Yung Pueblo is a meditator and New York Times best-selling author. He has sold over 1.5 million books worldwide, and online he has an audience of 4 million people. His writing focuses on the power of self-healing, creating healthy relationships, and the wisdom that comes when we truly work on knowing ourselves.
What’s the big idea?
We often carry our past into our present in ways that are counterproductive to happiness and connection. Until we attend to our inner baggage, our personal and relational well-being will suffer from the pressure of our repressed struggles. Through personal growth and healing, we can create new harmony in our most important bonds. In this way, caring for your own inner peace will result in a greater gift of love for the people you care about most.
Below, Yung shares five key insights from his new book, How to Love Better: The Path to Deeper Connection Through Growth, Kindness, and Compassion. Listen to the audio version—read by Yung himself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Real healing is possible.
I immigrated from Ecuador to America with my family when I was four years old and grew up in poverty, watching my parents struggle to make ends meet. This instilled a deep anxiety and fear in me that I thought I’d have to live with forever. I avoided it in college by socializing, partying, drinking, and doing drugs- anything to not feel the discomfort of those heavy emotions. After nearly losing my life to these distractions, I realized this was not how I wanted to live.
Slowly, I started being radically honest with myself, admitting that this underlying tension was controlling my actions. I heard about Vipassana meditation through a close friend and did my first 10-day silent meditation course in 2012. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, and I wanted to quit many times. But I made it through and learned something that changed my life forever: real healing at the deepest level of the mind is possible.
In Vipassana meditation, I found a practice that helps me release the tension in my mind and live a more calm, harmonious, and enjoyable life. With my two-hour daily practice and intermittent silent courses (now up to 45 days long), I continue to see the results of this healing practice in my own life. I still experience anxiety and fear, but they are not as strong or overwhelming as before, and there is a new element of calm that wasn’t there before.
Finding and using a healing practice is the real work. Becoming aware of your emotional history is one thing, but changing it is another. Once you see your knots, you must then untangle them. The best way to do this is by picking up an established practice that already helps many people. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Find something that meets you where you are, aligns with your intuition, and helps you take tangible steps forward.
For me, it is Vipassana meditation, but there are many different forms of meditation that can bring good results, or different forms of therapy, spending time in nature, journaling, and many other practices that can help. Find one that is challenging but not overwhelming and apply yourself to it.
2. Inner peace spreads to all facets of your life.
The new peace I gained from meditation was not confined to my mind. It spread to every aspect of my life, increasing my creativity and productivity and improving all my relationships—especially my relationship with my wife, Sara, who I’ve known for over 17 years. We were shocked that finding and applying a tool that helps one let go of attachments also helped us love each other better, argue less, and enjoy life more.
When Sara and I met in college, we felt an instant connection, but we didn’t know how to care for that love. We didn’t yet know that even when a connection is strong you still have to intentionally learn how to love each other well. We would argue often, throwing our internal tension, stress, and irritation on each other, wanting to make it the other’s fault when we didn’t feel good inside. We couldn’t take responsibility for our own bad moods and tried relentlessly to drag the other down into the heaviness we felt in our minds.
“Personal inner work is the great game-changer in a relationship.”
We didn’t yet know that we each needed to individually understand our own emotional history and behavioral patterns. Personal inner work is the great game-changer in a relationship. It has the power to create a new era of understanding and skillful behavior that will encourage a deeper and more joyful union. If you do not acknowledge the way your past has shaped you, you will continue repeating the same defensive and survivalist reactions you used back then. If your past remains unconscious, it will seep into your relationship in ways that block you and your partner from having the best union possible. Only after you see yourself clearly can you develop new habit patterns that are more conducive to supporting your happiness and your partner’s.
3. Attachments block the flow of love.
Forcing, controlling, possessiveness, manipulation—these are all variations of attachment. They are unmistakable blocks that stop love from flowing. They create pressure on a relationship in a way that eventually breaks the connection. Love is meant to uplift; a partnership is meant to nourish, but attachment does the opposite. It is a self-centered approach to a relationship that can end something great before it really begins.
The biggest thing I have gotten from these 12 years of delving into meditation is balance. Left to itself, the mind will crave instead of developing conscious goals; it will hate instead of having compassion; it will try to control everything instead of embracing change. Attachment is a deep form of inflexibility.
