I've done a lot of things in the last ten years. I created this podcast, started businesses, hosted a world tour, and even wrote multiple best selling books. But one of my favorite things I've accomplished is my newsletter. It's called Weekly Wisdom. For the last four years, I've sent out a newsletter every single Thursday. I write about spirituality, love, life's challenges, and the practical things we can all do every day to get closer to healing and well being.
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If you'd like to start receiving my newsletter in your inbox every Thursday, just go to j Sheddy newsletter dot com. That's Jay Shetty newsletter dot com. The newsletter is one hundred percent free and you can unsubscribe at any time. I hope you will join me and I can't wait for you to read it on Thursday. People underestimate the time. I think it's so interesting, so many of us we
choose the worst times to have the best conversations. A lot of people in their relationships will choose the moment their partner walks through the door to have the most difficult conversations. Now, that person maybe just had a stressful journey home back from work, and you're thinking to yourself, so did I, Well, guess what. You're not in the right position either. Not only is the timing wrong for them, it's the wrong timing for you.
The number one Health and Wellness Podcast, Jay Shetty, Jay Shetty, Jon, Hey everyone, welcome back to on Purpose, the place you come to listen, learn and grow.
I am so grateful to have you here. My name is Jay Shetty. Thank you for joining me for the next twenty to thirty minutes as we talk about the tell Them Method. Now, I promise you this method is going to transform your life. I believe it will change the way you work with your colleagues. It will change the way you talk to your parents, your partners, It will change everything about your life, because more often than not, we do the opposite. Instead of the tell them method,
we practice the tell everyone but their method. Now, let me give you a quick overview as to what they tell them method is. If you don't want to go on a date with someone, tell them if you want to cancel plans tonight because you're exhausted. Tell them if something feels off to you and you don't want to see someone again. Tell them. If you're anxious about a project you're taking on at work and you're not sure what to do with your bo us. Tell them if
you don't like to watch sports with your partner. Tell them. If you usually wait till the last minute to tell people you're not coming, don't do that, Just tell them. More often than not, we don't tell them. We don't tell people. We hold on to emotional information. We hold on to our feelings, We hold on to words, We hold on to energy that we're being compelled to share, to give, to pass on. But we hold back and we hold onto it. There's a famous Zen saying that says,
letting go is hard, but holding on is harder. Just imagine yourself holding on to a piece of rope that's being dragged from your hand. If you're holding on tightly, gripping tighter and tighter and tighter, it's going to leave a burn in your hand. And so often our emotions that we want to share with others, that we want to exchange, that we want to set free, are the ones that we're holding onto so tightly. It's so important that we actually tell people how we feel. And this
applies to both challenging and encouraging emotions. The other day, I was talking to someone and I said to them, you know what, I'm just going to tell you how I feel, and I opened my heart to them. I told them how much I appreciated them, how much I admired them, how much they meant to me. And I meant every word. And they were so shocked and taken aback because they were just surprised that someone would actually open up in that way and wear their heart and
their sleeve. And I said to them, I like living that way because I'd rather say everything that matters to me and be seen as foolish, stupid, weak, then to hold it all back and miss out on an opportunity for a beautiful relationship. Because what am I really losing by sharing how I feel, I don't lose my dignity. I don't lose my self worth because I can only give that to myself. I don't lose my self esteem because I don't give the keys to that to someone
else in my life. I don't lose anything. When we think that opening our heart in a positive way to someone else makes us the loser, it means we believe that they have the power over us, when actually I know for a fact that I opening up my heart to someone, telling them how I feel, telling them how much they mean to me, and protecting my future self. I'm protecting my future self because hey, guess what, if
they react positively, there's a beautiful relationship here. If they reject it, then I still know in the future that I did everything within my capacity. I did everything I could possibly think of. Now. Sharing positive or vulnerable emotions is hard, but sharing a negative feeling towards someone is even harder. Telling someone you don't want to go out on a second date, telling your family that you don't want to come over for the holidays, telling a friend
that you no longer want to hang out them. These can be much more challenging conversations, and they rarely are going to go how we want them to go, and therefore we avoid them. We avoid tough conversations because we don't want to deal with the consequences of what comes from them. But the reason why we should tell people how we feel is because if we don't tell them, we'll probably tell someone else. If you don't tell someone how you feel, you'll probably tell someone else how you
feel about them. We gossip about that person to another person, and sometimes they find out, even in the most indirective ways. When we gossip or take energy from a relationship into
another conversation, what we're doing is diluting two relationships. You're diluting the relationship you have with the person you're scared to tell because now you don't have a deep relationship, and you're diluting the relationship with the person you are telling because you're boiling down the quality and depth of your relationship to be about gossip, to be about discrediting
someone else, to be about bitterness. Instead of building a relationship on positive emotions, we're actually falsely bonding over negative emotions. So let's say I want to tell someone that I don't think that what they're expecting of me is in line with my boundaries. Now, instead of telling them my boundaries my expectations, I start talking about them to someone else and saying, can you believe that person? They're always just you know, they're always just like disrespecting my boundaries.
