Becoming A Conscious Couple: Breaking Autopilot And The Top 3 Relationship Issues

Today, I sit down with Alan Lazaros and Emilia Smith — hosts of The Conscious Couples Podcast and founders of a growing movement aimed at helping people get off autopilot and build deeply intentional, growth-oriented relationships. This isn't your typical love talk. We dig into the science, psychology, and strategy behind what it truly means to be a conscious couple. Mr. Lazaros brings his engineering mind, and Ms. Smith brings years of inner work and trauma understanding, fusing their strengths into something powerful.

We break down the concept of autopilot in relationships and why most people are unaware they're operating from outdated, unconscious patterns. Ms. Smith shares clinical insights about how trauma, repetition, and social media create doom loops in our thinking—causing many to give up on great relationships before they even begin. We explore how AI is complicating matters, with some people outsourcing emotional intelligence to machines. Mr. Lazaros compares doing such to watching a robot life the weights for you and expecting muscle growth. However, both guests do not entirely oppose leveraging AI in relationships, but rather how and why a person is doing so.

In the second half of our conversation, we focus on the top three issues killing modern relationships: money wounds, mismatched love languages, and different levels of growth orientation. From there, Mr. Lazaros and Ms. Smith walk us through why these issues are so prevalent and the mindset shifts necessary to build something that lasts. We also talk about how Gen Z and Gen Alpha are facing completely different challenges than prior generations—especially when it comes to love, tech, and self-awareness.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-conscious-couples-podcast/id1609969734

Alan's Appearance: https://podcasts.apple.com/vn/podcast/taking-your-life-to-the-next-level/id1657865479?i=1000677996269

Kevin's Appearance: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/taking-your-life-to-the-next-level-ii/id1657865479?i=1000683650785

Website: https://coupleonukes.com

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*Couple O' Nukes LLC and Mr. Whiskey are not licensed medical entities, nor do they take responsibility for any advice or information put forth by guests. Take all advice at your own risk.

Transcript

 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey. Still fighting my fever. So luckily we've got two guests on today, a two guest special, so I will do minimal talking. Hopefully I'm not known for that at all. But if you're listening, not watching, I've got an excessively pink shirt on.

And that is in the theme of love because today we are gonna be talking about couples, specifically conscious couples. And so as a nuclear operator, I am putting the nuke into couple of nukes and our guests are putting the couple. Into a couple of nukes. One of them you may recognize, Alan Lazarus. He was on the show before talking about taking your life to the next level.

Today we are gonna take our relationships to the next level and to help him with that, he has brought his partner, Ms. Amelia, who helps him run the podcast. And we're gonna, Ms. Amelia, I'd love for you to go first, just 'cause you know Alan has gotten some time on the show. And then you can pass it over to him when you feel like you've said enough.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. I appreciate it so much. We appreciate it so much. We love being able to speak into the lives and in the hearts of people, especially about conscious coupling because we have love as a center point of who it is that we are, and so many of us are seeking that out.

So the conscious couples has been something that has been a very meaningful trek for both Alan and I as we speak into the hearts and the lives and the podcasts of so many human beings. So thank you for having us. And Alan, you're tired? Uh, yeah. So last time I was in the show, if anyone listening or watching is a long time listener, I apparently spilled coffee all over me.

So that's a good first impression. Now, so the Conscious Couples Podcast, the Conscious Couples Movement, the relationship talks started five years ago. It was. In October, a woman named Kate. We, we literally both had businesses at that time. We both had podcasts at that time and we were deep in our relationship at that point.

'cause we got deep very quickly when we met and we said, you know what? Let's do service Saturday. That's what we used to call it. And now we call it, uh, work all day Saturday. But in the beginning we didn't work Saturdays, not every Saturday anyways. And we called it Service Saturday and we started to coach.

People on relationships because we had communities and we noticed that people were quite frankly, very envious of the love that we shared. And they would say, I want a partner like Emilio, or I wanna partner like Alan, who spills coffee all over himself. So, uh, no, but seriously. So we started doing free, what we called relationship talks, coaching sessions every Saturday with conscious singles or conscious couples, AKA, a single or a couple that wants to get off autopilot.

That's what it means to be conscious. And back then I had a podcast called the Hyperconscious Podcast, which is if you look up Hyperconscious, you remember it. If you look up Hyperconscious, it means acutely aware. So acutely aware of what you say, think, do, feel, and believe. Acutely aware of what's going on.

Most people are on autopilot going nowhere fast. I'm not trying to be unkind, but that's facts. Look around and we said, fuck that. We want to change the world in our own unique way and share what we're, what we're experiencing. Because this relationship with Amelia is by far the best thing I've ever experienced.

And I've been in past relationships where that was not. The case, and I thought relationships kind of sucked, to be honest. And, and now I know that they can be magnificent if they are conscious and if you work on them consciously and if you're into personal development. So five years ago we started coaching individuals and couples.

Mm-hmm. And now we've done, uh, a virtual event every month for 50 months. Our 50th anniversary of relationship talks, events, virtual free virtual events every month are, is coming up this month, this month in August. August 7th. Wow. Yeah, August 20th. That's my bad. She does the events better than me. But after 50 months, I was the engineer, man.

