Why Aubrey Marcus Says 24 Hours Is All You Need to Change Your Habits
The advice you will learn from this episode is simple: Take one day at a time. But as the saying goes, “tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life,” and Aubrey Marcus, CEO of the lifestyle and holistic health mega-company Onnit, argues that all you need is just 24 hours to pave the way for the positive habits and decisions that will set the tone for your future. Dr. Oz sits down with Aubrey to find out how you can harness the power of your own success hidden inside you in just one day. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
But as the saying goes, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life and Aubrey Marcus, CEO of the Lifestyle and Holistic Health Mega Company Onnit, argues that all you need is just 24 hours to pave the way for the positive habits and decisions that will set the tone for your future.
Just 24 hours.
It's the underlying theme of his book, Own Your Day, Own Your Life.
He's a real character.
Aubrey Marcus joins us today.
Thanks for being here.
Yeah, glad to be here.
Let's start with that 24-hour claim because it's not usually what we think.
Is that really enough time to make a big difference?
My friends always remind me that you overestimate what you can do in a day and you underestimate what you can do in a year.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I agree with that.
I think the real key thing to making any change is you've got to feel it.
You've got to feel what you're trying to aim for.
And if you actually layer all of these practices into a single day, starting with that morning mineral cocktail, that hydrating with the sea salt and the lemon and the water instead of rushing for the coffee, and then you get your cold shower and you get that right kind of food and you start layering all these things, you're going to have one of the best days of your life and then you're going to feel it.
And then after you feel it, then you're going to want to track that more and more often and bring those habits into your life.
So the most important thing is to feel it, and everybody can do one day.
And in one day, that's enough time to actually feel how it feels when you're really taking care of yourself.
So the 21-day offering that's usually out there, in part because some of the research has suggested that it takes about 21 days to change a habit, because you don't actually get rid of habits, you alter them.
Create new habits.
Create new habits.
So it takes a while for that programming, for the jiffy lube, so to speak, of the brain to get comfortable.
In fact, there's a miracle grow chemical in the brain that has to simulate brain neuron growth.
That also seems to take 21 days to take impact.
So that's how long you probably have to do the same habit for.
Right.
So the one day is more about just feeling it so you can keep doing that for at least...
It's going to give you the motivation, right?
Like that's the carrot.
That's that thing.
Like the first time you have sex, you go, wow, that was really good.
I want to do that again.
I'll do that 21 day plan.
I'll do that.
I'll keep doing that, you know?
And this is like that feeling that you'll get like, oh my God, I have so much energy.
I feel so good that even though the habits won't have formed yet...
Because I agree with you, it takes longer to form the habit.
You'll want that feeling so much that you'll end up being more motivated to continue and carry on some of these practices.
Sure.
Your story with everybody.
What gave you the belief and the passion to change your own life?
It was almost out of necessity.
You know, I mean, I have a lot of gifts and a lot of blessings, and I'm aware of that, but I also have my own fair share of challenges.
You know, I had a lot of immune challenges growing up.
I was sick all the time, so it really got me keen on what these stressors were for my body so that I wasn't, you know, at certain years of my life, I was probably sick four months out of the year.
You know, different chronic strep throats and chronic tonsillitis and sinusitis and different things that were going on.
So that was part of it.
And then also a way overactive brain that kept me awake deep into the night.
So I started to practice some of these meditation and yoga and ecstatic dance and more spiritual practices to quiet the mind and calm myself.
So I can't take all the credit that this is just pure inspiration.
A lot of this was desperation, trying to dig myself out of my own struggles and my own challenges.
What is ecstatic dance?
Is that like the Sufis?
This has been a practice in so many different cultures throughout the years, and it's a way to use kind of a moving meditation.
And the idea is that you collapse the separation between the music and your movement so there's no judgment involved.
Because most of us, we start judging ourselves when we start moving our body.
It's a performance art.
Hypothesizing that somebody's looking at us, and that takes us out of the present moment.
Well, all forms of meditation and presence is about being in the present moment.
So if you collapse that distance between the sounds and the music and your body, you can get in a flow state, like the psychologists call it superfluidity.
And that really takes you out of your mind and allows you to activate that sense of presence somatically, not just cerebrally, like a lot of these meditation practices.
That's what little kids do.
If you look at a toddler dancing, they just hear the music and they feel it.
Yeah, put on Michael Jackson.
There's no separation between them and the music.
What's the Spanish language song?
Oh, oh, Despacito.
Our grandson is obsessed with that song.
Just wiggling.
So cute, too.
And that's before someone told them that they weren't supposed to move like that and that wasn't dancing and they didn't look good.