They're always disrespecting me. I don't just don't know what goes through their head. Now. If I'm saying it in order to figure out how to have a conversation with them, that's healthy. But if I'm saying it just to get it out there, then I'm not actually getting anywhere with it. What happens is the next time I see that person, I now get more confirmation bias. Confirmation biases where I
get more information to prove how I felt. I then go back to my other friend and talk about it all over again, and all of a sudden, I still have this person in my life who disrespects my boundaries, And now I have someone else in my life who I could be building a healthy exchange with, but we only talk about bitterness, pain and negativity. So instead of telling someone else, tell them it completely sets you free. You let go of the baggage of holding onto it.
You now no longer holding on to the multiple conversations you'll have about this scenario, which means you've made space for other things. It also allows for you to get a reason. And this is the difference. I think so often when we want to share something hard or harsh or negative with each other, we don't realize that it can be done in a beautiful and powerful way.
Right.
It's so important to recognize that it's about how you say something, not what you say. We think it's all about what we say, when really it's about what we are meaning to say, how we say it, tension with which we share it. And often I find a question is far better than an accusation. If you want to tell someone how you feel, it's better to tell them with a question as a way to check. So to say, hey, you know whatever I say that, I don't like it when you talk about me like that in front of
this other person. I wanted to ask you why you still continue to do it? Where does it come from? Now? This allows you to check in a way that doesn't put the other person on the defensive, hopefully doesn't make them feel like they have to be critical, And now you're actually asking them a question where they get to explain themselves. I think we underestimate the value of how something said. We have forgotten how to communicate in a
non violent, non confrontational way. It's interesting, right we think that if we're right, no matter what the other person's reason is, we're going to confront them, and so because we're trying to avoid confrontation, we avoid communication. But actually, healthy communication can help us avoid confrontation for no reason. Often, if I think someone's behaving with me in a certain way, I'll check in with them and say, hey, you know, I noticed this. I just wanted to know if you
notice it or where does it come from. All of a sudden, now we're on the same page, We're on the same level. I'm not calling that person out, I'm not making them look bad. I'm not you assuming that they're acting a certain way, and I get the opportunity to get an explanation. I'm not asking for a defense,
I'm asking for their insight. And I think this is so important because so often we've watched so many courtroom dramas where all we know how to do is put someone in their place, and then that person kind of has to defend themselves and stand up for themselves. And now we're not getting anywhere because now we're doing the same thing back. It's so important to tell people through a question, tell people in a non confrontational, non violent way.
It's also brave to tell people how we feel, because when we don't, we feel self righteous, but we automatically assume that that person is unaware or wrong. I found that when I tell people how they feel, they get a chance to tell me how they feel, and often I realize we're far far closer than we think. So I'll give another example. The other day, I was pitching
an idea. The idea got rejected and I didn't really get any feedback, so I said to the team, I said, hey, I didn't get any feedback that I felt was valuable or insightful. We've got feedback, but the feedback felt pretty vanilla. It felt pretty you know, standard feedback. And it was hard for me to say, hey, I don't think we got any insightful or reflective feedback, but I thought it was healthy to say that because I was acknowledging we did get feedback, but it wasn't to the degree that
would help me. And I want to learn and I want to grow. All of a sudden, I got some amazing feedback, and actually, when I listened to it and took accountability, I could totally understand why the idea got rejected. I could actually reflect and comprehend why we didn't get a yes. And when I communicated that and communicated the heart of the pitch, it actually led to our much
more powerful positive conversation. Again, it was a hard conversation for me to have because I didn't want to look desperate. I didn't want to look needy. I didn't want to look like I was forcing things over. And what I realized is I could explain all of that right. Sometimes we think, well, I don't want someone to think I'm XYZ, and so I'm not going to say it at all, rather than saying to them, hey, I'm not trying to be XYZ, but this is how I'm feeling. Let's figure
this out. Know is how it makes such a difference. We have to tell people why we think what we think, not just what we think. We have to explain to people why we're feeling the way we're feeling, not just what we're feeling. So often we just tell people our emotions.
