ends up in control. That’s in control of a political party, a family corporation, etc. So that doesn’t mean the person that the most malleable, it’s the person who got the most ways of thinking and communicating. So if you’ve got seven ways of resisting you, I need eight ways of persuading you. And so being able often to step outside your usual mindset and see things from a different perspective is highly useful.

1:14:56 And, you know, if I like Robert Dilt’s work in modeling Walt Disney, he would he had three perspectives. The dreamer, he dream up all these guys. Wow, these ideas. They need to step out and become the realist. Well, you know, sorry, the critic, the dream of the critic, the critic.

1:15:13 He got this will never work. People won’t laugh at that. People won’t enjoy an error and tear it to shreds. And what was left? He’d realistically go, well, if it is going to work, we’ll need that and that and that.

1:15:22 We’ll need to do it in this in this way. So a lot of people critique themselves whilst they’re in mid performance. Now, if something’s going horribly wrong, yes. But otherwise, no, wait till afterwards. You know, a lot of people try and do that as they’re writing, they’re critiquing as they’re going on.

1:15:35 Get it down is what I do and then critique it afterwards. So in disagreement, we know that usually there’s an unmet need. And the best way to resolve it is to is to just ask the person, hey, what’s your unmet need here? Particularly if they’ve gone to the level of personal criticism. You know, it’s so easy to take it all personally rather than just see that the person is they’re coming from a place of defensiveness of upset or something like that.

1:16:02 And you mentioned heart math. Now, this is used by every division of the American military. And this is a really simple technique for interrupting overwhelm, emotional overwhelm. So the heart is like a second brain. Right. Yeah, there’s a lot of studies with that, right?

1:16:16 Shows about the same number of communication connections. So say you’re an emotional overwhelm, you’re feeling bad or something like that. So put your hand here. OK, any hand will do any hand will do and breathe. So often people when they say they stop breathing, breathe and then let it go.

1:16:32 And then this is the way I do it. Think about something that makes you feel good. Think about who do you love or who loves you and hold your attention here.

1:16:49 Then think about what would I like to have happen in my life? Would you like to have happened? Yes, something basically ask yourself a power question. Something like, who do I love? Who loves me?

1:16:59 What’s something I remember that makes me feel good? What could happen that would make me feel good? OK, something in the future that could happen. OK, so in order to answer that, you have to think about it. You have to go into it.

1:17:08 So it forces you to go into it, forces you to live it and to live it. OK, that’s it. Yeah. But with your hand here. So you’re emphasizing the heart here and you’re changing your state.

1:17:17 So this is different to this. Now, touching yourself changes your state. It does. And particularly where you touch yourself. So here produces delta.

1:17:26 This produces other changes because, as you say, it draws your attention here. The breathing interrupts the stress state. And then think about something positive, changes your perspective. And then from that place, you might then want to make a decision rather than in a fight or flight unless it’s an emergency. Right. And rarely do we get in tune with our hearts, right?

1:17:46 It’s usually fear, logic. He did this and that, she did this and that and that. And just like get back to your heart, feel the love, think about something fortunate in the future and make that decision from your heart. Yeah, I used to be able to have an argument with somebody on Friday afternoon and make it last all weekend. I said, hey, should I have a fucking show or something?

1:18:04 You know, and I could literally and I should. I’m that. How dare they speak to me. And that is a case of my brain running me, not me running my brain. So now if I find myself, you know, something happened the other day.

1:18:15 I’ll hang on. I could really work myself up about this. I need to do something about it. Let’s make a note. Right. Just get myself calm.

1:18:26 Yeah, nobody’s died. This is just a business problem. And there’ll be a solution. It might not be what I want, but I’m not going to ruin my entire weekend because of this. Bam.

1:18:36 Put it in the Monday morning, sent the email, had a conversation and, you know, we’ll see how it works out. But I could in the old days, that would have been all weekend. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of my mentors always says in the cosmos of time, your life is nothing more than a fart in the wind.

1:18:52 And he says, so none of the decisions you ever will make will ever really make any difference. So we all get so, so caught up in one decision. But in the course of your lifetime, it’s they’re almost meaningless. So don’t get caught up in that. Well, it’s the there was that study done a few years ago where people went into old people’s homes and the researchers did.

1:19:11 And they they asked people, what do you wish you’d done more of or less of? And, you know, most of the people said, I wish I’d worried less. Right. And when I’ve I’ve done a process where I go out to near the end of my life and I look back and I ask myself, what do I wish I’d done more of or less of? And when I first did this, I went, which I’d loved more after more, been less competitive with everyone else.

1:19:34 Don’t wish I had more money in the bank. I actually, wow, I’m missing out on some of the real joy. And if I do that now, I do a different process. I go out to the end of my life near the end, assuming I’ve had a fantastic life. It’s been amazing.

1:19:50 And I asked myself, what made it amazing? And then the answers are for me, the love of my wife and my family and having, you know, being in good health, living life on my own terms, you know, taking joy in things rather than just it being an endless pleasure. Pleasure quest. It’s all about happiness and then having made a difference. Right. That’s a really good exercise for someone to do, because then that shows you what’s important today.

1:20:19 Yeah. And your decisions today make they will change based on those new goals. Yes. Talk about pleasure and happiness because it’s part of the book as well, where you’re saying a lot of people get into relationships for pleasure. You know, we got all the dating apps these days, the hookup apps.

1:20:34 Yeah. But you’re saying that that’s not going to make you happy. How can you actually explain that to someone? How could you explain that to the 20 year ago Paul McKenna or 10 year ago? Well, I’m not sure he would have listened.

1:20:46 But it depends if I’d shown up and said I’m from the future, and I would go, OK, bring it on, you know. But if somebody say older than wiser than me, it depends who it was actually. Yeah. The message came from the difference for me between happiness and pleasure. Pleasure is a glass of champagne, a bubble bath.