And we have all these shame patterns that are in the body and it's just so nice, especially as a man, to just start moving and say, okay, I have permission to do this.
I have permission to be weird.
I have permission to own my own body in space.
So it's a practice that I really enjoy.
And what got you to think, I can harvest all this brilliant insight that I have and create a marketing company behind it?
Why did that transition?
Yeah, you know, it actually kind of went the other way.
It was like, I have a lot of things that I want to share, but nobody's listening.
So how do I figure out...
I'll start a company.
Yeah, how do I figure out how to...
Tell the story a little better.
How do I reach more people?
And so I started a marketing company to figure that out, and I was telling other people's stories.
But the whole time I was telling other people's stories, I knew that ultimately that was just the training ground for me to tell my story.
And now, fortunately, with Onnit and the book Own the Day, I'm able to tell my story and actually get that across.
So share with the audience, folks who don't know you, especially Own the Day.
And there's a beautiful picture, by the way, of Aubrey on this thing.
These are some pretty cool tats, I've got to say.
Some pretty cool muscles.
Thank you.
Do you remember getting them all?
Yeah, well, this is my grandmother here on my arm here.
Oh, is that who that is?
That's a really special one for me.
Probably my most special tattoo.
Tell me the story.
It's a dominant tattoo on your left arm.
Yeah.
And it looks like a photograph.
It's very well done.
It was taken from a photograph where she has me in her arms and she's just smiling really big and I'm smiling really big.
And she was a huge part of my life.
And she was a basketball player in Iowa, too, back when, you know, I think the women had to wear dresses when they were out on the court.
Right.
And so she was rolling balls to me.
As soon as I could sit up straight, she was rolling balls to me back and forth to build my hand-eye coordination.
She was reading stories.
The first any type of writing I ever did was sitting on her lap and dictating as she typed on one of those old school typewriters.
So, so much of who I am from the athletics to the writing, you know, I credit my grandma.
And so she's with me always.
All right, so you've got, you've tied it up here.
You're making a, you know, a classic Aubrey, you know, I got this.
Look at what he's doing every day.
Look at that subtitle.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
Optimized practices for waking, working, learning, eating, say like a co-am, training, playing, sleeping.
What's that last word?
Oh, sex.
You should read this, honey.
Yeah, that's a tough one.
And then I got my fiance on the back cover, too, just to let everybody know that.
But she's not as tatted up as you are.
No, she's not.
I think that's probably a good thing.
So you cover the whole gamut of daily life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, how does a day look when—it's a day that you could repeat.
This isn't a day that's some abnormal super day that you can only do once in a blue moon because it's so hard to do.
This is a normal day that encompasses going to work.
It encompasses spending time with your family.
It encompasses having that glass of wine at the end of the day.
It encompasses all the things that a lot of us do in a normal day and try to make it something that's real, something that's repeatable, something that doesn't feel like, okay, now I'm on this crash cleanse or this crash detox or this special plan.
And it's like, no, no, this is a day that I could do...
Every single day, at least in good part, you know, a lot of these practices for the rest of my life.
And that's what I wanted to make it.
I wanted to make it feel like this is something that was enjoyable, not just productive.
You're in here with your water, and you start every day with this special water.
Can you tell us why and what it is?
We lose over a pound of water overnight just from the water vapors escaping our body.
But it's not the type of pounds that you want to lose because it's just hydration.
And it doesn't take much more than that to actually start to feel the effects of mild dehydration.
So in a lot of people, the first thing they do in the morning, maybe they'll have a little sip of water, but they reach for the coffee.
And caffeine is also dehydrating, even though it's also mixed with water, depending on how strong you make it.
But really what you want to do is start to replenish that pound of water you lost overnight just from the moisture escaping your body and get yourself back to kind of homeostasis and balance.
And of course, the sea salt that provides the electrolytes, which is going to support multiple different body systems.
And then the bioflavonoids from the lemon, that's just going to wake up your digestive and gastric juices and help get you in a more primed state.
So I call that the morning mineral cocktail.
And surprisingly, you know, it's one of the first steps in the book, but it's also one of the most talked about because people really feel that difference in just their energy levels, their anxiety, their irritability, all these things that kind of come from dehydration that we're not really aware of.
You can start to mitigate that right off the Do you eat breakfast too, or is that it for your morning?
No, I have breakfast, typically.
I mean, there are some good arguments for the intermittent fasting protocol where you're going to skip breakfast, and breakfast, a lot of the science is showing, isn't the most important meal of the day.
You can easily skip it and then compress your feeding window from Like noon to 8pm and have lunch and dinner.