I was the science guy, nerd, computer engineer, masters in business. I didn't understand the inner game. Well, and she has been studying this stuff quite frankly since she was like 11. So it's been unbelievable. So we bring sort of my engineering mind and her deep inner work trauma stuff, and it's been, I've learned more on the Conscious Couples podcast than I have anything else.

I do, quite frankly, partially because of how incredibly Emelia is, quite frankly, but also partially just because of how ignorant I was as an American male who was focused externally on achievement for so many years of my life. Hmm. So what it means to be a conscious couple. We get that question a lot and it's really just, you know, I was thinking about it this morning because that's a question that always comes up, but it's to be reflective and to be in the practice, the routine, the exercise, if you will, of reflecting on your relationship and being able to turn towards your partner and talk about it.

You know, you wouldn't be. It's, it's amazing how many couples don't actually check in on the health of your relationship and, you know, we step on the scale or try to avoid it, or we go to the gym or we try to avoid it, right? Relationships have a pulse and so many people are not checking in on the pulse.

So when you can be reflective and ask yourself, how's the we right doing, which is the, the me and the me together. If you're on YouTube, we've got the symbol up here. The we is a diamond. Mm-hmm. And the left is the masculine right here. And the right is the pink, which is similar to your shirt, brother.

Strong work on that. Yeah. Strong work on that by the way. Yeah. Good to go. That's awesome. I'm over here wearing black, but uh, the hole is greater than the sum of its parts. And the purpose of an intimate relationship is growth. And if that's the case, conflict becomes a good thing. So that's kind of a long intro, but yeah, that's really what it is about.

It's about how do you have a magnificent relationship and not settle for anything less. That was shorter than most of my intros on my own show. So I'll take it and I'll say, me personally, if I was naming the podcast, I would've named it. The Hyper-Conscious Podcast meets the Conscious Couple's Podcast.

We'll throw back to, uh, Alan naming, uh, when him and Kevin Palmer first, uh, named a podcast. They had quite the title there, which, uh, I wanna. I wanna get into a few things, uh, talking about balance and stuff, and I have some awesome questions that I've just thought of now, but I wanna circle back to the autopilot.

Alan, you mentioned people are on autopilot and I want to kind of define, explore that a little bit. What is this autopilot? Obviously we've got the subconscious and the conscious, but also how much of the autopilot is influenced by social media, by childhood trauma, by what you witnessed your parents and their relationship, and is the autopilot fluid, is it constantly changing or is it pretty, you know, kind of rigid?

How does that work? From a clinical perspective? She can probably answer that better than me from a practical perspective. I'll use an example that I think is tangible, so. I got in a car accident. Your listeners know this if they listen to the other episode. I got in a car accident when I was 26. That was a head-on collision, and it got me to sort of question my whole life.

It was my existential quarter life crisis, sort of the second chance my dad never got in 1991. My birth father John McCorkle, my stepfather was Steve Lazarus. That's why it's Alan Lazarus. That's a whole nother story. But my birth father John McCorkle, died in a car at 28 years old in 1991 when I was three, two, almost three.

When I got in my car accident at 26, I reflected on my past. I re-watched the movie of my own life. I got off autopilot essentially, and I called all the people from my past and I asked them for feedback. Now be careful who you call. I was naive and I thought everyone had good feedback for me, and I got ripped a new one a few times.

Yeah. But one person in particular, my ex-girlfriend, her name was Alyssa, this was my girlfriend from. Late high school to early college. So that was a shit show of a time, but we, we sort of fell in love in a hopeless place, so to speak. And. I called her up and her and I still get along today. She's happily married and you know, seems to have done very well for herself, but her parents were tough and I had a tough upbringing, so we were trauma bonded for sure.

In hindsight, called her up and I asked her, I said, what did you notice about me? I had this list of questions. You know, I was big into Tony Robbins and personal development. I had a list of questions, what's going on here? But she said, one thing I noticed about you, Alan, is you and your family never ever talked about your dad.

She spent four and a half years in my life and that was a crazy four and a half years from basically 17 and a half to, you know, 21 and 22 almost. And she said, you and your family would never go anywhere near your dad, John McCorkle. And I, after that moment of hearing that, I reflected on it. I went, that's true.

Like we don't touch that subject. We never talk about my dad, and now I do all the time, you know, on podcasts. And you look at your hero's journey and you, you reflect back and sort of the lion king's a good metaphor I think for my life. Stepdad, father dies, you know, kind of escape my past and then go back, you know, home and, and become the man I'm meant to be sort of thing.

It's a good metaphor for me, but I was on autopilot avoiding the trauma of my dad's death. Without even knowing it. And so what it means to get off autopilot is to be existential. Amelia and I are existentialists, and if you look that up, it's just a fancy word for you, question everything all the time, which is.

Hard to do because most people just wanna like, eat, drink, have fun, enjoy your, like, that's just stupid, in my opinion, to be honest, you, you gotta, you've gotta question yourself and you gotta question the world, and you gotta question belief systems. The only wrong answer, in my opinion, is to stop questioning.