1:21:04 You know, it’s it feels nice, doesn’t it? But if all we do is chase chase pleasure all the day, we like a mouse on a wheel. Yeah. Happiness is everything else is the backdrop is the is the landscape of of our life. And what’s interesting to me is when research has been done into happiness lottery winners after they won the lottery for about a year, they’re a lot happier.

1:21:27 And then they’re pretty much back where they were before they won. And and so a lot of times they spend all the money as well. Well, and indeed, or it’s amplified some negative traits. So say they they drink too much, they move up from beer to high class, you know, bourbon or something. And so, yes, it’s a very large proportion of people that come into money very quickly.

1:21:47 Suddenly, a lot of money like lottery winners, you know, inheritance, those sort of things within a year have lost most of it. Right. And so much are more unhappy because relatives have wanted it and taken it. And now they’ve lost all that money. And yeah, and it’s because they haven’t learned to be rich on the inside.

1:22:01 They haven’t altered their thermostat. Yeah, it’s very interesting. I watched the program Oprah Winfrey did a number of years ago where this man on the street made somebody made a movie about this. They’re giving this guy on the street hundred thousand bucks. And within a couple of months, he’d blown it right.

1:22:15 And being the brilliant interviewer that Oprah is, she sat him on the couch and went, so how does this come about? Basically came down to he didn’t feel comfortable with this. It was a pressure. And he just subconsciously had to get rid of it and ended up on the streets again. So I think a lot of this is changing yourself on the inside is, you know, I mentioned this earlier, you change, the world changes.

1:22:37 And, you know, you’re not going to be out of control. Every single thing that ever happens to you. I know I’ve tried. And so what you can do, though, is you can have a big say in how you think and feel about it. You know, one of the great researchers in distress, Dr.

1:22:51 Hans Salier, said it’s not what happens to us, but how we choose to perceive it. And so, for example, resilience, as I talked about earlier, is that it’s not just toughing it out, it’s also being flexible in the way that we view problems, challenges. And so it’s only right something bad happens to us. We should feel upset. But whether we choose to stay in that or move into a resourceful place.

1:23:16 I mean, I remember years ago with a group of people and something bad had happened and everyone was getting upset and I made a joke and somebody said, oh, come on. How are we ever going to solve this? If you’re making jokes? I said, I think it’s the only way. If we actually step outside, right now, we’ve all gone into survival.

1:23:30 We’re all freaking out here. We need to think creatively. We need to get out of the box and we need to think. What would it be like when we solve this? We need to be thinking outside of our normal mindset.

1:23:38 Some people say happiness comes from meaning and obviously not from pleasure. And sometimes meaning can be difficult. Sometimes that requires sacrifices. I guess you want to look at your relationship as something that has meaning ultimately. I guess, like you said, shared values, going somewhere together, finding that fulfillment in the person and be careful if it’s just about pleasure, right?

1:24:01 Yes, I think you summed up better than I have there, actually. Absolutely. It has to have meaning. I think one of my favorite quotes is from Victor Frankel, the psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz wrote Man’s Search for Meaning. And he famously said, purpose is the cornerstone of good mental health.

1:24:20 And so your life having meaning or you having a purpose. By the way, that purpose doesn’t have to be saving the world. It can just be to be a great husband or wife. It can be to be somebody who is kind. That’s another thing I love.

1:24:34 And I’m going to do two quotes in a row now. One of my other favorites is the Dalai Lama. Kindness is my religion. Strong, super strong. How do people know if they’re sabotaging themselves?

1:24:46 Or if they’re repeating a pattern because they don’t think they’re worthy of something? I mean, we’ve all seen someone in that relationship, but it’s very hard to tell if we’re in that relationship. Well, I would say you’ve got to look at the output. Look at the results you’re getting. So basically, if your life is working, that’s great.

1:25:04 But if there’s some aspect of it that isn’t, then go look at that. And for me, it was a friend of mine did this process. We said, are you an owner or a victim? And I went, well, it’s just talk about business. Good and bad things happen.

1:25:19 It’s, yeah, I decided to do business with these people and so I will accept that’s my responsibility. But when it came to relationships, I was happy to blame everyone else and go, oh, I’ve just been unlucky and stuff like that. And then I caught myself doing it and went, oh, yeah. If someone else had said that to me, I’d go, no, no, no, no, let’s see your part in it. You’re saying it takes one to tango.

1:25:46 So that’s how you do it, is you go, if you are not in a functional relationship or you repeat the same patterns again, you just happen to find the same sort of person who treats you in the same way, then I’d say it starts with you. It doesn’t mean it’s your fault, it’s not your fault. It’s your responsibility, right? So if your life is not the way you want, it’s not your fault, but it’s definitely your responsibility to go change it. A lot of people are in the fear of losing a relationship.

1:26:12 You talk about this in the book. How do you talk to people about that? Because some people think I never, I’ll never get married again. I’ll never find someone again. And so a lot of times almost just that statement and that thought means you’re willing to accept things that are maybe not ideal.

1:26:29 How do people think about that? Well, a lot of people, they don’t. They literally settle for second best and they lead a mediocre life. And I feel sad for them because they’ve never dared to step outside their comfort zone. They’re in a state of learned helplessness.

1:26:48 And there was that story of the bear in Denver Zoo that walked around 20 feet by 20 feet around the cage and eventually one day they take the cage and they built a whole enclosure with rocks and a waterfall and trees. And they put the cage down like that and they take the cage away and the bear still walks 20 feet by 20 feet and 20 feet. And the bear died. So sadly. So what I say is if you are, risk is the currency of the gods, right?

1:27:15 You need to step out of your comfort zone but you have to do something stupid. You don’t have to put yourself in harm’s way. I’m not suggesting that. I remember lovely Anita Roddick said to me, I’ve never met a really successful business person who takes risks. They take educated, calculated risks.

