The Hustle Ep4: Career or Love

Guys, Calvin here from Young & Wildly Successful. I hope you’re having a fantastic day. I’m on the beach at the moment in Sri Lanka. The sun is literally setting right now as I sit here record this video for you, and I wanted to record a video for everybody that’s out there at the moment in the world that is struggling to balance or even make a decision about whether or not they should be in a relationship or whether they should go after their career. It’s something that has really challenged me over the last decade.

I’ve always been highly motivated and highly driven. I’ve always wanted to be very successful, very wealthy, and I also understood that love is oxygen and without love nothing really else matters. But I see so many young people, and I speak to them, and I always ask them about all areas of life - how’s their health, how’s their career, how’s their finances, how’s their relationship with their creator or spirituality, and how’s the love in their life.

I always ask them about all of these areas, and it’s amazing to me how many people, how many particularly young people, have the metaphor, the idea, the mindset, which is…I actually remember one person saying to me, “I’m going to build my kingdom, and then I’m going to find my queen,” and I was like, “Bro, you have no idea what you’re talking about, because you don’t build the kingdom and find the queen. You find the queen, and then you build the kingdom.”

And so many young people come to my trainings and seminars and think because mom and dad separated that they can’t have a relationship and have a successful career. It’s like the two are polar opposites. It’s like I can’t possibly allocate the time and be successful in my career and also be successful in my relationships. The two just don’t go hand in hand. And I want to say that the majority of people in the world that haven’t figured out this game that’s true. You see a lot of relationships break down today. A lot of relationships break down, because they don’t balance work and their home life. And I don’t mean to say they have to be equal. They’re never going to be equal. High achievers with a passion about their careers don’t look at relationships in the same way.

But this video is really an exploration of those concepts. This video is for anyone that’s looking to be in a relationship and wants to be successful, that at some level doesn’t believe that the two have to be polar opposites, that hopes and dreams that they can be successful together. And I think what’s really important for you to understand is I’m not just talking about this in theory.

I have a multi-million dollar company. We travel around the world. Last year, I was on 64 different flights in 40 weeks, and I’ve been with the most amazing, incredible woman for the last nearly 10 years. It will be 10 years in September. So we’ve been engaged for merely eight years. So I’m not saying this out of theory. I’m saying this from real life of having to try and to juggle and balance success, career, business, attain, and a relationship and at times have that balance right and have that balance way wrong. And I’ve also seen my family separate. I’ve got quite a few key members of my family that have gone through divorces, and both my family and Cherish’s family have gone through divorces and separations trying to make this work.

It’s not a science guide. It truly is an art form, and every relationship is going to be different, and every time in a relationship’s going to be different. I can’t say the relationship I have today is going to be the same as what it is in 10 years from today. Lord knows, it’s not the same as what it was 10 years ago. But I what I will say to you is this, and this is the one thing I want you to get from this video, other than the steps, and tools, and strategies I’m going to give you is I want you to believe it’s possible. I want you to believe it’s possible to have a relationship and to have a business and a career.

I want you to believe it’s possible, because the first step before the relationship and the business work is that you have to believe it’s possible. If you don’t believe it’s possible, then it’s not going to happen, and it’s just as simple as that, like you have to come with a belief. You don’t have to know how it’s going to happen. You just have to believe it’s possible, because if you didn’t think it was possible for you to lose weight, you ain’t going to lose weight. If you didn’t think it was possible for you to drive a car, you ain’t going to drive a car. If you didn’t think it was possible for the sun to rise again tomorrow, it ain’t going to rise tomorrow, right?

Your beliefs determine your reality, and so it’s so important that as a consciousness that we believe that it’s possible that we can have both, and more importantly, you have to believe that you deserve both. You have to believe that you deserve to be successful in your life, in your business, in your career, whatever that is, and you also have to believe that it’s possible for you to have true love and happiness in your life, not just someone right now while you’re finding yourself, not just someone that is there on the side while you’re building your empire, but someone that’s going to be there with you through thick and thin, someone that really believes in your mission as much as you do, someone’s that’s going to have your back, your best friend, someone that’s going to believe in you and is going to want your success as much as they do their own.