And there's some good arguments for that.
But as long as I keep my breakfast low carb, higher protein, higher fat, I feel great.
What you really want to avoid are those blood sugar swings to start your day.
You know, reaching for that donut first thing.
Blood sugar is going to skyrocket.
Body is going to release a bunch of insulin.
Then you're going to go hypoglycemic.
And then you're going to be really irritable, especially if you haven't had your water.
And then you start this game of metabolic...
Adrenal ping pong.
with the caffeine, and you're really fighting behind the eight ball.
I love that.
You're really behind the eight ball, you know, whereas what you want to do is support yourself, then add the caffeine like a turbo button, you know, and then have the donut maybe as your reward after your workout when you've depleted your glycogen levels.
And so it's not like never have a donut, never have coffee.
I'm not saying any of those things.
I'm saying do it at the right time with the right intention, and you can really enjoy everything in life and still feel really good.
What is your workout, by the way?
Because you look fabulous.
Thank you.
Yeah, I've kind of kept consistently training most of my life, but Onnit really has brought forward some what we call unconventional training.
So that's kettlebells and maces and ropes and sandbags and steel clubs and these tools.
Maces are like attack tools.
What do you do with maces?
Yeah, so they actually developed in 12th century Persia, and it was the warrior elite and the Pelwani wrestlers that would swing them behind their head to strengthen their shoulder girdle, and it's an off-balance load, so it forces your body to compensate.
So no matter what you're doing, even if you're just pressing it straight up, your core is working, your proprioceptors are working to keep yourself in balance.
All those small muscles are kind of training at the same time.
So it's something that a lot of the top athletes we work with, NHL players, MMA champions like Cody Garbrandt, Tyron Woodley, and this is the type of training they do.
Because in real life, you have to have multiple muscle systems working at the same time.
You're not in fixed plane movements.
And this allows you to have that kind of multi-planar full-body training.
So that's typically what I'm doing.
Doing that, doing some sprints, and then just playing.
A lot of what I do is just play and dance and move and swim laps in the morning to get my circadian rhythm flowing and just try to not have working out be solely in the gym, but working out and movement, which is really a miracle drug.
I mean, exercise is the ultimate miracle drug beyond anything else.
Just try to blend that into my life.
So if my little Alaskan Klee Kai is, you know, starts to go for a run on the lawn, I'll chase her.
I can't catch her.
She's way too fast.
But I'll run around and you just take that impulse to do it.
Or if there's any opportunity to just start moving, I count that as part of my training.
So I try to collapse that idea that training needs to happen just for that 40 minutes in the gym.
Movement is a practice you can stretch out through the whole day.
Just being precise about high exertional exercise.
You mentioned sprinting.
Yeah.
So of that 40 minutes in the gym, how much of it is sprinting, is doing stuff that really pushes you to the top degree?
Yeah, I mean, not that much.
Usually like three to five minutes max, and that'll be divided up into multiple different sets.
So I'll try to have some kind of real power-focused element of the workout.
And we have...
We have skiers, which are, you know, kind of like sprinting for the upper body.
You can pull those down.
It looks like you're a butterfly swimmer or a cross-country skier.
We have a rowing machine.
We have a curved treadmill.
And so I'll just choose one of those things, and I'll get some really intense sets to really blast and elevate my kind of anaerobic threshold.
And then the rest of the time, I'm doing some kind of slower movement patterns, like a Steel Maze 360 or like Cross-body lunges with the mace or some kettlebell swings and presses, long cycle.
A lot of these terms people are going to be unfamiliar with.
But if you go check out Onnit Academy, we have all the types of training.
And we actually have a full bodyweight training program called the Onnit 6 for people who want to get started and just get used to moving your body in space and get comfortable with it.
How much is...
Is this permeating the fabric of professional sports?
You mentioned mixed martial arts and the like.
I have a company that gets content matches from other countries and you put it on Twitch, for example.
And I'm interested in how different athletes in different countries get exposed to the right advice because it's very different.
Yeah.
And I'm just wondering how that sort of transpires.
In the NBA, I had the opportunity to talk to a couple of the trainers, and there are some teams that are just better, it seems, at getting their athletes injury-free, ready for their peak performance.
And you'd think they'd all be equally focused on that.
You'd think.
It's just that there's so much clutter out there about what is the right thing to do.
And it's like in the medical profession.
Not all doctors are created equal.
Certain doctors are going to give much better holistic advice than other doctors.
Some trainers are going to give much better holistic advice than others.
It's not that they're not competent.
It's just that some have this more well-rounded, more well-traveled understanding of the human body.
And I think that's what you find.
