The first thing I got which actually really came back very strongly during the pandemic this year was the notion that everything can disappear in a split second. Don't ever think that what you have is there to stay and is yours.

You can't be feeling great at this moment. You're out of touch with reality if you're feeling great. You can feel relieved; you can feel thankful; you can feel appreciative for what you have; you can feel humble; you can feel thankful. But you can't feel great in this moment, because if you're feeling great in this moment, you're detached and disconnected.

Decisions and outcomes are different things; a good decision may very well lead to a lousy outcome, but that doesn’t mean it wasn't a good decision

Love is a verb. It's not a permanent state of enthusiasm. It's not about finding the right person; it's about being the right person.

Ask yourself, 'What have I done lately to affirm the importance of my relationships in my life? Is there someone I owe a phone call to? Not a text, a phone call. Is there someone I need to talk to that I've been meaning to reach out to? Is there someone I owe an apology to? Is there someone who I could help in this moment?' Any time you do for others, you actually a) are less depressed and b) you feel better about yourself.

Love is something that you actively cultivate. You nourish it. You do things that express it that show the other person that you're thinking of them, that they're important to you, that you carry them inside of you even when they're not there. To just think it's an in or out is very, very narrow.

I don't understand the sentence that 'the purpose of a person's life is happiness.' Happiness cannot be a purpose; happiness is an outcome of multiple purposes for that matter. Happiness emerges out of something; it's not the goal.

Most of the time, when people come to couples therapy, they don't come to say 'I came to check myself out.' Couples therapy is often a drop-off center. They come to tell you 'Here, here's my partner, and let me tell you what I think is the matter with that person because I'm an expert on the other person.' People stop looking at themselves because they are completely focused on what's wrong and, often, what's missing in the other.

This is one of the hidden truths of relationships: If you want to change the other, change yourself.

You may decide that this relationship was a beautiful love story, but it will not remain a life story. You don't have to squash the love in order to move on. You may just say 'This love is precious; I will hold it dearly; but it is not going to be my life.'

If you think you're enlightened, go spend a week with your family.

On a cultural level, there's been a real push to see sex as a risk factor in America. Sex itself is the risk factor. Whereas, I think the European notion and the pubic health notion in Europe is that sex is a natural part of human development. Being irresponsible is a risk factor...

I think sexuality is a lens. It tells a story of the values, the behaviors, and the attitudes towards the body; towards pleasure; towards power; towards connection; towards the division of spirit and flesh, or mind and body, or all of those things.

Behind many criticisms is a wish. Ask for the wish; don't give the criticism, or you will never get to wish.

You really need to hear the multiple voices in a relationship. A relationship is a story. When you only listen to one voice, it is phenomenal how the mind will curate, select, discard anything that is inconvenient, uncomfortable about me.

I am fluent in 9 languages ... So, language and words and naming [are] extremely important to me. I think that it absolutely organizes ourselves—cognitively, physically, emotionally. So, naming is framing.

The temptation is to say 'How do I make my partner different?' And I say, start with the one thing you can control: 'Is there anything I can do different that is more likely to elicit a different response from my partner?' It's the one thing you can control is you. Start there.

When you're in a toxic relationship, parts of you are falling off, and you become a narrow version of yourself. Other people need to bring back a mirror of the multi-faceted you, of the you who once could say no, of the you who used to have such strong opinions about things... the fuller, bigger you.

People fight over three things primarily: power & control, trust & closeness, respect & integrity.

When you see your friend in a situation to want to blame the third person, they found somebody and that person is not nice to them, is offensive to them, is not respecting them ... The first thing we want to do is pull our friend away from that person. And the more, sometimes, we try to pull them away from that person, the more they actually are going to get glued to that person, or they're going to stop telling us the truth.

65% of startups fail because the relationship between the co-founders breaks down.

All your resident fears—all those fears that live inside of you that are usually tucked away, I promise you they will come out in situations like this. It's the residue. The attic opens up.

I believe that many beautiful relationships can transform into friendships, but not in the moment of separation.

You can't believe everything you think. You can't believe everything you feel. The mind is a very dangerous organ.