Because all of us can look back to 5, 10, 15 years ago, and we were so unintelligent in comparison. And if you look back 5, 10, 15 years ago and you were the same as you are now you're in some serious trouble. It means you're not growing. So that's what it means to get off autopilot. We have a conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind.

And the unconscious mind is driving a lot of the time, and that's literally autopilot. And so what you gotta do is get off autopilot and, and start captaining your own life. And I'll, I'll add, so one of the things that I love to talk about on the subject, it's a great question because the autopilot, when when we actually start to do what I call growth math, we think about how like we think about our thinking as a conscious couples.

You're doing some of that metacog, what am I thinking about as I talk about. Relationship or as, as we connect together. And the growth math essentially breaks down to, depending on how active your brain is, you have between 12,000 and 90,000 thoughts per day. Right? And everyone's on a different spectrum of hyperactivity in their brain.

But if you go to the, the unconscious, you, you really start to pick that apart. You recognize 75% of those thoughts that you have every single day are in fact negative. And so when, when you look at that and then you zoom out and you're like, wait a second. How many times am I having that negative thought per day?

Usually what, what the latest research shows is 95% of our thoughts are actually repetitive. So we're repeating negative thought patterns at all times, and that's happening in our unconscious. And so when, when we look at it from more of like a clinical lens. What if you had a, a big T trauma, like something Alan mentioned with your dad dying?

What happens when you have these relationships and you have your history and so much of that history with, with relationships defines who you are as a human being, and then that starts to kinda seep into your unconscious mind and then you start to operate. From that place with your relationship, and then all of a sudden you have the social media feed that gets all this data about what it means to be a couple, or what it means to be a man, or what it means to be a woman.

Like all of these bits of information influencing your unconscious mind. Yeah, you are quite literally operating just based on your unconscious thought patterns. And so turning that autopilot off what we found with conscious couples. Is really taking a, a second to take a step back and recognize, I've ha I have, I've had a past, this past is gonna influence who I am today in the relationship.

And maybe I don't wanna have the rule book that maybe my parents had in relationships. Maybe I don't wanna have the rule book that my past partner, when I was in, um, high school, we ended. Kind of operating by, and so that's something that has been incredibly fascinating as we look at couples and especially the younger couples that do have social media feeds all the time being curated.

That help their thoughts just continue down these negative thought spirals. One of the things that we see a lot of times, um, is called the doom loop, where people have these thought patterns that are negative and then they don't believe in their ability to actually have a great relationship. And so what happens when you're in the doom loop of that you don't.

Invest in it, right? You won't maybe go and, and explore alternative ways of communication or working through your trauma instead of bringing those red flags into a relationship. And so I think that this is a really exciting time for relationships and it's so exciting for, for people like you who, who wanna have these conversations because it helps all of us take that autopilot off.

Yeah. And I don't wanna play the older card, but I, I, I'm curious as to how old you are because I. When I was your age, I wasn't taught any of this. No. So, in a way, her and I are truly jealous because we, I couldn't find a fucking role model that knew any of this. Yeah. You can't just, yeah. Yeah. I wanna have a conversation with this person.

Yeah. Have 'em on their podcast like that. So how old are you, brother? 23. Yeah, so when I was 23, I, I didn't really understand a lot of what we've already shared. And at 36 now. Going on 87. I'm kidding. 30 going on 90. Yeah, exactly. So, uh, we're the oldest young couple you'll ever see hoping to hit puberty by 37 old?

No, but it is. Seriously, when I was 23, I wasn't, I wasn't contemplating why I drank so often. I drank, I drank a lot 'cause I grew up around. It, it wasn't a choice, it wasn't a conscious choice. It was, it was enculturation and it was conditioning and it was environment and it was, the people in my life also wanted me to, it's, it's, some of it was to escape and, and belong because I feel like intellectually I was always a little too much for people, so I would dial myself down to try to fit in, but that's what existential and hyper-conscious and a conscious couple does.

They, they question themself and others. So that they can change their themselves and, and improve their life. Mm-hmm. Last piece, I, in high school, everybody would come up to me. I worked at a golf course. I was a cart kid and a busboy. And if you've ever been on a golf course, there is some men with egos who, yeah.

I don't know if you know my family and where I came from. Yeah. Uh, and, and so it was really fucking terrible, honestly. And I didn't realize they would come up to me. They'd say, Alan, these are the best years of your life. My stepdad had just left. Uh, my mom had just, you know, had challenges with that. Got in a fight with my Aunt Sandy and, and we got kind of ostracized from her side of the family.

My, my sister just moved out and I, my, you know, my birth father had died, so I remember thinking like, God, I hope not, and I knew they were wrong. High school might have been the best years of your life because you obviously haven't gotten any better Dingus Jones. Right? It's not his real name. I just made that up.

But the truth is, most people, those people were on autopilot. In hindsight, we're actually gonna go and get dinner at the golf course that I used to work at and, and just go back and see what it's like to be this version of me in that same environment because I was a kid who was very impressionable and, and didn't, didn't understand how full of shit people were.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I get that. The Allen 3.6. Going to the golf course as, as you say, I think it's interesting just looking at like, I know for me, I, I am on the younger side, but I also know that because of my traumatic childhood and then going into the military and then podcasting. That I have aged a lot faster.