So it's really person-dependent, and that's what you see, rather than this body of knowledge that everybody is accessing, because there really isn't.
And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to write this book, is there's so much clutter out there.
Oh, you need to be vegan.
Oh, you need to be carnivore.
You need to be, you know, all of these things.
Like, what is that right balance for the average person?
And back it up by the best research you can, and give something that people can really trust.
Own the day, own your life.
It, interestingly, has provocative elements in it as well.
Arbor's getting real about his open relationship.
We're going to find out what he has to say when we come back.
So much of what you said right now, people I hope at home are saying, you know, they nod their head and they drive along and say, "I wish I could do that." It's not that they don't, you know, believe it, they just don't make time to do it, and you're pretty compelling.
But you say we should be reinvestigating tobacco, which is not something that we've been saying much on the show, on this podcast, or anywhere else.
Yeah, and one of the big reasons for that makes a lot of sense, because cigarettes will kill you.
Like, there is just no doubt about it.
It's one of the worst things you can do for the body, period.
Like, cigarettes and, like, a habitual soda habit.
You know, it's just like, how fast can we die?
That's the question that you're asking when you do that.
But really, when you look at it, a lot of the harm comes from the delivery mechanism of that tobacco.
So if you look at some studies done by the Royal London College of Physicians, if you look at something like smokeless tobacco, which is my preference, which is Swedish snus, it's called SNUS, they say it's 10,000 to 10,000 times less harmful than smoking a cigarette.
And obviously they don't have the ability to do these big studies and actually figure it out.
But that was their analysis because the delivery mechanism is a lot safer.
Now, even safer than that is probably the nicotine patch where it's just transdermally getting into your body with minimal damage.
Why do you want nicotine?
And then that's the other question.
That's the other question.
And that comes from probably you haven't really done much with nicotine in your life.
No, I don't feel like I have a nicotine deficiency, though.
No, of course it's not.
And this is one of those things where you have to be mindful because...
Regardless of the delivery mechanism, nicotine can be addictive.
There's no doubt about that, so you have to be aware of that.
But then, is the juice worth the squeeze?
And in my personal opinion, the benefits of nicotine as a performance enhancer, for focus, for creating that alpha state, which is linked to that flow state, Which is why like top elite military professionals, top elite athletes, a lot of people who really need to focus.
I used it when I was writing and really needed to lock in.
It's incredibly valuable for that.
It kind of creates this hyper focus and stillness at the same time and tons of really good research on the performance benefits of nicotine.
And now so if you can get those performance benefits but really mitigate the damage being done, well then maybe it just might be worth it.
It's like drinking a little bit of wine.
Alright, you know, there's going to be some tax on the liver, there's going to be some things that you have to be mindful of, but the feeling might just be worth it.
So you just slap a nicotine patch on your arm before you write your book?
I actually use the Swedish schnoose, and I just, I'm mindful that I only do that a couple days out of the week, maybe, and only one time per day.
And so I try to mindfully mitigate the damage that could come to the gums and harness the benefit of that, which I think adds more to my life than the risk that it's providing.
And so, you know, to me, it's something that we need to really take a look at.
It's not going to be for everybody, and it's a very personal decision because, as I said, nicotine can be addictive.
But if you can mitigate the damage and harvest these immense benefits—in fact, you know, nicotine is probably my favorite drug, and I've done a lot of different drugs— You know, and like I've tried a lot of different things, but the feeling that you get, that real sense of calmness, Like you've just gone diving underwater.
Like it reminds me, you know, when you really get the good nicotine buzz of free diving underwater.
Like you're going spearfishing when everything gets quiet and you're just really focused on that fish that's going to come out from underneath the coral.
Like you have this ability to be calm and focused at the same time that I think is worth, you know, worth the potential challenges that can come from utilizing nicotine.
Let's talk about some of these drugs.
There was a beautiful article recently written by Michael Pollan on some of these psychedelic drugs.
And one of the lines which really caught me was that LSD or an analog to it had been used by the man who started the 12-step program in order to get off alcohol.
Now, you mentioned some of the downsides of taking nicotine, especially if you're taking it as a smokeless tobacco pinch in your gums.
It's conceptually, theoretically, issues with gum harm.
But if you're getting a benefit that, in this case, avoiding alcohol consumption, if you're an alcoholic, it becomes more interesting.
Because now you have a true cost-benefit.
I mean, a real risk that you're mitigating.
So, in psychedelic drugs, it seems like maybe these could play a role in...
Depression, suicidal thoughts, getting off other things, other addictions, you're stuck on even food.
That was the nature of the article, your experience.
