Jen (00:01):
The heart of humans podcast explores the secrets to building flourishing relationships. We demystify the elements of desire, trust and love by interviewing conscious lovers and providing reflections to help you create the relationships of your dreams. My guest today is Alexander Hein, who was a self-proclaimed high achiever. We can probably relate to any of you who are high achievers. It would impact his health, his relationships, his finances, and his fitness at 23. His journey to China helps introduce him to new philosophies and meditation, and eventually his desire to heal his health would lead him to his doctorate in Chinese medicine. His best-selling book master the day teaches people to eat, move and live better with the power of daily habits. He is a stoic known as the modern health monk on YouTube and with nearly 350,000 subscribers, he is helping people everywhere, redesign their relationship with themselves and master the life that they want. Welcome to the show, Alexander,
Alexander (01:15):
Thanks for having me, Jen, that was quite the intro.
Jen (01:17):
What prompted your personal life journey?
Alexander (01:20):
I think the big one is since I was a kid, I was always very introspective. And I think from a young age, I knew that I could never live the life. I wait, I saw other people living it. If that makes sense. You know, even I remember being 12 or 13 and I saw adults going to nine to five jobs and then get in their car, coming home and then have dinner with their family and then help their kids with homework and then watch TV and then go to sleep and do it again 40, 50 years. And that was supposedly considered a life. Uh, and I just knew that would never be me. So I kind of made a promise to my soul when I was a kid that whatever the, my insights told me I had to do that I would do. And one of those things was that I would never give up on my dream, whatever that dream was.
And however it morphed, however it changed. So when it came to be 21 or 22, I got my first job out of college and it was a good job and I actually liked it, but I had that same, you know, that little tickling feeling in my chest, that was just like, you know, the nagging feeling of, I, there's no way I'm going to do this for 40 years. So what is it that I've really always wanted to do with my life? So for me, going back to that little promise, I made to myself when I was young, what did I always want it to do? Well, I'd always been into the intersection of martial arts, mysticism and medicine. And I always fantasized about a joked that I must have been a monk in my past life, because since I was a young, young, young kid, I always had an obsession with, uh, just monks.
I just read books by monks. I read books by mystics. Like the hermit archetype always resonated with me. I was never like the dream when I was 12 was never to be like a jock and have all these hot girls around me. It was like, I would love to meet a Holy person that then tutors me in their ways. And like what 12 year old has that? Right. So for whatever reason, that was kind of like the vision or desire put inside of me, don't know where it came from. Don't know why. So I had this nagging thing coming back and I'm like 23. So I booked this one way ticket to China. I have an awesome year there. I learned to speak, read and write Chinese. I come back to the United States and then began the whole real process of kind of entering the real world. I had no friends, I moved back home. I had no job. Didn't know what I wanted to do was so happy with just so unhappy with my life after living this year. Like, so on-purpose year where I felt so aligned with what I always wanted to do. And I felt like I had taken a huge step back. And that was kind of the beginning of, well, I've got to really learn some, some skills and work on some character stuff, and that's kind of where it all began.
Jen (04:15):
That's perfect. So you discovered the things that you wanted to work on that were attributes more than where they were the attributes or were they skills?
Alexander (04:29):
I would say it was one part of each, because I think, you know, at the beginning it was really just external things I wanted. I wanted a job. I liked, I wanted to date a girl and fall in love for the first time I wanted friends. So it actually wasn't internally motivated at all. Originally it was purely just, I want these external things to build a full life. And it was when I realized that the way to get those is really through changing how I am as a person for the better. And that's really character,
Jen (05:00):
Character. Absolutely. You mentioned that you were a high achiever as well. And, and you mentioned how perfectionism effected you in your life from reading your book. Um, how did it affect your relationships? Did you see it in your relationships and how did you overcome that?
Alexander (05:21):
Definitely. Yeah, I'll give you a good story. That'll illustrate this. So sometime last year, after a bad breakup, I decided I was going to read the top 50 books on love and relationships. So I crowdsourced on my Facebook and I said, Hey, what was, or what were some of the most impactful books on relationships for you? So I didn't go off the Amazon ratings. I went based on what books came the most highly recommended. And last year I read 25 of them. And I put together anywhere between one page and 10 pages of the key essential points from each book, their archives in order that I read them in my Evernote and it's just Evernote files called love and relationships. Now I had a female friend asked me recently, she's like, what is a girl sound like? That would do that. Like if you met a girl that was like, well, I went through a breakup and I read the top 25 books and I wrote 10 pages on each book. Would you ever date a girl like that? And I said, that sounds absolutely terrifying. So terrifying to date a girl like me.