I never really felt like a kid to begin with, and I was always a very intellectually curious person. Mm-hmm. I will say podcasting, definitely spread it up because everyone I spend my time with is much older than me. Uh, you know, they say you're like the sum of the five people around you and, uh, my five people are always some different podcast guests, but they're always someone.

Uh, much further ahead in life and it's kind of propelled me along as well. What I will say, it's interesting, you look at, like you say, you have one gentleman who grew up reading Nicholas Sparks and, and classic romance literature and watching those movies, and then you have another gentleman who grew up watching pornography and all this sexualized social media content and music, and looking at how that affects their outlooks.

On relationships, because I've seen that a lot in the Gen z, gen alpha generations who are constantly inundated with sexualized content, not just pornography, which average age of exposure is eight to nine years old. But just music videos, commercials, like there's a lot of, you know, I won't name names.

There's a lot of sexualized commercials trending right now that are being discussed. Right. And it's interesting how that changes that kind of, that autopilot course in life. And one thing that's. I beginning to influence relationships, which I know I've listened to some of y'all's show, but I haven't seen every episode.

So I don't know if you've covered this topic or not, but it's definitely something I want to continue to cover on this show, which is the integration of AI into relationships. We've seen people who are uploading their partners text messages. Into chat g, PT or other AI software and forming their answers or analyzing things.

Yeah. And I will never have AI write my texts or emails, you know, uh, maybe some business stuff helping me out there. That's fine, but. I am, I, like, one of my friends shocked me the other day. Like, he showed me a text and he was like, Chad, GBT wrote this and, and, and he's trying to fix this relationship with his sister.

I said, that has to come from the heart. And now I'll always be a, a big proponent of that. You know, human connection is, is about the heart and human spirit, right? Which AI doesn't have it can mimic it, it can really seem like it. Right. What do y'all think about, you know, AI coming into play? Is that kind of.

Affecting the autopilot? Is it replacing it with an even more strong autopilot that's even harder to resist? I mean, I don't know if y'all have kind of experienced this or dabbled into this subject at all. We, we are so excited. Yeah. The most tech nerds. We, I thought you'd never asked. We, yeah, I didn't, we'd ever be asked about this.

So, and we're both tech nerds, like to the nth degree that we probably, I've seen Allen's degree open up the guy literally like, yeah. I go first. Thank you. No, it's ladies first go. So. Actually, it's so fascinating because this past weekend, Alan and I had spent some time at my family's lake house and we had spent some time with a 14-year-old.

He just so happens to be a step cousin of mine, and we were quite literally having this conversation around dinner table. The dinner table. Alan wasn't present for this, but it, it was right at the tail end of your meeting. We were having dinner and the 14-year-old was trying to articulate to my parents who are in the Gen alpha, uh, gen X, gen X.

Generation. So I quite literally had, I'm a millennial, gen X, and then you have a 14-year-old talking about, you mentioned gen alpha, so there's boomer, there's builder boomer, gen X, millennial, gen Z, and then Gen Alpha. Yes. And then after that, I believe is now Gen beta. Yeah. Yep. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so with word, yeah.

Would that being, like you said you're 87, like you're feeling it now, right. Dude. I, Jen Beta, what are we doing here? I would never want to be called that big person label. No. Hey, it's all good. So what? And I'm so sorry to interrupt, love, but I need to learn here. What are the ages for that? Well, I thought I was a millennial my whole life, and then I got flamed online that I was a Gen Z.

So yeah, you're Gen Z, so I know millennial, so I know builder. Builder is 80 plus. Boomer is, you know, 60 to 80. And again, I'm paraphrasing, you know, you can chat. GPT, this, which to my answer, it's chat g PT is good for learning. AI is good for learning, not for replacing, and that's a different conversation.

Hmm. But builder is from 80 to 100. Let's just say Boomer from. You know, 50 to 70? Uh, no, no, it's actually 60 to 80 I think. And then anyone who's like 45 to 55 is technically Gen X. 'cause I know Christina, my COO, she's Gen X, she's right on the edge of millennial. I think she's 43. Mm-hmm. Millennials are basically, you're the cutoff.

You're barely a millennial, right? Yeah. So it's 30 to basically 45 type of thing. And then everything below that I thought was Gen Z. Now there's gen Alpha and gen beta, so I'm gonna have to do some research. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So why I mentioned that was because ultimately there's three generations at the table, and it was a war between my mother trying to say, who like is not a techie at all, but thinks she is the worst.

She's trying to tell this 14-year-old that AI is helpful and good around communications. They're having this dialogue and he was like, I'm not interested in it. I, I don't think that it's good. I personally just think that like having your authentic mind to kind of chew on things is actually really good.

And it was so wild because I'm more on this side of the fence in terms of your question, like bring your authenticity into relationships. And I also see what my mother's saying, who's just a newbie when it comes to technology and seeing some of the benefits of ai. And so it was fascinating. And to, to answer your question, I think that there is so many benefits that AI and technology will continue to bring us in relationships at helping us understand ourselves at a deeper level, helping us understand the world at a deeper level, helping us understand each other at a deeper level.