That’s what I’m talking about, because I can tell you one thing, being with Cherish for the last 10 years and going through the challenges that we’ve gone through, both of us now running very successful businesses, and trying to keep it together has been the biggest challenge of my life, the biggest, without a shadow of a doubt, but it’s also been the very best thing in my life. And I think that’s reflective of all of the biggest challenges and of all of the great successes. So out of all the things that I’m proudest of, I’m proudest of the relationship, and out of all the things that challenge me the most, the relationship has challenged me the most.

It challenged me the most to understand this other person that I’m spending my life with. It challenged me to understand who I am in this relationship. An intimate relationship and the reason why most of us run away from them is because they’re the most confronting. They challenge us. They make us afraid of failure and of getting hurt. They cause us the highs and lows of all possible emotions, probably all at the same time, and they really cause us to become better people, and most of us are not willing to live in this space of constant and never-ending improvement. That’s why things fail.

Relationships die when the parties, both people, stop growing, and it’s very difficult for a relationship to break down when two people continue to grow together. When they can grow apart, then that’s not always a great thing, but when they grow together, it’s very important.

And so I think to start off this conversation, I want you to keep in mind that it’s vital that you continue to grow, it’s vital that you continue to get to know who you are and who your partner is. If you think that there’s nothing new in you and there’s nothing new in them, then you stop growing, and as soon as you stop growing, the relationship is dying. It’s just a matter of time.

Love today, ladies and gentlemen, when we think of all of the temptation of this world, when we think about all of the challenges of this world, it’s not enough. So many people love each other, and they stay together with love, and they have no passion, no intimacy, no life. And what’s the point? Life is not just meant to be, “I love you.” Life’s meant to be, “I love you. I worship you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and that can really truly be it,” and I say that, because I’m here living it 10 years on. That’s more than most people are married these days.

So I don’t profess to know everything about raising kids or going through the challenges of divorce or all of the challenges of someone cheating or any of that stuff. I haven’t had to deal with that stuff, and on the same token, hopefully, if you listen to what I have to say, you won’t have to go through it, either. And one of the big things that I want to share with you is this understanding that men and women have a very different idea of what time is, and they also have a different idea of what attention is.

I know, for a lot of men around the world, they’ll focus all of their attention, time, energy, and effort. They don’t really require a lot of attention from their partner. It’s nice to get it, but it’s not something that really lights them up. Whereas women, as one of my early mentors once shared, need attention all the fucking time. All the time they need attention, and it’s not because of neediness, which a lot of guys mistake. It’s actually just validation. They want the connection to be with somebody that they love. They want to know that what they’re saying matters. They have a need to express. It’s the nature of the feminine, and they just want to feel connected, and they do that through sharing.

And so a lot of guys will ask how your day went, and they’ll get this episode of war, and peace, and all the things that happened in the day at every moment, and how they felt, and what they ate, and all these things, and the guy gets asked what was his day like, and he says, “Yeah, it was good.”

Men and women communicate very, very differently. So if you’re in a position right now and you’re not communicating effectively, probably what’s happening is you want your partner to communicate the way that you want to be communicated to, and they want you to communicate the way that they want to be communicated to. And I think we make the mistake of thinking that we are the same as each other, and therefore, we want the same things. We want to receive love in the same way as we want to give love in the same ways, and we don’t.

Great book called The Six Love Language I’d encourage you to grab a hold of and have a look at, which looks at the different ways people are showing and express love, and people do this by the way and at work. We can show and express love through gift, through physical touch, through words and affirmation, through presents, through active service. These are all different ways that we can express love, and sometimes we’re gift-giving.