So I realized, you know, what it manifested as was I put a lot of pressure on myself, but it also can come out. For example, romantically, it can come out on the women. I date to perform at a high level where my expectations are extremely high, unfairly high. It can come out in my friendships where I expect my friends to become aware of their, their annoying patterns. Um, or I expect them to, you know, if they're late three times to hopefully not be 30 minutes late the fourth time. So it really manifested the same way as it does subjectively, which is a manifest is pressure intention. So I still haven't overcome it fully, but it's one of those traits that I'm working on. And I think the big thing is just, uh, accepting that people are the way they are not expecting perfection, uh, but also holding them accountable.
So people, you know, we were just talking about this before this interview that most of us are skilled at seeing things black and white, because it's easy to understand and it's easy to take aside emotionally, right? Like I love the person. I hate the person. I love that food. I hate that food. That's really easy to understand, but what if it's like somewhere in between, which I think a lot of things are in life, maybe everything is, I don't know. Um, I think it's challenging because it's easy to think. Like, you know, we know people that just accept everybody the way they are all the time and it falls almost into codependency because there's no accountability there. And then you have people who are on the other side, just kind of hyper holding people accountable, always calling them out, always expecting them to be better, always expecting them to be aware of their patterns.
And that's an unrealistic ideal for most human beings, even high achievers, so to speak or people that want to do the work. So I find that the intersection is that what I'm trying to work on the most, this is just how my friend is. I hope they're growth oriented. I hope if I demonstrate being growth oriented, it will rub off on them, but I'm not expecting it to. But then also, if it is like a real consistent problem, then we need to have a chat because a real friend holds you accountable, right? If you mess up a real friend does not just gloss over something, that's a big problem or a big mistake. So finding that, that gray area between that dichotomy has been really big for me.
Jen (09:02):
I love that. I love that. How you define a real friend is someone who will hold you accountable. And at the same time, it's not, it's never black and white when you're not being that way. It doesn't mean that you're not a great friend. It just means that that's not what I want in a friendship. So I absolutely appreciate that honesty. I think it is one of the hardest things to, to, um, create in a friendship. And it's also the most valuable, I think, um, so often we will go past our, our own boundaries just to help people and that doesn't work either. So identifying that is wonderful. Um, and relationships are they, they mean so much to me. And I know they mean so much to you. And you mentioned that people forget that all the hard work is in the marriage, not the wedding and that relationships are a process. Can you explain what that means to you?
Alexander (10:11):
Let's say that you want to write a book, right? Your goal this year is I'm going to write a book now, just think, is it more useful to look at a goal sheet that says, write a hundred thousand words or write 130,000 words, roughly, which is a book, or is it useful to see, write for one hour every day? They're both actually the same exact thing, but one of them looks monumental. I mean, 130,000 words. How many pages is that? How many hours years does that take writing? One hour a day is exactly how I wrote multiple books. And it produced the same outcome without the stress, without the pressure, without the overwhelm, because I realized that everything you want comes from a process, not an outcome. So in the same way, if you're writing a book or you want to cultivate friendships or a romantic relationship, it still is a process.
Like for example, if love is, you know, romantic, a healthy, romantic relationship, that's amazing is your goal. The daily process could be learning your significant other's love language and doing more of that. It could be going on a date night weekly, it could be cooking something. They really enjoy a couple times a week. So it's really this idea of, we were so fixated on wedding day syndrome that I call it like, it's this it's just the arrival, but we'll often sacrifice our entire life, hating everything in between, which is your, your actual life, right? If a wedding is one day and a relationship is hopefully a long time, then we become it's this weird fixation. Um, so I would recommend creating process goals versus end point goals. And it doesn't matter if the goal is something immaterial, like a relationship, like a friendship, like a romance or a marriage. The same thing is true for material. Things like earning more money, writing a book, uh, getting fitter, you know, it's tracking. What does the process look like as a goal versus eventually getting you there? Because it's actually more, it's more easy to understand what to actually do today to reach that goal. Anyway,
Jen (12:26):
One of the things that you you are clear on is that tracking progress makes a difference. And you are a man that is big on tracking progress. What about romantic relationships? Do you track progress inside of your romantic relationships? Have you done that before?