Attachment is one of the biggest inner obstacles to overcome so that love can flow better between two people. The human mind has a powerful drive to crave for things to exist in a manner that is to our liking. Sometimes, this drive turns an unproblematic desire into a strong attachment that has gathered so much mental tension that we feel upset when things diverge from what we imagined. Love is meant to support feelings of freedom when in the presence of your partner, but attachment can squander those feelings by demanding things happen a certain way.
4. Use emotional temperature check-ins.
During the first wave of the pandemic, Sara and I were living in a one-bedroom apartment in New York City. Tension would escalate quickly between us when one of us felt off. We started checking in with each other informally each morning and early afternoon about how we were feeling: tired, tense, overwhelmed, irritated, etc. This forced us to acknowledge where we were at individually, and also gave the other person a heads-up. This made it possible for us to show up for each other better. We could give each other space, provide support by taking something off their plate, or just know not to take any irritated comments too personally. Don’t let your emotional state be a mystery to yourself or your partner. It is impermanent, but having the strength to acknowledge it can take away a lot of its power.
Emotional temperature check-ins are needed. Even when you have been together for many years, you cannot read each other’s minds. The next best thing is checking in with each other a few times a day about your emotions. Letting each other know how your moods are shifting not only helps communication but also functions as a preventive measure so that you don’t project emotions. If you move through the day without acknowledging how you feel, it can be easy to unconsciously blame your partner for down moments that may have nothing to do with them. Being honest and vocal about how you feel brings more clarity to interactions.
“Don’t let your emotional state be a mystery to yourself or your partner.”
Ask each other, “How can I love you better?” and act on it. Getting new information from your partner directly is helpful because, just like you, they are an ever-changing being. Their preferences will slowly shift over time, and knowing them can help you offer better support as they move through their ups and downs. Relationships go through seasons, so check in regularly.
5. Arguments are not about winning; they are about understanding.
Arguments and disagreements in a relationship are natural, but learning how to navigate them compassionately is vital. In an argument, victory is not winning. True victory in an argument is understanding. When you realize that love has nothing to do with dominance and everything to do with freedom, it becomes easier to focus on understanding each other as a way to conclude an argument. Understanding is a generative emotion, whereas if you strive to win, the other person has to lose, which will naturally lead to resentment. Seeking to understand means you both welcome vulnerability, which will help deepen your connection.
The following are some key practices of the art of arguing:
- Valid perspectives. You each have your own perspective on the matter, and each perspective deserves to be fully listened to without interruption. The only way the two of you can develop a full view of what happened is by bringing your two perspectives together. The key practice here is patiently taking turns to give each other the space to share before you have an open discussion about how to move forward.
- Selfless listening. Your ego will try to get in the way when your partner is sharing their side of things. The only way to combat this is by intentionally refocusing your attention on their words instead of thinking about how you want to respond to what they are saying. This is a practice of compassion. Let yourself be immersed in their view of things; see it from their angle. This only works if you take turns listening selflessly.
- Be honest without being dramatic. The drive to be correct can make you embellish things. Can you express yourself without going overboard or being mean? Leaning into an honest demonstration of your perspective will make the conversation move more smoothly, and it will bring you closer together. The deepest forms of love require a foundation of honesty and gentleness.
- Ask yourself if you can let it go. Attachment happens quickly when the ego feels threatened—even if the line of reasoning you are getting attached to is illogical and functioning as a roadblock that stands in the way of your peace. Check in with yourself to see if you are hanging on to heated emotions unnecessarily. Remember the love you have for your partner and the love you have for yourself. Let these lighter emotions guide you to a middle path.
- Take responsibility. When we take responsibility for our actions and mistakes, it creates a space where others feel more comfortable doing the same. No one in a partnership should always have to be the bigger person, but when you can accept your part in something, own up to it, and apologize, this changes the discussion from blame to connection.
- Your partner is not your enemy. Don’t let anger make you forget who is in front of you. The person in front of you is not perfect, but they are still the one you love. Make sure to protect yourself and hold them accountable (if necessary), but do not be overly confrontational.
To listen to the audio version read by author Yung Pueblo, download the Next Big Idea App today:
