He’s making wisdom go viral. With his videos hitting nearly two billion views, Jay Shetty has become one of the most influential philosophical and motivational speakers of this generation. In this interview, Jay reveals his mission to change and challenge the way we think, to help people cultivate a “monk mentality” in a modern world, and to encourage even the most skeptical to understand the power of selfless sacrifice in order to tap into our ultimate potential. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We always think about life and like, okay, what's going to make some money for me?
Or what am I going to get paid for?
Okay, I can study that.
I'm okay at it.
And we spend our life, right?
We spend our life in the box of what we're good at and don't love.
And that leads to depression.
It leads to pain.
It leads to pressure.
It leads to so much stuff because you're doing something you're good at, but you don't love it.
And so I think finding meaning.
So for me, the first thing is, let's start with our strengths.
Our strengths are a good place.
the innate strengths that we have naturally that come with us.
Hi, I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz Podcast. podcast.
He's making wisdom go viral.
With his videos hitting nearly 2 billion views, Jay Shetty has become one of the most influential, philosophical, and motivational speakers of this generation.
He's on a mission to change and challenge the way we think, to help people cultivate a monk mentality in a modern world, and to encourage even the most skeptical to understand the power of selfless sacrifice in order to tap into our ultimate potential.
Now, before I became Jay Shetty, the urban monk millions of us adore, Jay actually described himself as a thrill seeker, which caught me off guard because you seem so calm and I wouldn't have seen you as the rambunctious young person out there giving your mother a heartache.
Yeah, my school friends don't recognize me anymore.
They would never have seen this version of me.
So I was the teacher's pet and probably the ideal son until age 14. At that time, I was very obedient.
I followed all the rules.
I played by the rules.
And then at 14, I had this rebellious period for around four years where I was just questioning everything I'd been taught.
I'd been taught, do well at school and life will be great.
I was doing well at school, but I was still bullied.
I experienced racism.
And I was having all these other setbacks outside of my academic life.
And I just felt, well, what's the fun in it?
Where's the fun in life?
I'm not getting to experience or explore.
And I think at the same time, I started surrounding myself with people Who weren't necessarily involved in the best things.
And both of those two things together meant I went on this thrill-seeking journey, everything from physical thrill-seeking, whether it was bungee jumping or skydiving, but also to getting involved in violence and crime and drugs and experimenting with just everything that was available.
And like I said, it only lasted four years, but it was a really meaningful experience for me because what it's helped me do now is, first of all, it's helped me become non-judgmental when I meet others who are struggling with the same things.
It's helped me increase my compassion towards why people go off the rails and off the road despite having good parenting and a good background.
And it's also made me recognize that I can support and help those because I've been there myself.
And so for me, it's become a wonderful pillar in my foundation and building me.
So I don't regret it at all, but I regret some of the people that I may have caused pain to at the time, including teachers and friends and others.
If you saw a 14-year-old who was a little mini version of you now, knowing what you've learned, how could you intervene?
I think one of the biggest things at that time, and my parents actually did this pretty well, is that they too didn't judge me and they just spent time with me and they just understood me.
So I think my mum had a massive go at me once when it happened, when she caught me doing something and she just, she had a go at me that day and then the next day it was like she was back to normal, she was being my mum again.
And I just felt so unjudged by my mother and father that it gave me a second chance straight away, as opposed to having someone every day say to me what a disappointment I was or how everyone was going to look down on me or how the family was disappointed in me.
And I don't know whether my parents did that consciously or unconsciously, but I remember going on walks with my father when I was suspended from school.
We'd go for walks every week to the park and we'd just talk.
And my father became my friend in those conversations, and it wasn't like he was my dad anymore.
And I think just not feeling the pressure and just someone recognizing that these were just mistakes that could be rewired and changed, I think that acceptance from people that I could be scared of or fearful of for change helped me be reflective of my own.
We have a foundation called HealthCore that teaches kids around the country about their bodies, but it actually teaches them how to cope.
And one of the things we've noticed is that a lot of young people don't have the mentoring that your parents gave you.
And it's not that they're not loved, because they often have one parent, but that parent doesn't truly love them.
But because of time issues and lack of insight and difficult processing, it never really comes about.
That's one of the things we found most valuable is just to listen to these young folks.
Because although we're in schools Teaching in classes, the bigger conversation, because Health Corps only has young college, recent college grads, it's like the Peace Corps, the age difference is small.
And it's always that peer-to-peer mentoring that I found most valuable, which is why it's so great to have sports teams and musical plays and the like, because it bonds you to people who are maybe a year or two older who do just what your parents are doing for you.