1:27:33 And so in the same way that you don’t do your own brain surgery, if you want somebody to help you get over your self-sabotage, get an expert. And I’ve recorded a series of audio techniques and indeed a trance. The trance definitely will help you with that. But if I wanted to make a change in my life, I would find out who’s the expert on this and go see them. And say either do it to me or teach me how to do it.

1:27:59 I mean, I believe in, if you give a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man a fish, he eats for life. So this is very much a teach a person to fish. And the trance, that sounds really, that sounds creepy Paul. What happens in the trance? What’s the plan?

1:28:13 Are you trying to access my subconscious or something? So, okay, I’ll tell you how it works, bro. So say for example, you have a self-sabotage element, right? How many of us have that? I think a lot of people have it to some degree or another.

1:28:28 So part of you wants to get into a relationship. Part of you that’s been hurt, you don’t want that to happen again. So as soon as you find yourself falling for another person, you jump in and you sabotage, you make it all go wrong. You do something stupid and you go, why the hell would I do that? Right, I want everyone to raise their hand if they’ve ever been in that relationship.

1:28:44 Because we’ve all been going out with someone and everything seems like it’s fine and then they do something just crazy. And you’re like, what’s wrong with you? You know I’m gonna react horribly to this and this doesn’t seem like it’s in your nature and yet that’s how you break up with them. We’ve all seen that, I think. So how you do, so how that works is, remember the self-saboteur has a positive intent, right?

1:29:05 As all dysfunctional behaviors do. At some level they’ve got a positive intent. So phobia, you know, I have an irrational fear when I see a dog or a dentist or getting on a plane, it’s because once I had a bad experience with that so the unconscious mind is trying to over protect us by creating a massive fight or flight response. Now, when it comes to relationships and the self-sabotage, let’s assume that the self-sabotage part has a positive intent but it can find other ways to keep you safe without turning you into an asshole and screwing the relationship up.

1:29:36 So the best way to do that is go off into a trance, let a hypnotist like me talk to your subconscious mind because I speak fluent subconscious and ask it to make those changes and I make it ecologically so that you keep all of your ability to protect yourself but you don’t over protect yourself and sabotage your relationships. Okay, powerful stuff. Look, you leave everybody here with this 21-day relationship and richer, not to spoil it because they should get the book for that and the trance as well.

1:30:04 But like, what is this about? This is about you trying to kind of have a relationship hygiene or do something every day to check up on your relationship. Say I’ve been married for 20 years and I bring this home to my wife and say, well, guess what, we’re gonna do the 21 relationship richer. First of all, she’s gonna be like, well, you like Paul McKenna. I don’t like Paul McKenna.

1:30:21 But like, how can you get your partner to buy in on this? Or is this for you first? It’s for you. That’s what’s important, right? You shouldn’t be projecting this stuff onto the other person.

1:30:28 No, no. Take ownership. Yeah, take ownership. When you change, the dynamic will change but with regards to the journal at the back, what gets measured gets done, right? So if you’ve got to report to somebody you’re gonna do something, you’re far more likely to do it.

1:30:43 And in the same way, if you’ve got a way of measuring, if you’re doing these, if you’re taking time to do self-care, if you are focusing on the quality of your communication, things like this, then it’s gonna get done. And also, you’ll feel a sense of momentum after a while and it’ll be easier to do it than not do it. And so very often I see people go, like particularly at the beginning of the year, they set these massive goals. It’s a great idea to have big vision but they set themselves goals that are too big for them to achieve and so they give up fairly early on.

1:31:12 Whereas if they just did something every day to move them closer to what it is they want, they’d be more likely to achieve it. Okay, and so you ask people just to ask themselves, like, how am I communicating today? What am I doing? What am I learning? Just basic kind of just checking in with yourself.

1:31:26 Yes. I love that question you said in the beginning which is the simple only question you ever need to ask which is, what do you want from me? Is that what you said? What do you need from you? What do you need from me?

1:31:36 What do you need from me? And when I asked my wife that. Sounds so simple but it’s not. Well, I’d never done this before and I’d been reading about conflict resolution and unmet needs and so I sat her down. I said, darling, I need to ask you something.

1:31:47 She said, what’s that? I went, what do you need from me? And she looked at me and went, why do you ask? I went, I just, I need to know. And she came out with a whole load of things.

1:31:55 Some of it was, I don’t need you to continue doing that but it was simple stuff like, I really want you to hold my hand. You know, we’re walking down, I said, yeah, I get it. It’s, you know, for whatever reason, I didn’t do that. Maybe I’m not so touchy-feely or something but I got that that was important to her and some of it was simple stuff like, you know, she wants some, the recycling stuff for these particular bags. Personally, I don’t believe the end of the world will come if I put the plastic in one of that but yeah, hey, it’s important to her but I’m gonna do it.

1:32:24 Do you think we’re all sitting on a bunch of these quick wins that we could actually get and make our relationships better if we just communicate? Oh, I know we are. I mean, if you look at the scientific research around the little things that make the big difference, you know, time and time again, it comes back to these simple things about, you know, about, for example, just paying attention to somebody, giving them your state of being, your presence, is much more than looking all over the place.

1:32:48 You know, I mean, nowadays, when someone sits down, they put their smartphone there and they’re talking to you but they’re looking at that all the time, you’re just, you’re somewhat invalidated by that. Simple little things like that are the difference that makes the difference. Yeah, and like, that’s another thing you talk about is just paying attention to people and giving them your attention. Yeah. Which these days is a big thing.

1:33:05 Yeah, that’s right. Well, again, you know, kids think it’s all about a keyboard and it’s not actually connecting. Yeah. And, you know, I think that we are going through some many, many positive changes in the world right now but also there’s a few challenges too. All right, I’m giving everybody a call to action right now.

