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Sometimes life can seem hard and tough to navigate, but what may seem like the smallest tasks, such as getting out of bed or even brushing your teeth, should be celebrated as a win. And State Farm is here to help you celebrate all your wins. The State Farm Personal Price Plan helps you create an affordable price just for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the Personal price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Purina started the Purple Leash Project to help eliminate one of the many barriers domestic abuse survivors face, a lack of pet friendly domestic violence shelters. One in three women and one in four men experienced domestic abuse in their lifetime, and nearly half of survivors delay leaving because they can't bring their pets with them. Through the Purple Leash Project, Purina is helping to create more pet friendly domestic violence shelters across the country so abused survivors and their pets can escape and heal together. Visit purina.compurple to get involved hey, it's Alicia.

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When people tell me, wow, you have such beautiful skin, for a second I say, who are you talking to? Because I never did. Qies Soul Care is a holistic beauty and skincare line I created working with a leading dermatologist. I'm so proud of these product offerings because they're all about caring for the whole self inside and out. Nourish your skin, Nurture your soul. Try clinically proven Skincare from Alicia Keys with 25% off your first purchase at keyssoulcare.com using code GLOWONAIR.

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If you're wanting civility with someone who's wanting intimacy, it doesn't work. If you're wanting civility with someone who wants drama, it doesn't work. And I know you know who I'm talking about, right? You know, you've tried in situations to be the civil one, to be the peaceful one, to be the conscious one, but because they didn't want that and they didn't want that from you and they didn't want to mirror that, it didn't work out that way. The number one health and wellness podcast J. Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only J. Shetty. Hey everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. I'm your host, Jay Shetty. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm so grateful that you've decided to reconnect. Whether you're hiking, walking, walking your dog, cooking, driving to or from work. Thank you so much for Being here. I was speaking to a friend the other day and she asked me this question. She said to me, can you be friends with your ex? And my response was, who are you talking to? And it's one of these questions that I get asked a lot. And when this particular friend asked me this question, there was a part of me that was worried, but there was a part of me that was open. And I think it's because for years my quick response has been, no, not really. And then I realized how different this question was for people who had kids together. For people who had shared friends together. There were different versions of it. And I think often we can discount or dismiss the opportunity without recognizing the factors. So I thought it was important to do an episode about it because I think it's a lot more complex and subtle than we often give it credit for. Now, before we even get started, there are grounds for not being friends. Before exploring this question, I want to establish some ground rules. Not every ex deserves friendship. Did your relationship end in a peaceful manner? Did your ex treat you well? Are they dangerous, volatile or toxic and an untrustworthy person? Were you ever mistreated or did you ever feel unsafe? Were you disrespected or taken advantage of emotionally, sexually or financially? Were you lied to or cheated on? If any of these things are true, I would avoid even considering becoming friends with your ex. But assuming things ended kind of mutually and acceptably or as well as possible, considering you did call it quits, here's a rule of thumb. You're more likely to be friends with an ex if you and your ex had a nice breakup. But here's the thing. It will still always be complicated even if things ended well. Understand that becoming friends with an ex is a tricky, landmine filled journey. How could it not be? I mean, romantic relationships usually have their origins in friendship before they evolve into something deeper. You're now asking two people to maintain the friendship part of their relationship, minus the romantic or sexual angle. But it's not as simple as going back to the friendship origins of your relationship. Friendship, companionship, and above all, trust are all core elements of romantic love. Ensuring you know the difference is one of the primary challenges of becoming friends with your ex. I was on the Talk the other day at Today show in LA and they asked me this question as well. And what came out for me was emotional maturity and romantic clarity. Emotional maturity. Do you both have enough maturity to not be envious when you see the other person with another person? Do you both have enough emotional maturity to let the other become who they want to be, not who you wanted them to be. And romantic clarity. Are you both truly aware of the boundaries that now exist physically, sexually and in terms of intimacy? Or is one of you secretly hoping that you'll be able to make something happen when the other person's guard's down? All of these lead to a lack of trust. They lead to a lack of stability in a friendship or in a relationship. Now here's