Yes, absolutely.
And I think you hit the nail on the head in our podcast that we were recording around experience.
What really made me stop was seeing one of my friend's aunties who was a heroin addict and seeing her have a fit in front of us when we were with her.
Like that was one of those moments in life where you're like, what am I doing with my life, right?
And you experience someone who's further down the road.
And I think that feeling, again, like you were saying, feeling changes activity, not just knowing.
So we all know drugs are bad for us.
Like I don't think anyone thinks they're good.
And then you see someone experience something who's an addict and you go, wow, like I don't want to end up there.
And I think that's what it was for me, recognizing I didn't want to end up there.
And that was the day where I was like, okay, no more of this.
But still, these wonderful, loving parents of yours are still demanding.
They have expectations.
In your house, you grew up, if I understand correctly, you could be a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure.
Those are the three options.
How did you navigate that?
Academically, my parents were the opposite.
It was very much about results and studying and working hard, which I think are all great values, and I'm very grateful that my parents...
I think you always, you know, you get grateful to your parents as you grow older.
At the time, I was like, why do I have to work so hard?
Yeah, exactly.
And then, you know, now I look back and I'm so grateful that they embedded all those values.
But how I navigated that was always trying to follow the inner voice I had.
And I believe everyone has one.
And I believe we are just so bad at listening to it.
And I would always say my inner voice at that time, at least when it came to academics, would always push me into three subjects.
Economics, philosophy, and art and design.
Those were my favorite subjects growing up.
And so I consistently pushed myself towards those.
And I started standing up to my parents' wishes very early.
And even though they wanted me to do biology and chemistry and physics and math, I would say, well, no, my passions lie here.
And luckily I went to a school that blocked you from doing subjects that they didn't think you would excel at.
So my school was very particular when it got to the age of 16 where they would want you to focus on the subjects that you were naturally excelling at.
So they would literally sit you down with the teachers and it wasn't just about the grades you got because I did pretty well at school.
It was more about...
Where your teachers thought you were really committed.
And I think this way of educating is such a phenomenal lesson.
And if you've never had that at school, had that with your mentors and coaches who are able to see where something's meaningful to you.
And my art and design, philosophy, and economics teachers were all aligned, that that's where my strengths were.
And so I started narrowing that down.
How did that all end up as you becoming a monk, though?
Economics, design, philosophy.
Philosophy, maybe, but...
You met a monk, right?
Tell the story.
Yeah, sure.
So when I was 18 years old, I used to go and listen to lectures from celebrities, influencers, CEOs at university.
And every week, there'd be a different expert.
And this could be anyone from a well-known entrepreneur, billionaire, or A celebrity singer or musician or actor, actress.
And I loved hearing about rags to riches stories.
Since I was young, I loved hearing about people who went from nothing to something.
And then once I was told that a monk was invited to speak, and I was just like, well, why would I go listen to a monk?
Like, what does a monk have to say?
And I wasn't so spiritually inclined.
I was into deeper thought, but nothing spiritual.
And I went because my friends were getting into it, and they said, well, you should come with us.
And I said, I'll only go if we go to a bar afterwards.
Like, that was my underlining point.
And they said, fine, we commit, we'll go to a bar afterwards.
So I turn up with zero expectations, looking forward to leaving, looking at the watch, thinking we're going to go to the bar afterwards, and I'm left completely speechless.
His eloquence, his charisma, his energy.
And I can only say this in hindsight.
I couldn't have said it then.
But what really happened was at that time in my life, I'd met people who are rich.
I'd met people who are strong.
I'd met people who are famous.
But I don't think I'd ever met anyone who was happy or content.
Oh my goodness.
And I think we can all do a quick audit in our life of whenever you met someone where you genuinely met them and believed that They were happy.
And when I was 18, I can definitely say, and even now looking back, he's probably one of the few people I've met in my life who was genuinely content.
And so I went up to him like a networking student and said, hey, I want to experience this more.
And he was very gracious and kind and said, well, why don't you come and spend some time with me in India?
And he was just, you know, he just said that straight away.
And I was like, okay, I'll take you up on it.
So I spent the next four years while I was studying every one of my summer breaks, I would spend half of it interning in the world of finance in London.
I'm interning as a monk with him.
So walk me through this, because when you go to India, dressed poshly with all this sophisticated bankers in London, you arrive in Mumbai and you walk into the ashram, I guess, where a monk is.
Describe that for us.
Paint us a picture with your words.
Yeah, sure.
So I walk in and the ashram is two hours outside of Mumbai.
So it's in the sticks of the villages.
Like it's all mainly grass and the ashram is very rustic and old.