We don't explain our emotions, and when we explain our emotions, we give them an opportunity to explain this when we tell people how we feel, and more importantly, as I'm saying here, we tell people how we feel and why we feel that way, and we've recognized that we can take some accountability for it. It gives us a sense of closure. We've realized that we've done everything within our power, we've
done everything within our means, we've taken control. We've focused on everything we can control, and we don't have to be distracted by what we can't control, and that creates such a powerful sense of self respect. We get an understanding that we have the ability to really stand up for ourselves, we have the ability to really recognize how we're feeling. And I think this hits very closely to why I partnered up with match, and what I really found was I wanted to create a space where people
could connect based on their values. And this was really really important to me because I feel that everything I'm saying here is because we don't realize that our core values have such a big impact in terms of long term success. If you ignore core values, you're thinking in the next five months. If you take on core values, you're living in the next five years. And for anyone who's interested and invested in building a long term, long lasting,
powerful relationship, this mindset is huge. Ninety three percent of match members say that shared core values are a crucial indicator of relationship success. Now, another reason why it's important to tell people is because of what's actually happening inside of us. According to a researcher named Nelson, three things happen when an emotion is experienced. The first is we
develop an emotional vibration. The second is we feel the emotion and any thoughts or physical sensations associated with it. This is where the mind and bodies interconnectedness come into play. And number three, we move on from the emotion by processing it. But here's the interesting thing. According to Nelson, when the second or third step mentioned above gets interrupted, the energy of the emotion becomes trapped in the body. As a result, you might experience muscle tension, pain, or
other ailments. Express your emotions to yourself, explain them to others. Express your emotions to others. Explain them to others so that they have the opportunity to understand them. When we do that, we release it from being stored in the body.
Nelson says, the phrase trapped emotions usually means that you want to say something, but you're blocking it from yourself, and then that repressed negative emotional energy comes out as resentment, being passive, aggressive, It can come out as an overreaction. It can come out as depression and stress. Of course, and mind body therapist Kelly Vincent compares trapped emotions to carrying around a large backpack. It weighs us down, it
impacts our mood, and it drains our energy. So now that you're not saying how you feel to someone else, you're now carrying this backpack of emotions into every interaction you go to. And what we're really saying is I don't want to put in the effort to unpack this backpack. Right. Think about it when you've gone on vacation and you don't want to unpack a suitcase. So now you'll pack it again for the next trip, and you're now carrying everything from the first trip for the second trip as well.
So what you've done is you've just made it harder and heavier for yourself. You've just made it more and more challenging for yourself when it doesn't need to be. That's why it's so important to tell them now. I was reading an amazing medically reviewed article by Jennifer Littner on Healthline and it was talking about how trapped emotions
and extreme cases can actually create trauma. She talks about how, according to a twenty fifteen survey of almost sixty nine thousand adults across six continents, over seventy percent of respondents reported exposure to a traumatic event, while thirty point five percent were exposed to four or more. Right, this could be a breakup or before, she says, it could be
a major illness, it could be losing your job. And what ends up happening is that when we don't share or express that emotion on how we feel, that can end up being stored in the body. And if you've not read this brilliant book called The Body Keeps the Score, I highly recommend it. And when we're carrying around these emotions and we don't tell people how we feel, we don't tell people how we feel about them, we don't tell people how they've made us feel, we end up
blaming ourselves. We end up blaming them rather than engaging with them. We can end up taking that stress out on loved ones and so a lot of negative energy gets trapped in the body when it's not released in that way. And so I want to ask you, when's the last time you've been feeling a headache? Because there's something on your mind and your heart that you've been wanting to say. And here's what I'd recommend you do. Tell them, because if you don't tell them, you'll spiral.