what the science says about becoming friends with your exes. A 2017 research study shows that people chose to stay friends with their exes for four core reasons. The first is security. They make us feel good and show us that even in the wake of a breakup, our lives haven't been completely turned upside down. Right? We're all looking for security and safety. And our biggest concern genuinely is who am I going to call at 7pm tonight? Wait a minute. Who am I going to text first thing in the morning? All of those things we think are emotional and they are, but they're security based. It's not necessarily love or romance. It's a sense of safety and security which humans desire so deeply. And often we desire it so deeply that we stay in a situation even if it's bad for us. We want to elongate and extend something, even if it's unhealthy for us because it makes us feel falsely safe. Think about a time in your life where you've stayed somewhere because it fooled you into believing you were safe in one way or another. So one of the reasons we stay is security. The second reason is practicality. You like your ex and your ex likes you, and both of you value each other's presence in your lives. And this is a sense of, like, comfort or ease. So a lot of us are constantly trying to move toward comfort and ease. The path of least resistance. How many of you have stayed in a job, a relationship, at a family gathering for far too long because it was comfortable and it was easy, even though it wasn't good for you? See, as humans, we almost seem to lose our way. And it's interesting when you think about the pursuit of purpose that we're all ultimately challenged to go on. One of the reasons we don't take it is because we're just looking for security and safety. One of the reasons we don't take the pursuit of purpose is because we're just looking for ease and comfort. And it feels in the short term much easier to do these options. And the truth is, it is in the short term. It just isn't in the long term. And when it comes to a breakup, you just think, well, if we just stay friends, at least things are still practical. Not understanding the complexities that come with that. The third reason that people want to stay friends with their ex is civility, otherwise known as keeping the peace. If you're walking down the street and you see your ex coming your way, you don't want to have to dart across the street to avoid having an awkward encounter, right? It's just normal. Again, the path of least resistance. How do I create a world in which I have no conflict and no tension and no stress? By the way, I recommend that sometimes we create too much drama in our life. Sometimes we basically are the directors of drama in our life, almost like we're directing a dramatic, tragic movie, and we just find everything to cause tension and stress. So wanting civility is not a bad thing. I get it. But often, if you're wanting civility with someone who's wanting intimacy, it doesn't work. If you're wanting civility with someone who wants drama, it doesn't work. And I know you know who I'm talking about, right? You know, you've tried in situations to be the civil one, to be the peaceful one, to be the conscious one, but because they didn't want that and they didn't want that from you, and they didn't want to mirror that, it didn't work out that way. And the fourth reason, and by far the trickiest, has to do with unresolved romantic desires. You still want to be with this person. You haven't gotten over them yet. You don't know if you ever will. And you're thinking to yourself, if I stick around for long enough, they'll come to their senses that I was the one, I was the best one, and they'll finally realize what they're missing out on, right? I'm just going to convince them. I'm just going to stick around long enough until they change their mind. And I know I can do it, right? I know I can do it. Now, that one's a very, very tricky one because we're almost kind of creating an expectation without having that intention shared openly. And that's a really interesting position to be in. I find a lot of us have expectations without setting that intention. If you have an expectation that you're going to get back with someone and they've kind of told you, hey, this is not happening, sure, you might be able to coax, persuade them for a day or two, but it's going to be a hard battle. And because you're walking into it with a preset expectation, you're setting yourself up for failure because you're setting yourself up to be let down. There's four ways to know that you're not ready to resume a friendship with your ex. The first one, your feelings are strong and conflicted. In other words, you might still have romantic feelings for your ex, or you're thinking about your ex more than you'd like to, more than feels healthy. If so, pause, hold off, and postpone any attempts at establishing a friendship until those feelings simmer down or pass. You still meet up occasionally if you're intent on establishing a friendship with your ex. By definition, that means the two of you are no longer romantically or sexually involved. If you are, I don't have to tell you how complicated a factor this is and how much more difficult it makes it for you or your ex to move forward. Now, number three, you're secretly using friendship as a means to get back together. This is probably the most common one. And you and your ex broke up for a reason, probably more than one reason. And using friendship to reestablish a romance doesn't address or solve those problems. Being friends with an ex can trick you into thinking that you didn't really