The best example I can give of how someone can visualize it is if you've seen Doctor Strange in the Marvel movies, that's the closest I can possibly.
You know, it looks zen, but it's still very like earthy.
It's not like feng shui and it's not like this beautiful ashram.
It's beautiful, but in a very...
Earthy and organic sense.
And I walk in and the first thing we're told is, of course, that they would prefer us to wear these simple robes so that we can be stripped away of our physical baggage and of our physical identity and attachments that we have and that we could take on these robes.
And I was open to it because I wanted to have the experience.
And then we're given a tour of the grounds and the surroundings, which include beautiful lakes and rivers and beautiful natural plants and forests and woods.
And then we go down.
Usually the first thing we did was sit down to eat.
And so I would sit and then they would walk me through what I could experience.
And I was very much like, I want to go all in.
Like I was there to have a real immersive extreme experience.
I was not there to kind of sit on the sidelines and watch.
I was like, I want what you have and I want to know what that takes.
And so I started basically following his routines.
We would wake up at the same time.
We would sleep at the same time.
He would guide me and introduce me to the other monks.
It's like shadowing your favorite CEO. I got to shadow a spiritual CEO and experience life from his angle.
How long did you do that for?
So I did that every summer for about a month for four years while I was studying and then I went and did it for real for three years when I finished.
So if you add up all my summers it was like three or four months while I was still studying and then I turned down my grad offers when I graduated and went off and did it officially as a full month for three years.
And were you happier there than you'd been in the UK? I think it's a good question.
So I'd had moments in my life of loss and failure and all those types of things, but I was so meaningfully connected there.
I felt like I was living my purpose.
I felt like I was following my calling.
And the best thing is, the reason why I went was I wanted to purify myself.
When I started learning about wisdom, it spoke about the ego.
It spoke about envy.
spoke about greed, all of these things that I believed I was afflicted by.
And I no longer wanted to live with any of that.
And this was the only path I was being offered to remove all of these things.
And the second was I wanted to be of service to humanity.
And at that time in my life, I'd not met anyone who was having a big impact on the world through really serving humanity.
And And these monks were feeding villages, creating sustainable programs, feeding children, providing education to children.
They were doing so much philanthropic work.
And I was like, that's what I want.
So half of our day was silence and half was service.
And this gave me a perfect routine in my own life now where half of my day is about building me and growing me and then the rest of my day is about giving and service.
And so it gave me a great framework.
So I was definitely happier as a monk than I was in London for sure.
But not that I was so unhappy in London.
It was more excelling what I had.
There's lots more when we come back.
So I'm going to tap into your mind right now and pull some of these insights that, after years of being a monk and the insights you gained from it, you've been able to share with millions, after years of being a monk and the insights you gained from it, you've been First off, this issue of self-control, which many people think is about just being stronger.
You've developed some insights in this that I think could help, especially those of us in the West who are struggling all the time with how much of our freedom do we want to give up?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think in the West, we believe that freedom is having choice.
And actually, in the East, or the teachings that I learned, freedom is not needing to have all these choices, like not even being afflicted by having all these choices.
So it's like, we believe that achieving all our desires is freedom, and actually not having desire is freedom.
And what that means in a practical sense is you really getting so close to understanding what do I genuinely want and what do I need in my life versus what do I think I need because of advertising, movies, media, social media, Instagram, all of this, which now is dictating to us what we want in life from what we wear to what we own to where which now is dictating to us what we want in life from And I think so many people look back on their life and go, I don't even know why I wanted that.
And so for me, it's the first thing is just doing a really simple audit of your life and looking at something as basic as what are your goals right now?
And if you don't have any goals, you should definitely have them.
If you have goals, it's like, how many of those goals are your goals?
And how many of those goals are goals because of society?
And try and find the balance between the ones that are truly ones.
Is your dream really your dream?
Is your path really your path?
And as soon as you start having that conversation with yourself and asking yourself that question, it will become very clear to you what something's coming from parenting, whether something's coming from friends or pressures, and what's really coming from inside.
This is the issue that you've addressed beautifully in some of your work, the perception of the perception of you.
Yes, yes.
Unpack that a little for us.
Yeah, so I wish I wrote this, and I didn't.
So I quote Charles Cooley, and he said this in the 1890, I believe, or 1900s, around that time.
He said, the challenge is, today I'm not what I think I am.
I'm not what you think I am.
I am what I think you think I am.
And it blows my mind every time I say it.
It gives me goosebumps.
It's profound.
Yeah, it's so profound.
And what it means is we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves.