Well, I think, you know, that's been unequivocally shown in the science now.
I mean, the work done by Hefter, they've got phase two clinical trials on end-of-life depression and anxiety and showed significant benefits.
There's other double-blind studies on smoking cessation.
So again, talking about nicotine addiction through smoking cigarettes, they had 80% cessation rates with a single dose of psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
The MDMA research being carried on by maps.org is showing that two out of three treatment-resistant PTSD sufferers are getting cured by three psychotherapy sessions.
And really, so the science showing that psychedelic medicine can create...
And those people in the MAPS trials, by the way, after those three sessions, they just continued to get better with no further treatment.
So this isn't a drug that you have to continue taking, this idea that you have a missing chemical in your brain and you need to keep adding it the rest of your life.
This is allowing the body to heal itself in a really significant way.
Because with psilocybin, it's just one session.
And with MDMA, it's just three sessions.
Explain that to everybody.
What happens?
And have you tried?
I have.
So what happens in your brain that frees you to see the world differently that has this lasting, long-term benefit?
I think fear creates these walls inside our own psyche.
And when you have a really fearful experience, your body and your psyche does everything it can to keep you from accessing that and feeling that same thing again.
And particularly with the MDMA, MDMA kind of collapses that fear by providing a real serotonin boost that puts you in a feeling of absolute safety and kind of what feels like opens your heart and opens you up to a much greater sense of love and safety and security.
And so those walls of fear that you've had and those walls of trauma that have been created and kind of cordoned off these areas in your brain that have been really traumatic...
You're able to actually push through those and see what's on the other side.
And then when you see what's on the other side, you can see it from a different perspective.
You can see the benefit that perhaps that trauma has created in making you a stronger person.
You can see the person who traumatized you.
Perhaps they had been traumatized by their parents.
And you can get to a level of forgiveness.
And I've watched this.
I've been fortunate enough to be in the room when people were getting MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy.
And seeing them access periods of really intense trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, and go through all of the emotions that they've kept walled up, like rage, how could you do this, I was just a little kid, to, I imagine this happened to you too, oh my god, I can't believe this happened to you too, I'm sure it did.
I forgive you, you know, and move through these things and it creates this lasting change where I've followed up with these individuals and seen over months and years how that one session created this catalyst where they're bringing that healing not only into themselves but sometimes into the real world as well and talking to those people who are, you know, responsible for the trauma and looking at things in a much different way.
So it just gives you the freedom and the safety to explore those challenging areas.
But it has to be with somebody who's taking you.
It's not like you just go to a festival and take Molly and you're going to be all loving and overcome your trauma.
MDMA assisted psychotherapy.
You can't avoid those last two because it's a totally different experience.
Because if you take MDMA at a festival, all of that focus, because there's also like an amphetamine part of MDMA that allows you to have this kind of hyper focus and perception.
So if you've got a bunch of music and a bunch of lights, you're going to perceive the music and the lights in a really cool way.
And it's probably going to be You know, a fun experience, but it's going to come with a cost because you don't know where the drug came from.
You don't know if you're hydrating properly.
You don't know what else you're doing.
It's going to be a dangerous experience that might be fun.
But if you do it in a clinical setting with trained professionals, and you have a blindfold on, and you have earphones on, and you're really depriving yourself of the senses, all of that focus that would have been looking at the lights and the music and the dancing is going to focus right on Is that legal?
These therapy sessions?
So right now it's gone through phase two clinical trials, and it's been designated as a breakthrough drug by the FDA.
So it's going to get fast-tracked through phase three.
And it looks like if everything, all the data keeps showing up like it has been, that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy will be available by 2021.
And so the doctors can get clean, good source stuff.
Of course.
Yeah, it'll be the same.
It'll be regulated the same as a pharmaceutical, much like ketamine actually is now.
They're doing a lot of ketamine treatments, and for those who have trauma and depression and can't wait for psilocybin and MDMA to be legal because they're not legal right now, Ketamine therapy is another really viable alternative that's being provided legally in different clinics with a similar kind of protocol, ketamine-assisted psychotherapy.
And just finishing off on drugs, because we have so much more to talk about, nootropics, medications that might help us think better.
Yeah, and I tend to draw a line between medications and nootropics.
To me, a nootropic is something that's not a pharmaceutical, but something that's a natural compound that's going to help the brain in a certain way, either by supporting the neurotransmitters or by supporting blood flow to the brain.
And that was really what Onnit was founded on.
You know, we created a product called AlphaBrain with nine different ingredients that work together and then put those through some double-blind clinical trials at the Boston Center for Memory, two different trials.