1:33:20 If you’re watching this or listening to this, pull out your phone and take the top person on your texting that’s your closest relationship and say, what do you need from me? Or go home and ask him tonight. Yeah. And then I think that would start a great discussion and they might be like, well, I’d happen. Paul McKenna told me and go into this because I think that’s a great question.

1:33:35 Thank you. I’m gonna ask my wife tonight. She’s probably watching me right now and she probably has a list of 20 things. She might say a new Louis Vuitton bag or, you know. Like if that would make her happy, then that’s fine.

1:33:47 But, you know, I’m sure there’s a bunch of things in there that are quick wins for both of us that we just never talk about and it puts strain on our relationship. Well, you know, also, Brian, things like when I brought my wife a cup of tea for the first time in bed, she was, she went, thank you so much. I went, cup of tea, she went, yeah, but you went downstairs, you made it. She fed the dog. That’s really sweet of you.

1:34:08 You thought about me. I went, yeah, I do, yeah. And so I see, yeah. My wife likes that too. And I had the same reaction.

1:34:17 Like, why does it matter? You could have made the same tea in about 45 seconds but because I do it, it’s special. Yes. And I gotta pay attention to that more. Okay.

1:34:27 Let me ask you a couple questions, Paul. If I would ask, you know, your wife and some of your best friends, what is Paul’s superpower? How does this man do what he does? What would they tell me? What is it?

1:34:38 I mean, very productive. Like, is this restlessness that does this or do you just feel like my time is precious on earth or do you’re like, oh, I just wanna do something new? It’s all of the above. I mean, I’m an all or nothing guy. You know, I’m either in or I’m out, you know.

1:34:53 And if I’m in, I am fully into it. And so that’s why I’m cautious about committing now to things unless I’m absolutely certain I wanna do it. But I suppose it’s a sort of relentlessness, a tenacity. People have told me that recently and said, your tenacity, you know, I’ve been working with somebody doing a demonstration and it ain’t going the way I want. And I just carry on and carry on.

1:35:16 It’s the Richard Bandler thing of, you’re getting better or one of us is gonna die trying. And so I think that’s a tenacity. Plus the other thing, somebody asked me this earlier today, said, why are you exceptional at what you do? And I said, well, you know, I think that had I gone into the business of writing a garden furniture, I’d wanna be the best garden furniture maker in the world. That’s just who I am.

1:35:37 And so part of it is it’s a function of who I am. And so the other thing is as well as I have a natural affinity with this, like some people do with computer technology. I don’t, but you know, I show computer to one of my friends, I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s done. Whereas show me a human being, I talk to them, I go, ah, I see it. I build a hologram around them where they’re putting their pictures, how they’re organizing their thinking.

1:36:02 And I just see it all and I can see quite easily. Change. And so that’s something I wouldn’t say I’ve always had, but I’ve developed a lot in recent years. And it’s just a relentless kind of curiosity and fascination with people. And also, I’m perfectionist.

1:36:18 I drive everyone crazy. It’s like, oh, all right. And you know, the moment when you hit the return key and send that to the publishers is it’s liberating, but it’s also, you know, it’s done now. I can’t pull it back, you know. But so yes, I do have a busy mind.

1:36:33 I do like, I love, I love what I do. My job is great. I actually, I think that’s that, you know, saying find something you love to do, you never work again. That’s true for me, definitely. Even when you’re writing a book, which I’ve been told is the loneliest process in the world and the most painful thing to do, you still enjoy it.

1:36:50 I do, although I work with an editor. So what I do too, think my creative process is this. I watched Paul McCartney being interviewed years ago. Oh, he’d written a ballet. And they said, so how do you write a ballet?

1:37:01 Sitting there in the theater, he goes, well, you know, I’m sitting here on an opening night. I imagine the curtain goes up. What I see, what I hear. So I go off into the future and I hold the book. And at first, all I get is sort of abstract images.

1:37:15 I’ll get a feel for it. I’ll go like, I can see diagrams or it’s the tone of it is dynamic and uplifting. Or this is more bedside doctor. Or this is kind of, hey, it’s all gonna be all right. And so I get a sense of the tone of it to begin with.

1:37:29 And then it becomes richer and richer. And as I get closer to the time I’m finishing, I really begin to see it very vividly. Then I usually have a little crisis about three quarters of the way through. Or I can’t see the wood for the trees. And I go, this is garbage.

1:37:44 No one’s gonna read this. And I didn’t notice, but my wife reminded me, she said, no, you do this every time. And then when I get to the end, I’m just in a place where I go, I have no idea. And I give it to a bunch of people who I know are gonna be honest with me. Sometimes a little too honest.

1:37:59 And if the majority of them come back and go, it’s good, it’s good. As they did with this, they come back, this is brilliant. Then I get super excited. And then I’m unstoppable in my quest to go promote it, talk about it, and get the message out. It’s a good process.

1:38:15 It reminds me of the process when we make films around here. Yeah, at about three quarters too, I’m like, this is such a piece of garbage and it’s never gonna work. And my wife says, you always are like this. No, I’m not. And then at the end, she’s like, it’s always fine in the end.

1:38:28 And it always is somehow fine in the end. You mentioned social media these days. How much does the internet and mobile devices and everything change the way relationships are today? And are you worried about this? We hear about depression and mental illness.

1:38:44 We talk about eating disorders for women. They’re for men as well, and body shaming and all that stuff. Is this getting worse? I know you don’t have a mobile phone because you don’t trust yourself around it. You don’t wanna…

1:38:56 I know everyone jokes me. Paul, I got since I first moved to England in the late 90s. Yeah, this is… Well, it’s a… Hold that up.

1:39:02 It’s a very pretty phone. It’s a Vertu. They know how to make these. But I bought one about 10 years ago when this was hot. This was a very…

1:39:09 The time was the most expensive phone in the world. And, you know, living in Los Angeles… Of course it was, Paul. Yeah. No, but I was living in Los Angeles and it’s a status-driven town.