So if I think Dr. Oz thinks I'm smart, then I feel smart.
If I think you think that I'm weak, then I feel weak.
And so we base our belief of ourselves on how we think other people think about us.
And the only way to break that is to build up how you think about yourself.
And I think this is, we do this all the time.
When you're going out of the door, you ask someone, oh, do I look good in this?
You're constantly asking someone else to validate.
It's never happened with us.
Right, never?
No, never.
Because someone tells someone first?
No.
It always happens.
But you know, we all do that and I do that too.
I still do that.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm not oblivious to this.
I do that too and I think what we're always looking for is external validation and And the only way to block that is to start validating yourself.
There's a biological reason for that.
Please tell me.
I'd love to learn.
Just the whole idea of being...
The way we survived was because we could live in groups.
Yes.
And there was a conformity that allowed us to live in groups efficiently and effectively.
When we didn't conform, we were ostracized.
I think we're...
Because of millennia of conforming, I think there's part of us that just wants to make sure that we're still accepted by the group.
And that's why we're always checking.
Yes, absolutely.
So there's a survival tactic to it.
Absolutely.
But I think so much of the people we admire today are the people who don't do that.
Yes.
And the people that really pave their own path and do incredible things, all the people that we would all read books about or watch movies about, have all lived a very different path.
And I think this is the crazy thing that when you're in school, you're told to fit in.
And then when we grow up, it's all about standing out.
And it's like, it's so complicated.
It's a great point.
Yeah, it's so complicated, right?
Like when you're in school, it's like standing in line, fitting in.
And when you go older, it's like, do you have a brand?
Do you know who you stand for?
Do you stand out?
And it's so complicated.
Whereas for me, it's not about having a brand or fitting in.
It's about expressing who we are.
And this is what monk training was about, was about bringing out The qualities and the values and the attributes that are inside rather than forcing conformity of everyone.
So we were conforming externally by what we wore and what we did and what we ate for discipline and simplicity so you could go more inward.
And I think you spoke about this beautifully in the podcast we had of, you know, if you have basic routines externally of what you eat, what time you wake up, it gives you more energy and time and space to be creative inwardly.
And that's what I think it is, that we're so obsessed externally that we don't have time.
So we spend more time picking our hairstyle than we do figuring out our passion.
We spend more time figuring out what clothes we should wear rather than figuring out what strengths we have.
Like the amount of time that's spent picking the right filter on Instagram versus the amount of time that could be spent reading a book to learn a new skill.
All of our pressures are external.
And so of course we're removed of the time we can spend inwardly.
Do you have any specific practices that you learned in the ashram with the monks that you can share, that people can do right now so that they can get to this place of knowing who they are?
Yeah, one of my favorite ones that I speak about often is single-tasking.
What that means is spending your time doing one thing at a time.
And I think we all have this myth that we believe in called multitasking.
And the studies that I've read, and both of you can enlighten me more, but the studies that I've read suggest that only 2% of the world's population can actually multitask.
It's make-believe.
It's not real.
Yeah, it's not real.
And 2% believe it, and then when you hear that, you think you're in that 2%, and most of us are not.
I don't think even 2% do it, frankly.
I really believe it's just surely...
Being able to switch really rapidly between things, but you can only do one thing at once.
Yeah.
You can only do one thing well at once.
Exactly.
And I think that's the point.
Doing one thing well and doing something deeply.
So for me, single tasking.
Now, the way you practice this is consistently repeat to yourself throughout the day, do one thing at a time.
It's a simple mantra.
It's really easy.
So when I'm here with you all now, I'm present.
And then when I go to my next meeting, I'll be present, and I'm doing one thing at a time.
Often I'll be on my phone, I'll write an email, and my wife asks me something, but like, give me one second, I just need to do this one thing.
Let me finish this, and then I'll be fully attentive there.
And I think what we like to have is we like to...
So I can do that.
You can, yeah.
I don't know if this has happened with your wife, but I'm sitting there in the middle of something, and Lisa will, someone will come to her.
I don't know.
You're chasing after a topic and she'll interrupt me.
I find it very difficult.
I think it might be a male-female thing a little as well.
I find it difficult too.
Four times yesterday when I was trying to work and you kept interrupting me.
Trivialities.
That's why I say I love you.
And that's what we all do to each other.
I do to my wife, like she'll be in the middle of, you know, she's a vegan recipe developer, and she's fully immersed in the kitchen and doing measurements, whatever.
And then I'll ask her a question at that time.
And she's asking me a question when I'm recording a podcast, whatever it is.
And so for me, what we want is selective presence.
What we want is I want to be present at this time.
And I don't want to be present here.