I don't think that that's ever not gonna be the case. However, to Alan's point, I do not believe it is any substitute for being your own authentic self in relationship. And the scariest thing right now is that the younger generations to what you're, you know, experiencing with some of your friends are really blurring the lines and they don't have that quote unquote limiter as to like, where is that line?

And so you'll have younger couples and I have a 19-year-old client, so she's in that bucket and we're talking about this too, where, where, so she would be Gen Z or Gen Alpha 19. She's, I believe, gen Alpha. I think so. Do you know, I'll have to double check that. I have no idea. Yeah. I try to just see people as people, and I know that each generation has different traits and uh, issues that they're facing.

Yeah. But a lot of the stuff like ai, for example. Is affecting everyone. Now, the Gen Z and gen alphas are using it a lot more, obviously, but there are plenty of people I know in the older generations who are using it as a replacement. Right. I mean, and it's not just replacing what you're saying, but to the point that some people, especially in Gen Z and Gen Alpha, I mean they have online AI chat bots.

For, for sexual encounters, for relationships, and they have, you know, these virtual girlfriends and stuff, and I've done episodes on my show dedicated to how it affects social interaction. Because in a relationship you can't, and you shouldn't want to change your partner, right? Uh, there's difference between, you know, compromising and agreeing on stuff.

And they completely changed them. With ai, you fully customize your, your chat, GBT or whatever it is, you say, Hey, you're this way, this way, this way. And I've talked about how. Children growing up on that are gonna get to a point where they have to work with others and they're like, why You can't change others.

Right. You have to be able to work. But AI creates this idea of just, I can change everything around me to how I want it. It's very like me. Yeah. Instead of the we. It's, it's not the we, it's me and my AI that I control, not the. Yeah, if I can jump in real quick. Go ahead. I guess the last thing that I'll say on that is that like there is, um, when you look at the research behind how that changes our neurochemistry around how we relate to others.

There is a breakdown of that and yeah, and it is. What do you mean by that? There there's a, you can either have regenerative cells working to build skills that help you relate to one another, or degeneration of specific cells, neurochemically speaking. Wow. That rearrange your entire physiology and how you interact.

And on the surface we see it as. Maybe someone being socially dysfunctional, but underneath those cells are degrading because they're not exercising them. Yeah. Just like if you were to go to the gym, the muscle cells are regenerating. And so as a result of this topical usage and not trying to, to change things or trying to collaborate or trying to influence those skills, instead of just sitting back and saying, I'm gonna customize my, my girlfriend or my avatar.

Right. And, and putting air quotes for anyone here that's, that's, um, listening, it's, it's degenerating. Specific cells and neurochemistry that we have right there for our usage. So it's like going to the gym and having a robot lift the weights for you. Yeah, right. You're not gonna, not gonna build muscle that way.

And I'm sorry to interrupt you, but this is, it's a beautiful analogy. Yeah. You and I love this topic. So I have a client who's 31, and I'll keep it anonymous. And he is dating and we have something called a dating flywheel. And it's, it's basically just the basic steps you have to take to meet people and figure out if they're a good fit.

It's nothing negative, it's not. Pick up or any bullshit. And he came to me and I was like, do you mind if I see the conversation? I'm trying to help this guy. Right. I'm a little bit like hitch in that health, wealth and love is what I help my clients with. I'm a business coach, but we do some other stuff too.

And he's obviously wildly lonely 'cause anyone in my coaching program is 'cause they're basically just focused on their goals completely. But anyways, so he's like, can you help me? You know, in relationships, obviously that's something we do. Yeah, of course. And he shows me this conversation he's having with this woman.

And I'm like, brother, you didn't write this. Hmm. And he's like, no, I, Chad, CPT helped me. Oh gosh. And Right. Okay. So Elia hasn't heard this yet. Oh. So I said, brother, it's a fucking supplement. Yeah. It's not a replacement. Listen, I love chat, GPT. It helps me learn so well. It is a tool. An ax can build a house or it can kill someone.

Mm-hmm. It is a tool that you're supposed to use to become better. At the end of the day, we all need to wake up and realize principles are what matters. The principle is this. I can't have a robot lift the weights for me and still get the benefits of self-esteem and self-confidence and self-efficacy and self-belief and skill acquisition.

Human beings have neurochemical abilities to adapt to our what we do, say, think, feel, and believe. And if you have chat, GPT, writing your posts, you're not getting better. You might be getting better at getting it to be better, but that's not the same as you actually lifting the weights yourself in this metaphor.

So at the end of the day, I get fired up because there's a study that was done at MIT where they showed people who use chat, GBT, who overuse chat GBT, and they're actually getting dumber. Yeah. Their brain cells are act like that. Hundred percent. And, and I'm homegrown organic man. Like I, I grew up in a terrible environment.

I had a lot of adversity. I had to fail forward. I never would've been with Emelia. If I didn't fail forward for 30 years trying to figure this thing out, and I, there's something to be said for failing forward. The quick fixes of pornography. Listen, Netflix is awesome. I love it. We watched a movie last night.