1:39:16 People would get their new iPhone out and I’d go, I’ll match you and raise you and plonk that on the table. And the great thing about this is, because with my ADHD, if I had a smartphone, I’d just be on it all the time. Do you really have ADHD? Is that a thing? Well, it’s not necessarily a disorder, right?

1:39:34 Tom Hartman, who’s an expert in ADHD, explained to me that he thinks there’s a development of the species. That, you know, once upon a time, we had three, then four TV channels to watch. Now we’ve got four million. And in one of the research studies into the kids that apparently see everything but watch nothing, that’s not true. What they do is they see everything and surf through it.

1:39:54 Find something they like, then they concentrate. So I see it as an adaptation of the species. However, it can be somewhat annoying for people around you if your attention is going into several things simultaneously. Well, that’s another day at the office, so maybe, I don’t know, no problem with that. And, you know, you can still function.

1:40:12 F. Scott Fitzgerald, who says, an artist is somebody who can hold two opposing views simultaneously and still function. So, I mean, just the two. I mean, let’s get going here, let’s have four or five. So with a smartphone, yeah, I’d be on it all the time.

1:40:26 Whereas with something like this, all it does, and people go, all it does? I say, yeah, all it does is make calls and text, no voicemail, even. Okay, but the texting is hard because you’ve got to deal with the numbers. Oh, yeah, you’ve got to deal with that. Right, the old Nokia style.

1:40:41 Yeah, that’s right, you know, so I’ll probably have arthritis in a few years, but. Except it’s a virtue. Right, okay. So the ADHD is just, I spoke with someone about this and he’s in the autism space. And he said, people look at this at this disorder.

1:40:54 But he said, you know, in history, there were autistic people, and they were the ones that did this organization over here. They figured out this new basket weaving technique because that’s all they focused on. And there was a place for these people. Yeah, so I think there still is. You know, the idiot Savant is still with us.

1:41:12 The idea is to be more Savant than idiot, really. Well, that’s the way I look at it. You know, I’d rather be that than them. But, you know, there’s times I’ve been both. And so.

1:41:23 Do you have a new book on your mind or is this a time where you just kind of not think about new books right now? I don’t have a new book on fact. I’m just at the end of the contract. So technically, this is my last book unless I, I’ve got to come up with, you know, four more titles to do a deal. And I’ve probably come up and wanted a deal.

1:41:40 But I usually come up with a bunch. And if I get excited about it, then, and a publisher does, then we go do it. But the nature of publishing has changed dramatically. And the genre that I’m in, nonfiction, people want to watch it online. They can just go online and read about a lot of these, not my book, but similar stuff for free.

1:42:03 Or they want someone to explain it. So online courses, I believe, are gonna become a new genre. I’ve just recorded one with Mindvalley. And, you know, instead of it being somebody talking to camera for ages, it’s 21, 15 minute lessons. And it’s not just somebody talking.

1:42:18 It’s not just me talking. I’m doing it to you down the barrel of the lens. And so I see that as an evolution. Books are always gonna be with us in paper or electronic form. But the way that we gather information now, because a lot of the information that’s here, here has only been here in recent years, because we’re exponentially increasing the information that we have.

1:42:39 And as we know, that technological development is the throttle on the economy now. The way it was years ago, it was the country’s physical resources, in which case Russia would be the richest country. But now computers which are made from sand are powered by the ideas, or empowered by the ideas that go into them, by the software that’s created. And where does that come from? And it has to, some of it’s from other computers, but essentially it’s from the supercomputer that is the human mind.

1:43:05 So we’re about to go through a massive evolutionary jump. I mean, if you’ve read Ray Kurzweil’s excellent book about the singularity being here. 2030s apparently. Well, yeah, and people have predicted 2012, 2030, his math is better than mine, I’m sure. But yes, we are about to go through a massive evolutionary jump, from which we can never return.

1:43:25 But when you think about all the amazing things that are going on right now, you’ve got nanotechnology, you’ve got gene therapy, you’ve got stem cells, which are gonna change medicine forever. But also, you’ve got the marriage of cyber technology and human physiology, which will take place, and bam, you have some sort of terminal, whereby you input 25 languages into your brain, or you have all sorts of other experiences that you might want to have that you’ve never had, and that shapes you. And indeed, the stuff that you can download from here into a computer, I imagine many of those things will be good.

1:43:56 Are you gonna do it? You know, Elon Musk has this company Neuralink, where they can stick the things right into your head. Are you prepared to do that? Well, I’m not sure I’d wanna stick some of Elon Musk’s things in my head. Apparently a robot sticks these things in the perfect place, they miss your brain apparently, and then it Neuralinks you up.

1:44:12 Because right now, the bandwidth, well, with your phone, you have even a lower bandwidth than the rest of us. But I mean, but this is slow, but imagine if someone could get into Paul McKenna’s head, which is what this could happen. Well, yeah, I mean, the practical applications of something like that would be, we would want to necessarily see the world through the eyes of a genius, but we wouldn’t wanna take on all their baggage too. So you might just want to have it isolated with regard to mathematics, or physics, or general creativity, something like that.

1:44:45 So it’d be fantastic if I could somehow download my ability to be able to give people change through the things that I’ve developed, some of them consciously, some of them unconsciously. Yeah, so if there was a program whereby you could download super-therapist into your head and do it, that would make the world a better place, I would think. It’s coming, I think. What about the world? Do you worry about, we got Brexit here, we have politics in America, we have trade wars.

1:45:18 Do you worry about that stuff? Well, I think that, yeah, some of the direction in which the politics is going, which is very emotive, rather than the democratic process of telling people, this is who I am, this is what I stand for, is changing. So because of the way social media is being influenced and profiling and psychographics, you can be all things to all people, and messaging has become more emotive. Hence, people have. So it’s the end of the world if we Brexit, it’s the end of the world if we stay.