And we're upregulating the acetylcholine mechanism, which is one of the neurotransmitters in the brain responsible for focus.
And what we found in the clinical trials and the hundreds of thousands of people who have taken AlphaBrain is that it increases focus, executive function, which is like the ability to track multiple things at the same time.
increases processing speed.
We hook people up to some brain scans and we're able to show a lot of benefits just to purely cognition without using any stimulants and without using anything else than just supporting the substrate for the brain, which is a lot of these neurotransmitters.
So what kind of thing is in...
Yeah, the basis of it is a compound called huperziocerata, which is a club moss, and that contains a compound called huperzine A, which is an acetylcholine esterase inhibitor.
Now, acetylcholine esterase is what breaks down the normal levels of acetylcholine in the brain.
So this particular moss just has this capability of preventing the thing that breaks down acetylcholine, so you end up having more available for your brain.
It's extremely well tolerated, been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years, and all the safety studies that we've done and all the safety studies on that ingredient have shown that it's a really safe, natural way to boost some of the neurotransmitters.
Can you just take acetylcholine?
Will you absorb it if you do?
No, you can take raw sources of choline, like we include alpha-GBC, alpha-glycerophosphate choline, which is kind of like a substrate to build more acetylcholine.
So we kind of come at it with both angles in alpha brain so that we're providing the raw building blocks as well as preventing the things that degrade That neurotransmitter.
So for people looking for that additional focus in a natural way, I think we've established ourselves with AlphaBrain as that dominant, most well-tested natural nootropic.
And that's really what we built the business on, is creating science-backed natural formulas and then going off and doing that in multiple different cases.
You were talking about Hooperzina and the Owner's Manual, the first of the U-books, which was 2003, I guess.
So I'd known about it from Chinese medicine sources for a while, and kudos to you for putting it together with clinical trials, because that's always was gapping, so you don't even know what to advise, you know, how much, where, when, etc., especially for a Western audience that needs to hear that.
Can I transition to another controversial part of your story?
Yeah, let's go!
You thought this was going to be a nice interview.
No, I love it.
I love it.
We have a lot more questions to get to, but first, a quick break.
Visa's very curious about the open relationship.
No, I'm not.
You're curious.
I'm not an open relationship kind of person.
Let's just say everybody's curious.
How does that work?
Do you get jealous?
First of all, why?
Yes, I get so jealous.
It's the most painful thing I've ever done.
Why are you even bothering getting engaged?
Why not just keep dating if you want to be open?
I wish you could see this picture because your fiancé is...
Yeah, she was Miss United States, actually.
Oh, she was?
I told you I didn't judge me.
You could have been a judge.
So what the heck are you doing?
Who needs open?
You feel like you won the prize.
Yeah, indeed.
But, you know, the prize is...
We both do.
But, you know, and even in that idea, won the prize, you know, it's kind of this idea of possession.
And my philosophical understanding of love is that you can't really possess it.
And then you can't own anybody else's love, and nor should anybody own your pleasure.
You know, and if you're really, truly best friends with somebody, which I think is the goal of any partnership, you just want their happiness.
Yeah.
And however that happiness comes, if that happiness comes from another person, if that happiness comes from you, enthusiastically wanting your partner to be happy, to me, is the basis of genuine love.
Now, that being said, it's also one of the most challenging things you could ever possibly do in your life.
And you have to go into it knowing that you want the challenge to help make you a better person.
You have to say, I don't like the fact that I get jealous.
I don't like the fact that it's hard for me, you know, to communicate with my partner.
I don't like the fact that, you know, I feel vulnerable and I feel scared and I feel dependent.
Because open relationship will challenge all that.
Open relationship will challenge all that and it'll challenge it so that you can potentially fix it.
And it'll challenge it so that you can potentially fix it.
But it's going to drag you through the depths of your shadows in order to become a better person individually and ultimately, you know, foster a better relationship, which is, I feel, the position that, you know, after years of struggle and beauty and challenge and ecstasy and love and pain, you know, I feel like after years of struggle and beauty and challenge and ecstasy and love and pain, you know, I feel like I'm in And I think my fiance would say the same.
But go into this issue of jealousy and what you feel.
I mean, first of all, in an open relationship, if your partner is seeking for pleasure elsewhere, is it because you've been inadequate or because they need something that's not your job to give it to them?
I think that's what the ego wants to tell us, right?
And the ego wants to say, if I'm doing my job, my partner doesn't need pleasure anywhere else.
That would be like if you opened a restaurant and your friends didn't eat at your place every night, you would say that your restaurant is inadequate.
We're like, no, I just wanted Chinese food.