Alexander (12:45):
Definitely, definitely. Have. I think it's so underrated because P you know, people resist this a lot. They don't like it when I bring that up, because it seems artificial, or it seems, you know, it's kind of like the feeling of, if you find that your friend who's back in town reached out to you because they have your name on a spreadsheet of friends in that city. It, you know, it feels artificial, but it's actually kind of like a smart strategy to stay in contact with people. So I find that people really resist this idea. So I do something that I read from the, um, you know, Jack Canfield, the guy who does the chicken soup for the soul series. So he talks about this exercise that I ended up doing, where he mentioned that he interviews his wife once a month about where he's living up or not to his promises in his marriage.
And I absolutely love that. And I've done that in all my relationships that I've been in that have been long-term relationships every month. I'll be like, Hey, you know, uh, basically, is there something you want me to work on? And when I tell people that they're often kind of stunned, uh, I remember telling a buddy that who was married and he's like, really, like, he, he was both like really weirded out by it and could immediately see the value in it. Because to me it's like anyone who's seen a bad long-term relationship is like, you guys need to sit down and have a tough conversation. And like, these are the things that I like. These are the things that frustrate me. Can we work on these like that? You know, it's the same kind of thing you'd have with a friend who has just, just one thing that really bothers you.
And you're like, I got one of these days, I just have to sit with them and be like, look, this is, I love you. You're one of my close friends. This just really gets under my skin. It gets under other people's skin. They'll probably work on it if you just have that conversation. So, you know, and I think part of that is just the fear of being direct. And again, the, this resistance to accountability being a piece of a great relationship, like so many people lie and they say, um, yeah, honey, I'll still want to have sex with you. You gained 70 pounds. But then when it actually happens, they, they aren't attracted anymore. Right? So like we say that, but then when it actually happens, they're complaining about their husband or their wife, like, Oh, I'm not that attracted to her anymore. And to me, this isn't being nice.
It's I frankly put this at being dishonest. So again, this is one of those uncomfortable conversations. Like, because it, it, it sounds like it's very conditional love, right? And that's challenging for people because who wants to be in a relationship where you feel like you have to be performing all the time. That sounds exhausting, but there is a fine line of, well, these are the things I said I would do. Like I said, I was going to pick up the kids every day after school. If I don't do that and I leave them there one day, that's a problem. There's gotta be there's repercussions because my kids have to somehow get home. But also that's what I said I would do. So I think unconditional love in that sense is kind of not letting people disrespect themselves, like honor the agreements. They said they were going to do to show up in a relationship. Uh, and so tracking progress to me involves these are the things, you know, to me, it's more like tracking promises, I would say, because progress can just be, let's travel to a new, fun, you know, a vacation spot, let's go to a Tony Robbins seminar, let's do a tough Mudder or a Spartan race. Those can be progress, but I try to make sure that we're both just showing up the same way. That's, that's the main way I track progress.
Jen (16:27):
I love that. I w when you said that, um, that I can create a progress sheet where we can both track each other and how we are performing, but also in, in the ways that we are disrespecting ourselves, like my partner and I keep us, it's not a scorecard. I know a couple of that keep a scorecard. We have a gratitude weekly list where we acknowledge each other for the things that we've done for each other. And then also the things that we want to work on, uh, or would that we see that we can work on. And it's never the same because both people have different views. And that's, that's a wonderful thing. It's also one of the things that keep us on our toes. Um, so I absolutely agree with you. I think that, I think they're tracking how we are in our integrity, um, really speaks to who we want to show up as, as a partner.
Alexander (17:33):
Yeah. I think it's, it's underrated really, because again, you know, especially with romance, people love the fantasy of it, right? They love the, get swept off your feet with no work. They do everything, you know, everything I love, they don't even think it. And so anything that smacks of like artifice or just anything that feels artificial a little bit feels, uh, in authentic where it feels like it's not emotional or not like raw from the heart, but, you know, I mean, Hey, if you have raw from the heart emotion 10 years later, then, then great. But I don't think most people are relying on that in their, you know, long-term relationship.
Jen (18:11):
I, I think it, it's a Testament to who you say you are, as you show up in the relationship, you, you mentioned that you'll value your relationships more than your business, because at the end of the day, you're, it's, it's, it's our relationships that protect us, not our work. Um, I'm curious to know what are ways that you've successfully balanced your work with your relationships?