Now, I know I’m really big on gifts. I’m really big on active service. I love to give, give, give, and Cherish is not the same in that way. She doesn’t do active service or gifts, but she’ll do physical touch. So she’d much prefer to give me a cuddle as a way of showing me love than to take me somewhere or to buy me something. Now, if I wasn’t wise enough to understand this over the years, I would think, “Shit, I’m doing all this stuff. I’m buying her all of these things, and she’s not doing anything for me.” And she probably could turn around and think, if she wasn’t wise enough to this, “He doesn’t do anything for me. He’s not wanted to give me a cuddle, or a kiss, or something of that nature and give me back what I do.”

But the point is to understand that a lot of relationships break down because the partner, one person, says, “I’m doing all this stuff, but I’m not getting anything back.” Your partner goes, “I’m doing all this stuff, and I’m not getting anything back.” You’re doing what you guys want. You’re not doing what the other person wants, and so it’s really important to understand that you’re going to have to make a choice. You’re going to have to make a choice, what’s more important to you, your partner or your career.

And that doesn’t mean to say you have to have one or the other, but it does mean to say that you have to make a decision about what’s more important. And the ego of youth oftentimes will choose career, and the wisdom of life and consciousness, I think, would choose your partner, and that might just mean to say you don’t have the right partner yet. But I think so often we can be caught up in the work, and what I’ve come to realize is that whilst I may not have always got there faster because I was in a relationship, I always got there because I was in a relationship.

And what I mean by that is people don’t need a relationship when they’re on top of the world. It’s nice to have one, but you don’t need it, because you’re so full in your own self and life is so great. But where a relationship can be exceptional and where a relationship really stands the test of time, much like a great friendship, is not when you’re on top of the mountaintop, but when you’re at the bottom of the valley, when you’ve given all that you’ve got, and you’ve got nothing left in the tank, and you don’t think you can continue anymore.

When you are on the verge of defeat, and you’ve got someone there to give you a hold at night and to tell you that it’s going to be okay and that’d keep you going, and that says, “I believe in you,” that’s when a true relationship comes into its own, when you can be honest, and vulnerable, and equal for one another, when you can believe each other and trust in each other and back each other 100%. When you’ve got a best friend as well as a lover, I think that’s really important, because so often in life we try to do it on our own because we think we have to, and we forget that just by having someone there is the secret to success.

I wouldn’t be who I am today with what I have today with where I am today if it wasn’t for Cherish. Not that Cherish has pulled the strings at YWS or done that much at YWS - in the early days, she was hugely instrumental, today, she does very little in the company - but it’s because she’s there. It’s the conversations I can have on a night with her. It’s the discussions I can have. It’s the frustration I can vent. It’s the strategy that I’m struggling with that she helps me massage in and work at the kinks. It’s my capacity to lean on her and for her to lean on me that’s allowed us to be as successful as we are, and then also it will allow us to stand on our own two feet.

And so there’s a balancing act, and that balancing act is going to involve you working harder than you could have possibly began to imagine. Because when you think you’ve given everything you can to your business and everything you can to your relationship, one of them is going to require more from you. And don’t wish that your problems were less. Wish that you were better. If you want it bad enough, if you want the relationship bad enough, if you want the career bad enough, fight to keep it alive. If you don’t, give up now, because I promise you one will break.

And there are people in this world that are incredibly successful in business and have insane relationships, there are people in the world, and they’ve learned some really important things. One, that you’ve got to make sure that at least one of you in the relationship always holds on to the belief that you’re meant to be together.

There’s been plenty of times over the last 10 years where I haven’t had a thought Cherish and I are meant to be together. There’s been plenty of times where Cherish has wanted to leave me, and one of us has just been so stubborn, so dedicated, so committed, so present, so unwilling to see another option, and success that we stayed together. And that’s really been one of the key reasons we’ve stayed together. It’s just because the fact that we refused to give up, and when things haven’t been working, we’ve given each other space, and we’ve been willing to move forward.

One of the big things I want to encourage everyone to do is never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever to fight and to leave each other in a fight. Always make sure, have a rule, have a ritual, have a way of doing things, which is that when we fight, we always apologize, we always find a way to move forward. We never leave it overnight. I can honestly tell you there’s not been 1 night in the entire 10 years I’ve been with Cherish that we’d ever going to bed without talking to one another, not one night, not one night. There’s not been one night where I’ve ever stayed somewhere else. There’s not been one night I’ve ever had to sleep on the couch, there’s not been one night.