I didn't want steak again.
The pleasure that comes from emotional connection and physical connection, we're creatures that can enjoy a wide variety of different things.
Only you, it doesn't make you less special that they want something else.
It doesn't make you deficient that they want something else.
It's just the natural human craving for variety and for experience and to meet interesting, cool new people.
And it really forces you to understand that, that We're good to go.
Like, yeah, it was cool, but, you know, Rocky Road, you're my Rocky Road.
It's my favorite.
I'm going to come back to you.
That's what I love the most.
And in that, you know, it really facilitates a sense of passion and a sense, you know, your partner's free.
You know, it's not, when you fantasize about the horse of your dreams, it's not a demure little horse that's in a tiny little stable bridled up all the time.
You're thinking of that wild stallion with flowing hair, and it allows your partner to be that.
You know, you don't own them.
You don't control them.
And every time they come back to you, it's a choice.
So it feels like you get butterflies.
Like it's the first time you've seen them again after they've been away from you.
And it's a really interesting, cool thing that starts to happen.
But again, on the backside of intense dealing with your intense feelings of jealousy and inadequacy and insecurity.
Are they better than me?
Is it?
You know, am I not doing enough?
All of these things you'll have to deal with and then come to the other side to make it through.
You deal with that without an open relationship anyway.
I mean, that's just the human condition.
You do.
But this just forces it.
You know, like, this forces you to deal with those core issues.
You know, personally, you know, I wasn't even aware of how much validation-seeking that I was trying to get through my sexuality.
You know, like, me being, you know, sexually...
Dominant and sexually strong and sexually really good in bed was so much of how I judged my own self and my own self-worth.
And so, you know, allowing my fiance to experience this with other people, it really forced me to take a good hard look at all of these things, all of these reasons that I thought myself worthy of love and these reasons that I thought myself was worthy of being a man.
And really, Anna, is that really it?
Or am I worthy of love just because of who I am and just because of, and am I a man just because I really am a man?
It doesn't matter what I do in bed.
It doesn't matter who I sleep with.
It doesn't matter.
So it's really a, it's a practice of self-mastery that is very intense and, you know, really escalates this general process.
And for me, who's dedicated myself to really being the best version of myself as possible, this has been one of the greatest and sternest teachers that I could have ever imagined.
Well, what if she falls in love with pistachio?
Yeah.
Or maybe it's like a 50-50 deal.
We have a bunch of friends who've been in open relationships, and we've had this conversation multiple times.
Yeah.
Pistachio becomes a new flavor choice repeatedly.
And if so, if pistachio is her favorite, who am I to deny her from something that is actually going to make her more happy?
Like, if I love her in the truest sense, like, imagine, like, you love your kid.
You know, if you love your kid so much, it doesn't matter who they're with as long as they love them.
But it doesn't matter if they're just doing stuff...
I'm not going to articulate this properly, but there's impulse.
You don't have kids yet, do you?
No, I don't.
So your kids will want to do stuff that doesn't make them better people.
And you will see that happening.
You probably have younger siblings or cousins.
You will see very bad choices being made because they want something.
What you want for your kid is to be the best possible version of themselves.
And if this is taking you on that path, awesome, wonderful.
But often it doesn't.
It's just self-indulgent.
It's just impulse.
But do you think that you can...
Fulfillment.
A lot of times your kids have to make those mistakes on their own.
Absolutely.
100%.
Yes.
And what I end up seeing a lot is...
You may have that thing.
You may think that, oh man, pistachio is my flavor.
And I've even got caught in that own trap like, oh my goodness, this is really what I want.
But if you just taste it one time, you might think, oh, this is it.
But if you actually get the opportunity to be free and to experience that, then you realize like, oh yeah, this isn't that great after all.
And really, what I had with Whitney, what I have with my fiance is way better than all of this.
And I think a lot of times you can get stuck in that trap of imagining and fantasizing about how great it would be to be with somebody else.
But then when you actually do it, you're like, oh, well, that wasn't actually that great.
And so this allows the freedom and flexibility to really see, is this good for me?
Is this valuable?
And of course, you could get caught up in a seductress's or a seductor's web and get misled.
And I think it's the job of the partnership to kind of help illuminate like, hey, watch out for these emotional traps that might be getting set.
And so it's a challenging spot.
You're really self-aware, so I think you're the type of person that this really would work for.
I'm pretty self-aware.
Well, Whitney's right out there.
But I feel like in a traditional, we'll say traditional monogamous relationship, the real purpose isn't even so much the necessary connection for you.
It's where it takes you as a person.
And part of that is the not fun.
And it is all the buttons that are being pushed.
And it is the struggle.
And it is the...
The level of intimacy that comes from those periods of boredom or irritation or wishing you could go somewhere else and having to reconcile and be together.
And so I think leaving too many doors open doesn't always necessitate spending the deep digging, soul-searching relationship, plumbing opportunity that you have in a monogamous relationship, unless you're super self-aware the way you seem to Yeah, and look, I'm not an advocate that everybody should try open relationship because it's hell.
Like, the first time that Whitney slept with somebody, I spent the next 36 hours basically on my knees not knowing if I wanted to vomit or just curl up in a ball and die.
Like, that was the feeling.
It was the most painful feeling I've ever felt.
And that feeling will come in different degrees of strength.
Depending on who she's seeing and depending on where it goes.
I'm not saying this is a pleasure cruise by any means.
And it's really not even about the sex.
But for me, this is a deeper understanding of what I believe is capital L love.
And that's a love that loves her loving.
Love's her feeling love regardless of where that source comes from.
That loves me feeling love regardless of where that source comes from.
It's like what Cyrano de Bergeac said in the play.
It's like the ultimate love is to hear the laughter born of your sacrifice but have that person not know it was you that made the joke.
You know what I mean?
Like, it doesn't matter.
As long as they're laughing, that fills your heart with joy.
As long as she's enjoying life, that fills my heart with joy, even if it's with me or with somebody else.
And to me, that's the purest form of that capital L love.
And that's what I want to get to.
I want to get to this non-possessive, non-controlled level of love.
And this is through a very stern hammer that You know, kind of hammering me into a deeper understanding of that type of love.
And so I'm grateful for it.
And that's what makes it worth it.
It's certainly not worth it if you just want to have sex with people because the sex will not outweigh the pain.
But if you want to do it for self-mastery and you want to do it to understand love in a different way...
If you have some kids, you'll learn that kind of love really fast.
No doubt.
Because no matter what they do, you adore them.
No doubt.
Many ways up the mountain.
After you get married, you think you'll have an open relationship?
I know that I will.
Yeah.
I just know we may not exercise it.
And I could see periods where for years neither of us had lovers, because it isn't about the sex.
But if it came up and she said, hey, I met this guy, I'd really like to explore that, there's no part of me that could ever say, no, don't.
I'd say, yeah, don't.
If that's what your heart is called to, go for it.
And I would expect the same from her.
So while we may never exercise it after a certain point, the rules will always be, of course.
If that's something that you're really called to, you know, go for it.
You know, be in love, be happy, have fun, have pleasure.
You know, do what makes you feel well.
And that'll always be the operating rules.
Now, whether the physicality actually happens, who knows?
And we can make that decision.
So you get an idea why the Aubrey Marcus podcast is so popular.
Yeah.
You challenge your guests.
You spend a lot of time talking about how people find their purpose.
Yeah.
And the narrative, the story that you write for yourself is so vitally important.
And a lot of people are living in someone else's story.
Or they don't even know what story they're in, which is potentially really dangerous.
But what is the first step to figuring out what your real purpose is?
Yeah, you know, I have a journaling exercise that I like to have people do, and that journaling exercise is to put a date somewhere in the future, and put that date somewhere in the future, and then start the, so write a date, like maybe 2019 or 2020 or whatever, six months, a year, two years in a row, and start that journal with, my life is as good as it could possibly be.
And then write as if that was the start of your journal from the future.
And write about everything that you're doing.
Write about what you're doing in your career.
Write about what you're doing in your relationship.
Write about all the things that are happening.
And that'll give you like a snapshot of like, okay, this is what my life would look like if it was as good as it could possibly be.
This is pretty concrete.
Like I'm eating these things.
I weigh this.
I have this job.
My life is as good as it could possibly be.
I'm doing this.
I've supported this charitable organization.
I got this job.
I just got this promotion to this position.
I'm working on this book and project.
This is coming out.
Get really granular with it and give yourself a real clear idea of what you, at your absolute best, if you were to write your journal like that.
Because most of us write our journals like, oh my God, I can't believe what happened today.
I feel like shit.
I still hate them.
Yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
So most of our journals were ruminating about the bad things.
But this one, you know, hypothesized that moment when everything is just the best it could be.
And then kind of work backwards from there.
I think that's probably one of the most concrete tools that I can provide is just to help people have that vision.
Because once you see it, then you can kind of navigate towards it.
But if you haven't seen it, and you don't know what your life would look like when it's just all tens across the board, then you can't steer adequately towards it.
Aubrey, thank you very much.
The book's fantastic.
You'll recognize his handsome, well, his handsome body.