Alexander (18:40):
Well, I'll give you an honest answer, which is that I haven't successfully placed my work and relationships. It's been, um, it's been undulating, I would say the first three years of my business. Um, I was in a long-term relationship and it worked great because the girl I was dating was okay with the fact that I worked a nine to five. I went to the gym, I had dinner and I came home and worked on my business every night, four days a week. And we only saw each other on the weekend for three years. And that worked because she was doing the same. She was putting in, um, she was in nursing school and she was working to put herself through school. So for us, that really worked for a romantic relationship. I don't know if for other people that would have worked, you know, some people that would have been a deal breaker.
So I think, um, you know, that was a time where it worked. It was easy to balance, work and love. And there've been other times where it hasn't been that easy. Uh, the last three or four years have been much, much harder for me in some ways. Um, but easier. And others, like, you know, doing my doctorate, I was also juggling my business, but it was easy to maintain friends because I saw them every day, you know, in school or on clinic shifts, they were, you know, my colleagues seeing patients. So that made it a little bit easier, but you know, a big one for me, that's made it a recent ritual is I have this reminder go off of my calendar every Wednesday. Uh, and it just says love and friends. And basically it says, you know, yeah, it's so cheesy. Uh, it has like a list of like five things and it just, it kind of reminds me of what's important.
And it's basically like, you know, it reminds me that my happiest years have always been because only because of the strongest friend groups that is the only correlation I've ever noticed. And then it reminds me like, you know, this is a pattern of yours that you consistently struggle with. This is the, one of the habits that's been a solution for you, which is reach out to people know every single week, you know, I'm, I can get caught up in my work. Like a lot of people also being in it introvert. I don't naturally feel strong tendency to reach out and connect with people all the time. You know, I could easily not talk to one human being until the weekend and then be like, Oh, you know, I should probably meet some friends or something. Um, so for me, the tendency to always connect is not there.
So unless, you know, unless I have a great, um, a great group of friends or I'm in a romantic relationship, but for me, it's just saying again, it's, you know, the, the coming back to the promises we have for ourself, there's a big difference with what we think our values are and what our values actually look like reflected on our calendar. You know, there are so many people who work really long hours and they say that, you know, like I know men, for example, I work 70 plus hours a week. They say their family's number one. But clearly that I cannot logically be true if they're working 70 hours a week, they're home for an average of one hour per night with our family. And I know none of these men are really at the top pretty level, right. So if they really had their family prioritized, if that truly was subconsciously there, number one, they would spend more time with our family.
So in the same way, I had to catch myself and hold myself accountable that well, I realized that, you know, I tracked all my happiest moments for a whole year, year of my life. It was hundreds of little things in an Evernote document. And I realized I was shocked as an introvert that more than 90% were with people I never in a million years would have expected that. And so I had to remind myself that I'm saying that my happiest years are with people, but I don't prioritize being around people at all. You know, like some years it's organic and there's a lot of friends in my life some years it's even with all this effort to make friends, I'm always feeling like I don't have enough friends. So this is a quadrant I really struggle with. I've just had to put an extra work and kind of extra rituals to make sure that I'm always working on it. So for me, that, that Wednesday night ritual of all right, it's Wednesday night, that reminder goes off. Um, it mentions this one study. There's a, um, the Harvard grant study, I believe is what it's called. Are you familiar with it? Yeah.
So basically it's one of the largest, uh, kind of longitudinal studies where they followed specifically young men graduating from Harvard through their entire life, and then wanting to see what factors were the most important just in their life and in their wellbeing. And if difficult childhoods, uh, predicted difficult adulthood life or shorter life, if substance abuse predicted a good life or a bad life or health problems. And one of the main things they found was that having a close knit community was even a stronger predictor of longevity than your blood work. So basically that the number one factor predicting quality of life, subjective quality of life is the number and degree of your social connections, your social ties and your community. And all I have to do is remind myself of that book in that study. And it immediately reminds me kind of, of what's most important. So for me, it's been that nightly ritual of just reminding myself that that's true because I forget it and then prioritizing connection, which means not expecting other people to, to build a bridge to me and find me, you know, like it's, it's on me to go out there and make new friends
Jen (24:37):
I'm much like you, I, I can also hermit for as long as I'd like before I realized that I haven't been keeping in touch with my friends. In fact, this podcast is a ritual. It's a reminder. Um, and I, and I am so, Ugh, uh, I'm just moved by your honesty to be honest, because that is exactly why I started. And I learn how much our relationships have been improving, not just the quality of life, but, um, my own development as a, as a person, I truly believe that we don't really get to know who we are without our relationships.