We're simulating these characters, growth and development. We're mentally and emotionally present with the characters. It's called the Warrior King. Uh, the woman king. The woman the woman king. Yeah. Unbelievable film. It's fucking awesome. But. We are on the couch simulating the emotions and the mental cognitive stuff that Woman King developed and grew and developed skills and tackled challenges and fought for what she believed in.

When we leave the couch, yeah, we're recovered a bit 'cause we're relaxing, but we're not any better. I think movies can inspire you. I think it's a tool. Not a replacement. You still have to be on your own hero's journey. You can't just read books and escape. You can't watch Harry Potter grow and develop.

You have to, you have to grow and develop yourself. And just like video games too, same deal. I used to play Diablo two and you level up from one to 99. Next Level U is the name of my company Next Level University. So I would get these characters to level 99. And they'd have dexterity and vitality and mana and all this stuff, and barbarian and paladin and sorcerers and all this stuff.

But when I left the virtual world, I was still a regular kid. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It did help me with strategic thinking. It did help develop my mind. Competitive, gaming's important, but God, I could have developed myself better. Yeah. And, and the, what I'll add to that is like. One of the things when we look at it from an even bigger context is that no one's addressing if they're just in a, me, me, me circle, customizing their feeds.

Algorithms are being customized to help, um, tap into their urges emotionally. They're not ever facing any fears and facing fears in an actual real world dating world. When you're connecting with men or women or whomever, that is a really important level of actual like cognitive and emotional and social development that we need as human beings in the longer term of our life.

Right? Uh, it's just very concerning. And then when you add the layer in the context of who their parents are and how much their parents. Usually the younger generation are millennials and how much there's no inhibition around gluing to technology. Yeah. You don't have the parents of maybe, let's say we can give the boomer generation great credit at this of like.

Pushing us into those arenas that encourage those skill development. Now, how, how the boomers is a little different, a little hard, a little hardcore, but get outside the Magen millennial generation isn't necessarily, you know, and I can't broad brush, but like the, the parents of these younger individuals aren't necessarily getting that push into the, the fear zone outside of their comfort zone.

And that's an even bigger concern because there's no accountability, right? So. These conversations, unless you look for it, they're not gonna be curated on one's feed because it's literally the antithesis of developing. So, yeah. Last thing I'll say, we'll move on from this topic. I know we gotta go in 17 minutes.

I, I would say this, if I stayed the nerdy video gamer, there's no chance I could be with Emelia Smith. I had to grow and develop as a man. And the only way that you do that is you get out into the world and you fail forward. You make mistakes. You own your mistakes, you learn from them, and you develop real skills that actually scale.

And you can't do that just on the internet, and you can't do that when cha PT is writing your fucking. Texts. So I told him, and I, I love this client. His name's Andrew. He's the man. And I said, brother, it's a supplement. Learn from it. Hey, what, what's she really mean with this? Because she's messing with him a bit, babe.

Like she's doing the thing. And yeah, you can learn about why can't, psychology keeps referring to women. Why aren't, why doesn't she just tell me what she really thinks, brother? That ain't vulnerability. Yeah, that ain't vulnerability. That ain't the world we live in. Used, I said, he's like, seriously? Because he, he unpacked one of the texts.

He, he showed it to me and I said, well, what she's really saying is this, this, this, this, this, and this. He's like, but you would only know that 'cause you've gotten the skills in the real world, not because you're simulating some ai. Right. And that's so important. But, so my point is, is that he can put the text into chat GPT to help him interpret it, and then he needs to think of a thoughtful response from the heart.

Wager is gonna get more important in the future as all this stuff proliferate. And I would wager he needs to have a step of being like, why did this ana, like the ANA analysis that's here, why did this generate this output? Yeah, exactly. What am I missing in my consciousness? Yeah. What am I missing in my dataset of awareness around human beings of women?

The, the psychology, emotional connection. What am I. Not yet learned about enough so that I didn't have the skillset to analyze and generate this understanding that chat GPT has helped me now have, and a lot of people are not doing that. They're not doing the, what was I missing from my data set about people, about relationships, et cetera, et cetera.

What lack of skillset do I have to deduce what she actually is saying, right? Like, and that only comes by the skillset of reflecting and that's why. Conscious coupling, that is the practice, right? If you're not reflecting, you cannot gain those gold wisdom, insights, and it's just because when you're on a date, you're not gonna be able to say, one second, hold on, let me get my ai, can you?

It's like Google translator. Hold on. My AI needs to translate what you're actually saying to me so that you and I can bond. It's like, no, that can't happen. It's a tool not, and a supplement, not a replacement. That's, that's the end. Yeah. Great question. Thank you. Thank you. For sure. There's a lot that I wanna address there, but I do want to move on just for the sake of time.

I know Allen is one of those guys. He counts every second in the back of his head 'cause he knows like he's doing math and engineering over there. He can help himself. But what I wanna move on to just because, uh, your show covers a lot of topics in, you know, dating and relationships from taking things too personally to expectations, that kind of stuff.

Right here, what I'd love to share is between one and three, uh, you know, out of all the clients you've coached through relationships, both couples and individually, what would you say are some of the biggest relationship issues, kind of the most reoccurring, uh, that you've noticed? Like any patterns? Yeah.