break up, the whole thing was a dream, and the future will be different. It's important to be honest with yourself and remember that your ex probably has the same strong feelings. Remember that if you broke up with your ex, that means something about your relationship wasn't working for you, your ex, or both of you. If you're trying to be friends because you secretly hope your renewed friendship will lead to a renewed relationship, you may be holding on to false hopes. Only try to be friends if you can honestly live with the truth that the two of you are no longer together. Now, the fourth reason is you feel bad and hope that making a friendship is a get out of jail free card. Now, maybe you did the breaking up right? Maybe you're the one who left them and now you're trying to. I see this with a lot of my male friends, where they'll break up with someone and they'll be like, I don't want to be the bad guy. I don't want to be seen as the bad guy. I don't want to be seen as that one. So I'm going to work hard on building a friendship up because that way at least she won't hate me. And really, I'm like, well, you're kind of Making that person maybe hate you more in the long term because you're doing it for all the wrong reasons. Maybe you feel guilty and maybe you fell in love with someone else, maybe you found someone else, maybe you're moving on. So you have to ask yourself, who does this friendship benefit? Am I doing it only to make me feel better about myself? If so, don't right think twice. Too many people try to stay friends with their ex because they want to be seen as a good person. You broke their heart, you found someone else, you moved on. But you don't want to be seen as a bad person. So you want to be friends with them so that they see you as a good person. And so you're only doing it to make yourself feel better about yourself. You're not doing it because you truly want to be friends with them. And that's only going to hurt them more in the future. It might feel good to you right now based on how you're perceived, but not only your perception how they feel. And their heart will be deeply hurt in the future. And I think this hits very closely to why I partnered up with Match. And what I really found was I wanted to create a space where people could connect based on their values. And this was really, really important to me because I feel that everything I'm saying here is because we don't realize that our core values have such a big impact in terms of long term success. If you ignore core values, you're thinking in the next five months. If you take on core values, you're living in the next five years. And for anyone who's interested and invested in building a long term, long lasting, powerful relationship, this mindset is huge. 93% of match members say that shared core values are a crucial indicator of relationship success. Now let's imagine sometimes life can seem challenging and overcoming problems can seem impossible. But when you focus on your problems, it can keep you from seeing the good in your life. One thing that helps me when I need a change in perspective is acknowledging the small wins in life. I encourage my team to pay attention to small wins because it helps them see positive outcomes and the steps that they're achieving on the road to a bigger goal. Use the power of small wins to shift your outlook and you will start to see positive changes. State Farm is also there to help you find personal wins and celebrate the small things in life. The State Farm personal Price plan helps you create an affordable price price just for you. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can bundle and save with the personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. Having a pet is like having a constant friend who lifts your spirits. With their playful and affectionate nature. For domestic abuse survivors, pets can be particularly healing. Offering unconditional love and creating a safe, comforting environment. They help ease the trauma and provide a dependable source of support, making recovery feel less isolating. Purina started the Purple Leash Project to help eliminate one of the many barriers domestic abuse survivors face, a lack of pet friendly domestic violence shelters. One in three women and one in four men experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. And nearly half of survivors delay leaving because they can't bring their pets with them. Through the Purple Leash Project, Purina is helping to create more pet friendly domestic violence shelters across the country so abused survivors and their pets can escape and heal together. And because of Purina and the Purple leash project, nearly 20% of domestic violence violence shelters across the country now accept pets. Visit Purina.com purple to get involved. One thing we can all agree on is that every child deserves the chance to succeed in school. But right now, many students are falling behind because they don't have access to basic tools like laptops or even Internet connection at home. Technology isn't a luxury anymore. It's a lifeline. That's why AT&T is stepping up. They've partnered up with community organizations to provide 20,000 backpacks filled with laptops, school supplies, and personal notes to students across America. In Seattle, for example, 250 students received refurbished laptops and words of encouragement from AT& employees. As one local partner said, these backpacks aren't just gifts, they're lifelines. They give students the tools to connect, grow, and succeed. When tech connects us, it changes everything. And AT&T is making sure no one is left behind.