See, we've all been through breakups and they hurt.
I want to be raw here. I used to believe in happily ever after.
I used to believe in marriage.
I used to believe that if you go through a breakup,
it means going through an inevitable breakdown.
I used to believe that if you were divorced, you had failed at one of the
core aspects of simply being human.
Maybe it was all those Disney flicks.
But today, my view of love, marriage, relationships, divorce,
and breakups has gone through a massive transformation.
A few months ago, me and my then-wife Kristina, we've been married for 16 years,
decided to celebrate the end of our marriage.
So, me and Kristina have been together for 19 years and we decided to make this our
last Valentine's day, which means tomorrow,
we officially formally end our marriage.
We effectively, consciously uncoupled.
Our friends and family came to participate in this celebration,
yet so many people found this puzzling.
I got attacked on the internet. How dare I celebrate a divorce.
You see, if we go by the standard societal definition, then we failed.
Like 50% of married couples, we failed.
But what if common society is wrong?
What if we've been seduced into a completely outdated model
of viewing relationships.
We are facing an era of human lifespans which are about to reach 120 years.
Where did we come up with this idea that to be in a relationship with someone
implies foreverness, implies that you have to be with that
person forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, even if life no longer
seems satisfying, even if you're no longer helping each other grow,
even if there might be someone else out there for you who could better accelerate
the transformation of your soul.
At a certain point, if you're no longer growing, it's okay, you can part
ways as friends.
There is no reason why you have to go from breakup to breakdown.
There is no reason why you have to vilify your ex.
Now the person who sparked this idea in us and led to my
radical rethinking of life is Katherine Woodward Thomas.
She wrote the book Conscious Uncoupling.
She is also the newest author on Mindvalley because I feel her work has the
potential to shake up a truly broken aspect of human society today.
But I want you to know, I firmly believe that the way marriage has
become an institution pushed forth by traditional families and religious leaders
in cultural traditions that may not necessarily apply in today's world leads
to more unhappiness, more broken homes, more badly brought up children than we
care to admit.
So, as Katherine asked, "If marriage is so beautiful,
why does 50% of marriages end in divorce?"
And why does a breakup or divorce come with so much shame that you have to feel
you failed at life itself?
Why do you then have to hate on your ex?
What if you can celebrate the time you spent together rather than mourn over the
ending of a love relationship?
But as Katherine says, "Your next relationship begins not when
you find your next person, but in how you end
your last relationship."
And you want to be able to end that with as much consciousness, mutual love,
and respect as possible.
After Kristina and I announced our conscious uncoupling,
so many people wrote to us to thank us for bringing up such a taboo subject,
for showing the world a new way of doing this.
And this is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring Katherine Woodward Thomas
and her work to Mindvalley.
This is not about encouraging people to end a marriage.
We should all do our best in a marriage.
But a big reason I want to introduce Katherine's work to the world is because
almost all of you watching this had been through a breakup in the past and what she
teaches is how to heal the emotional and conscious damage that that can do,
to forgive your ex, so you can move on without repeating the same mistakes and
following the same patterns.
This is something that I believe the world needs, and I cannot wait to introduce you
to Katherine's work.
If you find these ideas interesting, firstly, you might share this video with a
friend of yours whom you think needs to hear this.
And you can also tune in to my Masterclass with Katherine Woodward Thomas on the
subject of healing from the pain of breakups and breaking up consciously.