1:45:47 Maybe neither’s true. What I think about the future is, the Chinese call this age we’re in right now Weiqi, two symbols, danger and opportunity. And for me, that feels very real, that we are in a time when things are dangerous, but there is immense opportunity. I’m an optimist, I think it’s gonna be okay. What scares you, if anything?

1:46:08 What scares me? I suppose, the thought of people, I love something bad happening to them, something like that, I don’t dwell upon it, but I’m aware that that could happen, I’ve lost a number of friends in the last few years. And it’s tough, it’s really, particularly if they’re young, and it feels like life was just taken away from them, something like that, I suppose. I don’t really think about it very much. There’s, I don’t really get, it’s funny, I can work myself up about something, I can be anxious about a stupid thing, I can go, here we go, I can buy a tune on iTunes, and then, with my sort of compulsive nature, I can go, I bought that, that’s $1.25, am I gonna play it that much?

1:46:53 Maybe I will, maybe I won’t, maybe I just wasted $1.25, and then, I’ll go and make a $10,000 decision when I think about it. So, sometimes I can wind myself up about the minutiae, or I can just go, am I sitting correctly in this chair? It’s the shirt, it’s just right. So, I can get caught up in the little things, and in some ways, that’s a bit of a meditation, the obsessive compulsive stuff. But there’s nothing really that, I’m not terribly frightened about the future.

1:47:21 I think there’s gonna be good and bad things happen in it, but I’m not overly concerned. Did you revisit your parents’ relationship when doing this book? I did before, actually. I did a gestalt process where I was hypnotized to look at the world through my mother’s perspective and my father’s, and I then understood the dynamic of their relationship. And this was about 20 years ago.

1:47:45 And then I wanted to understand more and more how it was, and then suddenly I got the idea of, ah, we watch a training video, and that’s how it came about. Wow, was that a pretty intense process? Yes. Going through their eyes. Sure, yeah, I mean, brilliant and weird.

1:47:58 There with 10 other gestalt therapists, and I’m thinking, right now, oh, I see, this is why my father’s like this, oh, it’s perfect, they’ve got the same values. Oh, I get it now, yeah. Wow, so one of my traumatic events was my parents’ divorce when I was seven, and it comes up in the movie, and we just made, because when I’m in the plant medicine ceremonies, I go back there, because that’s when my reality was defined, kind of, as a young kid. And part of this process, big little spoiler alert if anyone’s watching, but I go back to San Diego and I interview both of them on camera and I ask them about the divorce.

1:48:32 So it’s very strange, and in some ways, tense process, but for the first time, I get to actually ask them what happened, what they remember, and also what it was like for them. So through the plant medicine, you got an insight into this is where there is trauma or upset. Yeah, I always go back to this seven-year-old boy that was just traumatized and then shut down from the world after his reality was kind of diced up and was taught that I had to be on my own the rest of my life.

1:49:01 And so in the movie, I actually got to travel back and speak to them on camera, and it was fascinating to hear their points of view of that situation that I had kind of selfishly looked at. So they both had their own reasons for doing it? Right, and their own traumas around it. It’s like, I was like, oh, you did this to me. But of course, for them, it happened to them.

1:49:26 To them, yeah. And it’s easy to say you were wrong and I was right, but everybody was doing what they thought was right, obviously by definition at the time. Yeah, I mean, unless they’re a total sociopath or even psychopath, they’re not waking up thinking, how can I upset Brighton? They’re just doing the best they can with what they have at the time. Did you feel healed during that experience?

1:49:46 I did, and I felt like I was remembering it in a certain way that wasn’t factual. I remember it as this. But when I spoke to my mom, being divorced actually allowed her to become this worldly woman that took me to Europe, which is why I’m in London. And if it wasn’t for that, she would have been kind of forced to live in this kind of submissive of wife role, and we would have never had these worldly experiences. So in some ways, I was created by that moment that I thought defined me in a bad way.

1:50:17 It actually defined me in a positive way. So yeah, now I have a completely different relationship with that memory. Also, I don’t think memories serve us a lot of times. I think there are sometimes recreated in the present to maybe make sense of our world. Yes, absolutely there are.

1:50:32 Yeah, in fact, a lot of the research shows that we can’t trust it because it’s all colored by how we presently are and encoded by it. Isn’t that fascinating? Most people wouldn’t believe that. Like, no, no, this happened. But it’s not.

1:50:44 And we know that sometimes when you’re talking to people about something in the past, they’d be like, no, no, this happened. No, this happened. I’m sure this happened. No, that’s just your brain trying to fit in. Well, and people are depressed.

1:50:54 If you ask them, I’d like you to remember a time you felt good. And they’ll say, I’ve never felt good. And you’ll go, no, surely there must have been times when, you know, good thing. No, I just thought I did at the time. But now I realize I don’t.

1:51:06 Because what they’re doing is they’re taking even the happy stuff and coding it into a gray, horrible thing that even the joyous stuff. Because that’s the nature of the disorder of depression. And also, it’s a brain chemistry. It’s a lack of dopamine, serotonin, the happy neurotransmitters. Help them to go through that process of, unfortunately, of making things joyless.

1:51:29 And can you remind people that there were joyful times? Oh, well, you have to go about it using about 10,000 Trojan horses. Because the other day, I was working with somebody. Halfway through, she went, you’re just trying to make me feel good, aren’t you? I went, yes.

1:51:44 Busted. And you struggled for depression when you were younger, right? No, it’s about 10 years ago when my father died. And I was working with people with PTSD and depression. Got infected, to some extent, with that mindset.

1:51:59 And then I began drinking heavily. And I was really not in a great place. And my friend Gempo Roshi rang me. He’s a Zen master, but he’s more like a therapist than a priest. And he says, I understand you’re depressed.

1:52:14 And I said, yeah. I said, well, there’s no point in anything. So what does it matter? He goes, and you should, of all people, should know that. You’re a Zen master, there’s no point in anything.

1:52:23 That may well be the case. He said, I’d like to talk to the voice of depression disowned. I went, ooh. So I went, as in, if I’ve shoved the depression away, because it’s so awful, and it’s like one of those things at the seaside, and you hit it, and it pops up again. And so we had a conversation with it.

1:52:42 And indeed, because I had been depressed before, been down, I decided I wanted to be in a positive place and do self-improvement. But I disowned this. And of course, when we brought that back into the ecosystem, so it’s got its voice, and it needs to, depression’s really, for me, is a label for a lot of unprocessed emotions. And so once it was allowed back in, and it’s not overwhelming anymore, I don’t need to frighten it, so I could look it in the eye and go, I’m not terrifying to you anymore.

1:53:08 I can let my time share at the edge of the abyss go. And I’m coming back to reality, and I’m gonna fully engage in life, because I’ve been where it isn’t, and I’m going where it is. And he showed you, you can have that conversation with it, as opposed to ignore it or not engage with it. That’s the mistake sometimes. Yes, is pushing it away.

1:53:28 Now, by the way, I don’t blame anyone who does, because with so overwhelming, of course, of course you wanna escape it. And right now, people are escaping their feelings through drinking, drug taking, gambling, sex, shopping, sugar, television, et cetera. That’s the way our culture is set up. But I was lucky in a number of my colleagues, Richard Banner and other people, and indeed my wife, were there to go, hang on, Paul, it’s not so bad. You’re gonna be okay.

1:53:53 And the thing is, from having been there and really experienced it, I now know, and I can talk to people who are depressed, and I found my ability to help them dramatically improved. Right, because you’ve been there before. Yeah. Yeah, nihilism used to be something I got stuck in. Like you said, what’s the point of all this?

1:54:10 It’s pointless, this is stupid, it doesn’t matter. That can be a real hard one to get out of. Well, if you look at it like that, yes, because I did, I talked again about this, and he said, you know, I said, do you believe in God? Yes, I do, and I don’t. I hold the two of you simultaneously.

1:54:26 And so is there a point, is there any point to anything? No, and there is if you want it to be, you know. It’s not, there’s no point in anything. It’s not, the nihilism is not supposed to be a de-joying of everything. Of course, there’s no point.

1:54:40 No, that would be an intellectual sort of approach to Zen. And that’s certainly not mine, my experience of Zen. And those Zen masters I’ve met that I’d like to be around, or anyone who practices Zen, they’ve usually got an immense amount of joy. But they’re not, because all suffering, as we know, passes. And it’s attachment that causes suffering.

1:55:01 So the, seeing no point in my limited understanding of Zen is that you’re not attached to things. That’s basically the way they say it. Right, and with the depression, it’s okay if it’s there. You acknowledge it and just say, okay, you’re there. I’m not gonna force you away, but I’m not gonna engage with you.

1:55:14 Well, no, actually, you would engage. But you would do this with somebody who knows what they’re doing with depression. So, and there’s not that many people I know who are able to do this. So for example, what I would do, I did it today, took somebody who got the depression or the excessive anger or the fear or the uncomfortable emotional states, and that’s which has been disowned, got in touch with it. Let it have its say, let it be part of the ecosystem of emotions.

1:55:39 Then created, got the antithesis to come up. Peace, bliss, comfort, comfort. Then put your attention here, above the two, here, and then experience depression, anger, fear, peace, bliss at the same time. And then the emotion resets within the ecosystem. It’s not trying to over signal because it’s been pushed away.

1:56:05 Wow, it’s powerful. Super powerful. Seen people cleaned up in a matter of minutes with this approach. Did you come up with that? No, that’s Gempos.

1:56:15 But I funked it up with a bit of NLP because we’re using collapsed anchors. So I’m creating the states, but his voice dialogue with the disowned parts, that’s on him. Wow, that’s powerful. And I love your accents, Paul. Well, when I do the, well, I live in America.

1:56:30 You always just do American accents, though. Well, you see, do you want East Coast, West Coast? I mean, I lived on both coasts, but I was there for about 10 years. And some things you have to say with American pronunciation, if you go, could you show me where the bathroom is? People go, what are you talking about?

1:56:43 You go bathroom, you know, and route, you know, and freeway. And why don’t we say things like, you know, I’d say I’d like some chardonnay. Chardonnay? What’s wrong with your chardonnay? You know, whatever it is that Americans say.

1:56:56 Or I would use the grammar. I would say that’s, I would say that’s real fine, you know, something like that. What do you miss about America and what don’t you miss about America? I miss the sunshine in Los Angeles. My wife loves seasons, but I’m quite happy with being sunny all the time.

1:57:11 What about the Americans themselves? What do you miss about them? What do you don’t? Oh, you know, I just, many of my friends are American. If I wasn’t British, I love being British.

1:57:18 I would be American. I love about America is the optimism, is this kind of aspirational culture. You know, that’s a great thing that America has. I love that, that sort of, the whole idea that, so here’s an example. I had a lovely Bentley.

1:57:33 I used to cruise around Beverly Hills and I’d pull up at the lights and literally once a week or something like that, somebody would pull up next to me in some beaten up old truck and they’d go, hey, nice car you got there. I’m gonna have me one of those someday, you know, something like that. And I think you wouldn’t get that in England. People would go, fucking rich person, you know, that sort of thing. And so that envy culture in England we have, I don’t like that at all, but I do like the aspirational culture and you know, I think I miss the optimism.

1:58:02 I do like the British sense of humor is very sophisticated. American humor is slightly different and, but, I do. A little more lowbrow, a little more banal. Well, again, that sounds condescending doesn’t it? No, it’s not that, it’s just different.