And the reason for that is because of the fact that we’ve been unwilling to allow the situation over bullshit most of the time to go beyond itself. We’ve always been committed to make sure that we found a way to break through whatever’s going on and just to cut through the bullshit and say, “Look, I love you. You love me. Let’s figure this out. I’m sorry. You’re sorry,” move forward, very, very important.

It’s also really important, guys, that you listen, you listen to your partner and you listen to your business. And when your business needs more help and you are giving it to the business and more attention, then your partner understands that and appreciates it. So often we can sell ourselves on the idea that we’re super busy, though, and the reality is we’re not really busy. We’re just distracted.

And so I want to encourage you to understand that…I remember listening to Gary Vaynerchuk, and he said, “The only regret that I have is that I didn’t spend more time with my wife in the first three years of our relationship because I was so busy with my business when I wasn’t really actually that busy. I was just distracted a lot of the time, and I could have spent a lot more time with my relationship than I did.” And I think your hindsight’s always 20/20, but don’t rob yourself and to think, “Oh my God, I’m building this massive vision. I’ve got to work on it all the time. I don’t have time for you.” Well, that’s bullshit. It’s just fulfilling your needs.

And I think one of the biggest things I want to share with you and I think that I’ll finish by sharing with you is this. Your energy will go to wherever you’re getting your needs, and there’s seven human needs: certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth, love, and contribution, seven human needs. And when we have those seven needs, if you’re getting more certainty, more variety, more significance, more connection from your work than you are at home, you’ll spend more time at work, and when you get more of that from your home than you do from work, you get to spend more time at home.

And relationships break down because they no longer find a way to fulfill each other’s needs. It gets boring, so it becomes too certain, there’s no more variety. And they stop growing, so there’s no more connection, and there’s no more love, and passion, and significance anymore. You don’t worship each other the way you used to.

And so I want to encourage you to understand that people cheat, people leave each other over work, not because they don’t love you anymore, it’s just because they find another way to meet their needs. It’s because you didn’t, and that’s just the truth, and I know it hurts, and I know it’s pretty harsh, but people don’t leave relationships where they fulfill everything. People don’t leave relationships where it gives them the certainty, and significance, and the stability, and the variety, and the excitement, and the passion, and the joy, and the love, and the intimacy, and all of the things they ever wanted in life the way that they want them. They don’t leave relationships like that. You don’t leave jobs like that, either, by the way. People that find a way to make it work find a way to meet their needs.

And so, guys, that’s the final thing I want to share with you, is if you’re trying to balance this work and business, it’s possible. I’m a living testimony to the fact that it’s possible. I can’t always promise you guys that I’m always going to be with Cherish, but I know, come hell or high water, we’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen, and if we can’t find a way, then we know we gave it every possible outcome. But we’re 10 years in, and the roller coaster still continues. And I’m five years into being an entrepreneur as is Cherish, and the roller coaster still continues through the highs and lows, and I promise you that it is absolutely worth the struggle. It’s worth the challenge, and I believe that you are up to it.

And I just want to encourage you to understand that your problems are never going to go away, the balancing act and the juggling act is never going to go away. It’s always going to be there. The problems never go away, but you always will become better at dealing with them if you commit yourself to learning about it, to reading the books about it, to investing in each other, to finding a way to meet each other’s needs in a way that no one else can, and to finding a way to support each other through the thick and thin of business when perhaps everyone else has almost given up.

So, guys, here on the beach of Sri Lanka, the sun has well and truly set now over the Indian Ocean, and I just want to encourage you to live strong, live with passion, to find your love in life, whether that be your purpose, your mission, yourself, and most importantly, hopefully your partner, and to spend each and every single day together loving, living, and rejoicing, because that’s really all that we have. And remember above all else, guys, remember to live life on your terms. Lots of love. Good luck, and God bless.