Alexander (25:26):
They are the great mirror. That's for sure
Jen (25:29):
They trigger us. They, they make us tear up. They make us angry. They make us just completely emotionally in love. I am excited to ask you, what are relationships teaching you today, Alexander?
Alexander (25:51):
Well, I would have to say this Freud quote, where he says love and work, work, and love. That's all there is. I kind of came to this realization maybe in the last year or two, that if I really lose everything, if I feel like every day I'm working up waking up to do something meaningful with people that I really care about. That's basically a 10 out of 10 life and effectively, everything else is gravy. And just realizing that was both pretty freeing because they're, they're kind of tangible. I mean, one's a human right. One's human beings. And one is probably something physical or intellectual you do, but it's really pretty freeing because they are also immaterial in a sense, because they're both methods of connection, right? So psychologically or psycho, spiritually, whatever word you want to use, it's a way we feel connected. One is usually connection to oneself and one is usually connection to another.
And so I think relationships have made me realize, uh, all the ways human beings look for connection and all the ways that also goes, uh, dysfunctional or haywire. You know, I think a lot of people that I've seen struggling with addiction, the number one thing, predisposing them is an inability to feel like they feel connected to other people and addictions all the way from the low level of playing video games all night by herself, all the way up to people doing heroin and then overdosing or overdosing on pills or deliberately attempting or committing suicide. So I think it really opened my eyes just to this idea of connection. There's a Carl Young quote to stick with the psychoanalysts here, where he talks about loneliness is kind of not the absence of people, but the absence of people with what you can share, the things that matter most to you.
So I don't think about connection as actually having anything to do with people. I've had years where I've been around the most people and felt the most lonely. And I've had years where I've had no friends, no social interaction, like right now, move to LA. I've been here since let's see late October, November, December, January, over three months, uh, that don't have one friend. I don't have one social interaction on a daily basis. And I haven't felt loneliness even one day. And that's because I feel deeply connected to, I feel deeply connected to my patients, helping my patients, even though my practice is new. Again, most days I don't see one human and I feel like I'm really deeply connected to why I'm on earth, kind of that idea of a Dharma or like a divine, almost like a prescribed purpose. So I would leave it as you know, relationships teach me about all the ways people seek to feel connection. And I think this is the most disconnected and lonely generation in history. And I think that's the reason why we see so much anxiety and depression and things like that. But I think that relationships are just one way. Humans feel connected.
Jen (29:09):
You've written books on how to create a great life. Can you tell us more about them
Alexander (29:15):
Two books right now? One is called master. The day one is called funnily enough, milks, the pigeon, uh, they're both on Amazon. So if you're interested, you can check them out there. But I would say if you're interested in learning how tiny daily rituals can change the trajectory of every part of your life, including relationships master the day will really make it tangible about how, for example, just changing one little thing a day could result in having the best friend group of your life three months from now, or finding the love of your life and making sure it stays that way a year from now. It could be also how to lose 20 pounds by changing. Just one thing you do or how to write books the same way I did by just doing one little habit on a daily basis. So if the rituals and habit aspect, how the little things really build a great or kind of a misfortunate unfortunate life, I would say master of the day is the book to check out.
And I would say, if you're someone who's really struggling with feeling lost in life, you feel disconnected. You feel like you're trying to find work. You love or figure out the purpose of life or what the meaning of it all is. My book Milt. The vision is a collection of stories specifically often for people in their twenties and thirties who are trying to figure out those answers to those three questions. How do I find work? I love, how do I build a meaningful existence? And how do I really create a life that I feel like is my absolute dream life. So if you really need some deep inspiration, I would say milk, the pigeon will get you on that path. And if you want tactical specific rituals and habits to do daily, I would say master of the day is something that can help you really be aware of how little things can build a really exceptional life.
Jen (31:13):
Thank you so much for the wisdom that you imparted. I believe that what you give people is through the lens of process. We are able to cultivate the connections that we want in our life. And I really want to thank you again for being so honest with us today. Thank you, Alexander for coming. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jen. It's been a lot of fun.