1:58:17 We don’t have pratfalls in England, but American comedy does. But also, I mean, the other thing about being in Los Angeles, it’s the cream of the entertainment world. You’ve got the greatest actors, singers, comedians, you know, directors, producers. Everyone is there, but you know, it’s fantastic. So I miss being in the sort of the Hollywood mix, as it were, but then also, I, you know, if I hadn’t been at two functions of an evening, I’d think I was missing out, or I was some kind of loser.

1:58:44 So now I’ve got a comfy couch, Netflix, Apple TV, et cetera. Dog. And a dog and a wife, you know. And you’re good. Yeah, not in that order, it would start wife.

1:58:55 Of course. You need to do a dog book. Is that gonna come forward? Yeah, maybe. I mean, people say, can you hypnotize your dog?

1:59:04 Well, some of my colleagues do the thing with the horses, the dogs and the cats, where you synchronize the animal, you tap on the points. I’ve done it synchronize from the dog when the dogs are not set. Haven, myself. You first of all, you get in touch, you can feel the anxiety. And, you know, I thought when I first tried, this is nonsense, but it worked a treat.

1:59:22 So I keep an open mind. Because they respond to your energy. Yeah, that’s right. But you don’t do it on the dog, you do it to yourself. Well, no, you wouldn’t sit and stroke the dog’s paws.

1:59:30 Although that, I mean, maybe it would. The only thing is, we know that this is hardwired and this and this to release the delta. So I don’t know if it would be the same positions on a dog, but certainly if you sink to the dog and you get in touch with the anxiety, and then you do this, it will alter the dog’s state. I mean, if you just sit and sink with the dog anyway and put yourself in a nice place, it will alter the dog’s state. Yeah, I wanna see the documentary about your life in LA.

1:59:55 That’s what I wanna see. Yeah, probably be rated R. Okay, that’s fine, maybe worse. But you’re right about Americans. I was in New York City where we can have a go and people walk up to me, that’s a nice suit.

2:00:07 That looks good, I mean, people would touch me and all that stuff in New York, I was like, wow. Yeah, I mean, again, I liked New York because everyone’s very direct, you know? And they will tell you, whereas in Los Angeles, people are like, everything, it’s a poker game, right? Hey, that’s so fantastic, love that, love your work. Whereas in New York, it’s like, hey, I’m not so sure about that, it’s much more kind of direct.

2:00:31 And it’s a great vibing city, I mean, it’s just fantastic. Yeah, it’s very good. All right, last few questions at the very end, Paul. If you could pick up the phone and call up 20-year-old Paul McKenna and give that young man some advice. The following success secrets are only available inside the London Real Tribe, where you get exclusive access and insights from our high-performance guests on wealth creation, productivity, leadership, morning routines, health, and well-being.

2:00:58 To join our tribe community, go to londonreal.tv forward slash tribe. Now, let’s continue with the show. Yeah, powerful. Lastly, that 20-year-old that’s watching us or listening to us, young in their relationship life, advice to them when it comes to things from this book or things they can start thinking about, maybe for some of them, their first relationship or first serious relationship. Last piece of advice for them.

2:01:23 That’s a really good one, isn’t it? I would say, if I was giving the young amisome advice, I would say, see, it’s a difficult one, because some of the mistakes I had to make were part of my learning curve, right? And so it’s almost like, you know, back to the future, they don’t want to interfere too much. But so I’d have, yeah, the thing is, I made them for too long and the same one. You know, it’s that definition of insanity, thinking you’re doing the same thing, getting a different result.

2:01:53 So I would have said, learn from your mistakes. I learned quicker. And also, it’s not always your fault. It’s your responsibility to do something about it. But, or don’t, you know, the other thing is, you know, making it personal and blaming other people is something I did for a while.

2:02:09 And I would point to that. And I would say there’s a brilliant book coming out in the year 2020. And by the time you get there, everything that’s in it, you’ll already know. So that’s not gonna be, I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t be of any help.

2:02:27 I would say, yeah, I would, the advice is a really tough one, Brian. I would say something like, yes, there we go. I’d do a process on me. By that stage, I’d already had my heart broken. I’d mend the self-saboteur.

2:02:42 I’d say, it’s your lucky day. You just had a world-class hypnotist shot, me from the future. Close your eyes, bam, bam, bam, done. And so I’d fix his self-saboteur. I’d put in a greater self-image and a self-image of somebody deserves everything that’s great in life.

2:02:59 And then I’d build a roadmap inside his subconscious mind to go have what it is he wants, everything that’s in there. I love it. The book is seven things that make or break a relationship. People can get this where books are sold. I’m guessing Amazon, your website has links, bookstores, W.A. Smith in the UK.

2:03:17 Amazon is where you’ll find it, definitely. Amazon, definitely. Also, there’s a code in there and you get on the website and you can download your trances. You can download the Havening Technique. You can download the HeartMath is in there.

2:03:28 You got videos of Paul and you got the audio as well. And I was playing the guys, the Mind Programming CD this morning. And I was like, guys, you don’t understand. This is the real deal here. So all your stuff is super powerful.

2:03:42 I really appreciate you, Paul. You always go big on this stuff and you’re always really personal about your stories. And it’s always a pleasure having you on. It’s great to see you. I mean, I get to say stuff here that nobody else asked me.

2:03:52 So thank you, Brian. Yeah, well, I appreciate your candor. Everyone really enjoyed the last one. They’re gonna love this one as well. For everybody here, go home and ask that question.

2:04:00 What do you need from me? Start that off. Grab this book and invest in your relationship before it becomes a mess and you become a mess too. And honey, if you’re watching, I’m gonna come home and ask you that question tonight. So Paul, you’re a legend.

2:04:12 Thank you so much for the book.