Uh, go ahead. LI would say the first one that is ranks as the number one is the money wounds. Everyone has money wounds, and everyone has trauma when it comes to money and finances and wealth and math and designing their own future based on the capital that they have. You and I just did a beautiful episode about how one of the Con 25 conscious level languages is money, and it's not necessarily that someone might value money, but they might value what's connected to that, which is time freedom, which is the horsey farm, which is whatever it is, right?

And while two people might not have the same quote unquote mindset around money, that ends up becoming such a something that is the undercurrent of so many couples and their contention and their misalignment because it's so much about how they go and achieve in the world. And it's connected to so many things, but it's the sneaky thing that runs underneath the radar with couples.

Yeah, the work that we've done over five years, if we don't bump up until like, until that or Alan and I are encouraging to open up that can of worms, people will avoid that like the plague because there's so many uncomfortable feelings around money. So that, that's what I would say is the number one, even though it's not as obviously glaring.

Irene Amelia, we were driving home from lunch one time with a couple and we were talking about what is your relationship with money? Hmm. And I have a client who I'll keep anonymous. Do first names. His name's David. I think it's important to do first names. His name's David. And he said, dude, I'm not that money motivated 'cause I'm trying to help him in his career.

And I said, brother, okay, I hear you. I'm with you. You're, and that's okay. Yeah, exactly. And here's the thing. You want a new truck? You want a bigger home? You want. To go on these trips. All of those costs something. What is that something? He's like money. I'm, I'm joking that that was, that was hypothetical.

But I am getting him to see like, you don't care about money directly. No one's like, oh, I want more money. They want something. Money provides. We don't trade chickens for horses anymore. Like some people do. The Amish do. That's all fine. You guys wanna trade pigs for cows? That's fine. That's not how it works in the 21st century typically.

Now it's numbers on a screen in a bank account, and no one knows the banking system. And I do. And I've been studying finance my entire adult life, and this stuff always came easy to me. I can't walk into a Panera bread without seeing their profit and loss statement. Definitely invest in Panera, by the way.

Seriously. But anyways, um. Delicious bread bowls. Mm. Yeah. Uh, we are personally their biggest customers, but, uh, the, the truth of the matter is, is that your relationship with money is always going to be a point of contention. If I'll, I'll give you this example. My business partner, he is Kevin, he's been on your show extremely.

Kevin Premier, shout out never quickly. Yeah. Shout out to Kevin, my man, Kevin. Awesome with. Making money. Really good at making it great at sales, great at growing the business. Dude. Fucking terrible at not spending money. Every human being has. One of the three things about money that they're really good at.

His wife, on the other hand, really good at saving it. Mm. Terrible at investing it. She doesn't know how to invest Darren with love. Okay. And, and, and they never had certain conversations before they got married about money. And that has held them back tremendously. Now they are having those conversations now.

And Kev, if you're listening. Love you brother. You guys are doing great. But when I realized, I said, listen, you gotta know your numbers. So you mentioned me. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, quarters, years, decades, lifetime. Even just that in my head, 24 7, 365. We've got 10 minutes, 21 seconds on the clock before our next meeting.

Yes, I'm outta my mind. We know, but the truth is, it's better than not knowing your numbers. So for sure, to her point, finances play a major role in every relationship. And it's one of the top reasons people get divorced, and it's because they didn't talk about it up front and they didn't get better together with it.

Emil and I are building our dreams together, and that requires a little thing we call shmoney, sch and service. There's indirect. There's direct, there's where you invest it. There's, you know, you can't have one partner buying a bunch of stuff with your money and then not build resentment. It's just a thing, right?

So, um, yeah, we need to call a spade a spade. So that's, I, I agree with her. I would say that's number one. Um, number two would be, we have something called the 25 Conscious love languages. If you've ever heard of Gary Chapman's work, he has the five Love Languages. We have 25 and I have, we just did an episode on this yesterday.

I have never, it's not out yet. I have never met a couple in the last five years of coaching couples every week for five years. I have never met a couple who doesn't have a mismatch. Mm-hmm. Including us. I, when we first got together, she loves adventures and she loves nature. I love my dark office focus sessions.

And, and that's not gonna work. So we are gonna have to travel and work while traveling. And so now we've, we've, I remember Kev integrated, you know, I said, I, I told Kev, um, that adventure is one of our. Core values together. He said, bullshit. I was lying to myself. I wanted to fit in with her and I didn't want that to be a mismatch.

And, and it was, quite frankly, and she's more of an adventurer and I can get on board for sure, as long as it's fitness related, but. Uh, I think that everyone has a mismatch. That's number two. So number one is money, and number two is the conscious love languages. Everyone is missing each other in at least one love language, if, if not several.

Yeah. And then three minutes to do the third and final one before quick outra. The, the third one is what we've noticed that very few people would pick up on. Is the fact that there's always one partner that has a higher, what we call growth orientation nice than the other. Mm. So if you have a fixed mindset, you think that you cannot change, and that's that.

And that impacts every single area of your life unconsciously. So you don't invest in things, you don't try to get better in your relationship, et cetera, et cetera. And then there's the other hand, which is that growth mindset for those people that don't know is, is you believe in your ability to get better and it's gonna just take some effort, right?