If you don't tell them, you will regret it later. And the reason why we're not telling them is we don't think about this. I want to help you come up with a five step formula for how to understand how to tell them. The first thing is they're not in front of you. What would you say if there were no edits right, if you didn't have to filter it, if you said it with all the anger, if you expressed it with all the pain, all the tension, what would it sound like? Write it out, audio it out,
say it out loud? How would you express your pain, stress, tension towards someone without thinking about how they digest it, let it out without them there? I ideally would say, write this down if you can journal it, because the next step is focused on what you actually are trying to say. As you now edit this, you're now extracting
the explanation from the expression. It's not that you're taking the emotion out of it, but you're taking the accusatory, the blaming, the judgment out of it so that you can truly explain how you feel over expressing what you think of them. So you're editing now in order to make it make sense to someone else. I couldn't be more excited to share something truly special with all you
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a truly delicious and refreshing drink. So visit Drinkjuni dot com today to elevate your wellness journey and use code on purpose to receive fifteen percent off your first order. That's drink Juni dot com and make sure you use the code on purpose. The third thing, which I think is really important is figure out the best time to say it. People underestimate the time. I think it's so interesting. So many of us we choose the worst times to
have the best conversations. A lot of people in their relationships will choose the moment their partner walks through the door to have the most difficult conversations. Now that person maybe just had a stressful journey home back from work and you're thinking to yourself, so did I, Well, guess what. You're not in the right position either. Not only is the timing wrong for them, it's the wrong timing for you.
The next thing is you don't know how heavy their day was, so they're already carrying a load, and now they don't have the ability to carry your load. On top of it, you've now reduced the probability that they have the conscientiousness and the compassion in that moment to be present with you. Did they have any capacity? You're speaking to them at a time where their emotional capacity is so reduced. And it's really funny because we think, in this moment, well, they should get it, they should
understand it. It's it's so important to me. They don't have any other time when actually you could have made it a lot easier for yourself to bring it up at a time that they could digest it. The other important thing, not just time, is to figure out the best place to say something. I think sometimes again, we choose the worst place to have the best conversations. We do it over dinner when someone's just trying to eat. We do it passive aggressively when someone's friends or family
is around them. We do it when the person's trying to disconnect from everything while watching a TV show, rather than setting a time in a place. We take up any opportunity because we think it's so important, but anything that's truly important. If you think about in the workplace, you set in a appointment, you set a meeting to have important conversations. We've got to do that even with
the people we love. Right, And the biggest one, which I think we underestimate is that we're usually quite attached to the result, and really what we need to do is be detached from the result. Now, how do we do that. We want them to change. We want them to know how we feel. We want them to feel bad about it. We want them to get the point that maybe all these expectations we have, well, the truth is all of our expectations are not helping us. They're
actually setting us up for failure. Instead of sharing all of this in a way that we hope that they go, yeah, I get it, I get it, I'm going to change completely, which is our artificial hope, we could share it and actually to see where they're coming from. We could actually try and understand what their blocks are. We're actually try and comprehend what their challenges are because guess what, that's going to give us a lot more information, a lot more ability to grow, a lot more insight into what
can be solved. Now, this is going back to the simplicity of tell them method. Let's look at that example. If you don't want to go on a date with someone and you go out just because you feel guilty, Now they think there's a chance they're being strong along. Now you're feeling worse on day four that you keep stringing them along. And now on day eight you've got to tell them anyway, right, you're not going to let it go all the way to them expecting you're going
to propose to them, and well maybe you might. And then now you've got to do even the harder job, because if you just told them in the first place, you wouldn't have all that later on pain. Some of you wait till the last minute to tell someone you're not coming to the party. Guess what, that lets them down more than if you told them a month in advance and gave a good explanation. Tell them, tell them, tell them, because guess what, you don't then have to spiral.
You don't have to think about that emotion that exchange for the next three weeks. You can actually create space for the life that you want to build. Thank you so much for listening. This helps you. I hope you pass it on to a friend and remember I'm forever in your corner and always rooting for you. And next time you're struggling to express how you feel, just tell them. I promise you it will make a huge difference and save you so much mental space, so much mental time,
and so much mental energy. Thank you. Hey everyone, If you love that conversation, go and check out my episode with the world's leading therapist Lourie Gottlieb, where she answers the biggest questions that people ask in therapy when it comes to love, relationships, heartbreak, and dating. If you're trying to figure out that space right now, you won't want to miss this conversation.
If it's a romantic relationship, hold hands. It's really hard to argue. It actually calms your nervous systems. Just hold hands as you're having the conversation. It's so lovely.