And so any. We said this earlier, any challenge that happens to come up in a relationship, you see that now as an opportunity Conflict doesn't mean that you have a bad relationship. Conflict means that actually you guys are growing together instead of apart, because most people would just slide that underneath the rug and it wouldn't come up.

And so one partner will have a higher growth orientation, IE, they're more inclined to their growth mindset and invest in the relationship, invest in themselves, invest in the future. And then you have one partner that's like stuck in the mud and that is really struggling and or they might have a growth mindset.

But they're just very slow with it. They take their time reading books and they're not necessarily, um, willing to take as much messy action as maybe their partner. And that comes back down to a thing called risk aversion, right? Not every, every couple has the same risk level or risk tolerance, because that requires you going outside of your comfort zone, outside of that comfort zone as your anxiety zone, and outside of that anxiety zone can be a trauma zone.

So Alan and I as. High growth-minded individuals with high levels of growth orientation. We put ourselves in what other people would have, uh, be their trauma zone. We are constantly chasing after and learning and developing, growing. And for some people that would literally be traumatizing to them. Yeah.

To live a day in our shoes. And some couples have a totally different dynamic in that. And usually that's never. Like unearthed. And so that's one of my favorite things that we unearth in the conscious couples with people because we'll see it all over a couple. They'll come in and we can tell immediately who has one of them is being dragged there.

Yeah. One of them actually wants to be there. Yeah. And then I have to convince the one who got dragged here, usually the man, fine. You're gonna be okay. Yeah. One, one. Uh. Man who got dragged to one of the calls. Apparently I heard this at the grapevine from one of her clients. He said, how exactly is Barbie and Ken gonna help us with our relationship?

Us? Yeah. That's funny Also, uh, you need it brother? So, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, last piece, growth orientation. I had an ex who quite literally, she said this playfully, but many a truths said in jest. So she said, dating you is like dating a fucking StairMaster. And the truth is, your ex would've said the same shit.

I mean for sure. Like we are never gonna stop. And I think of that. I'm like, nah. That's what I'm saying. The GLAD is not just me. I feel better now, brother. It's, it's, she was wanted to enjoy and whatever. And I'm growth baby. Next level, next level, next level, next level. There, there. I'm a striver, not an arriver.

We're not done. We were like 26. 25 we're not done. What are we doing here? The truth is, in hindsight, she's a sweetheart. I, I adore that person and she had already achieved all her dreams. She wanted to be a nurse, she wanted to be per diem. All this stuff, she had achieved all of her dreams. Mine were just getting started and it all depends on self-belief.

The higher your self-belief, the higher your goals, the higher your goals, the higher your standards in the present have to be, and the more of a pain in the ass you'll be to your social life. Facts. Yeah. Facts. Cool. All right. Well, because just a time crunch. Uh, you know, I'm gonna have obviously your podcast and description below, along with your episode of Next Level University with on my show and Kevin Palmer.

But also, how can people contact you if they've heard this and they say, you know what? Maybe our relationship is struggling. How should they reach out to you? Should it be through the podcast, a different website? How should they get in contact with you? It's a great question in Instagram. DM first for me.

Yeah, for sure. Evolve with Amelia and then my email. Email at or amelia@theweuniversity.com. email@email.com. And uh, I have a client that is coming to mind. She literally heard the podcast through some, like a platform like this. She sent me a DM and now they've, we've, we've coached them for. I don't know, six months.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And shout to Heather. Yeah. Now they're clients and it's just amazing the transformation. They were on the brink of a complete five year split up, and now they're like madly in love, ready to like just build their life together. And that's because they sent a dm. So we are one DM away.

Yeah. So what was your handle? You, uh, evolve with Emelia. Okay. Evolve with Emelia. Mm-hmm. E uh, E-M-I-L-I-A. Nice. She go, she went quick with it. Yeah. So Evolve with Amelia, all one word. I'm a Lazarus 88 A-L-A-Z-A-R-O-S 88. You'll put all that in the show notes. Make it easy for everybody. Chat. GPT will do your job for you.

I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Um, no, but real quick. DM on Instagram, it will actually be us. It will not be a chatbot. It will actually be us. It. Your AI agents and the Conscious Couples podcast on YouTube is probably the best bet for free value that. I don't wanna say you won't get anywhere else, but I'm starting to feel like I can say that because it's very unique.

I haven't, some of the stuff we talk about is just not talked about and it will change your life. It won't be fun. We're not gonna entertain you. We're not a couple clowns up here, but I mean, we are funny here and there. Yeah, yeah. Maybe. Yeah, for sure. But argument, it's just, it's just gonna help your life.

It's not gonna be enjoyable. You're gonna have existential. Conversations in your head going and if, but if you want to flourish and be madly in love, this is the podcast that will do it. It's not pretty. You're gonna have to face some hard truths about yourself and about life, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be super helpful.

So worth it. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for having us. This was awesome. Of course. And, and thank both of y'all for coming on and I'll probably have you on again because we did not reach. Much of what I wanted to talk about, but that's perfect. Uh, always, always glad to have y'all on again, so thank you for your time today.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you brother. And we'll come back anytime. Definitely. Yeah. We'll come back anytime. Definitely. Thanks man.