Life doesn't work like that.
You either present or you're not.
And so the only way to master that is single tasking.
If I'm present with you now, I'll be present on my holiday and I'll be present on my phone.
If I'm distracted now, then I'll be distracted later.
So this is why so many people are at work thinking about their holiday and when they're on their holiday they're thinking about work.
Because we want selective presence.
We want to be attentive on holiday and inattentive at work.
Life doesn't work like that.
You have to make a choice.
So single tasking is my favorite way of bringing in the present for yourself.
Do one thing at a time.
When you're showering, just shower.
When you're brushing your teeth, just brush your teeth.
When you're eating, just eat.
And we were often taught this, and one of the methods of eating that we loved was called chewing your drinks and drinking your food, right?
So you want to drink your food.
You want to grind it up so much with so much attention that you can actually drink the solids.
And you want to get to a point where you're chewing your drinks.
Instead of like just gulping down your drink, you want to chew your drink.
You want to as if it was a morsel of food.
How would you take it in?
And that was better for your digestion.
It was better for your body.
You would keep all those nutrients.
And it was such a simple tactic that you can do.
So every time I'm eating now, I'm repeating that to myself.
I love that idea.
Some of the best advice I've ever received on weight loss is chew your food.
It slows you down, so your ghrelin, the hormone in your body, the satiety hormone, can actually elevate so it can tell you that you've eaten.
Otherwise, you ate three meals in 30 minutes.
Exactly.
You don't even have a chance for your biology to work, to help.
Absolutely.
And I had that bad habit of eating really fast.
So when I first got there and the monks was looking at me, they were like, wow, that guy eats fast, right?
So that's one of the first things they said to me because they could see that I was always one of these people eating in a rush, eating on the plane, eating on a train, eating on a bus, you know, just running around, eating lunch.
And then when I went there, that was the first thing.
And we think slowing down is a bad thing, but actually slowing down helps us do things deeply, more effectively.
And allows that activity to do what it needs to do.
And so when you're eating fast, you're not even eating, right?
And you can both advise me more on that than I can, but the monk's principles were just simplified to that point.
So that's a few things.
I mean, there's so many more things we could talk about.
Let's talk about vision.
You say memorably that you can't be what you can't see.
Yes.
My belief in that is I would never have wanted to be a monk if I never saw a monk.
If you never see someone use social media effectively, you'll never think about using social media effectively.
If you never see someone or something, even if it's just a glimpse, you don't have to see it in its full force, it's hard to be it.
And I think today, the reason why we struggle with habits and discipline and self-control is we don't necessarily see it that often in people around us.
We don't talk about it.
So when I became a monk, we gave up all eating of meat, fish and eggs.
We gave up alcohol and any other intoxicants.
We were celibate for the time I was a monk.
More questions after the break.
You're so good at giving concrete lessons.
One of the biggest challenges that especially the younger generation faces is the inability to figure out what they're really passionate about.
Give us a step that could help the average listener revisit this issue.
Yeah, absolutely.
So this is from both the Ikigai model and the Dharma model, both of which I love so much.
And it talks about how purpose or passion...
What expanded slightly is defined by these four areas.
Finding the cross-section of what you're good at, what you love, what the world needs, and then what you can get paid for.
And I think what's often missed in that whole list is what the world needs and what you genuinely love and are good at.
And so we miss.
So we think about money first.
We always think about life and like, okay, what's going to make some money for me?
Or what am I going to get paid for?
Okay, I can study that.
I'm okay at it.
And we spent our life...
We spend our life in the box of what we're good at and don't love.
And that leads to depression.
It leads to pain.
It leads to pressure.
It leads to so much stuff because you're doing something you're good at, but you don't love it.
And so I think finding meaning.
So for me, the first thing is, let's start with our strengths.
Our strengths are a good place.
The innate strengths that we have naturally that come with us.
Some of us are natural born communicators.
Some of us are natural born builders and engineers.
Some of us are I think the first thing is self-awareness on your strengths.
Start there because it's tangible, it's easy to figure out.
And I think most of us avoid that because we're told our whole life to focus on our weaknesses.
So what I try and say to people is, when it comes to your hard skills, focus on your strengths.
When it comes to your soft skills, focus on your weaknesses.
When it comes to your qualities, like empathy, compassion, judgment, focus on your weaknesses.
But when it comes to your hard skills, your tangible skills, focus on your strengths.
If you're good at math, own it.
If you're good at, you know, whatever it is, being a doctor, own that.
And so I feel, start with your strengths.
The second thing I think is, is you have to find meaning in things.
You don't just fall in, it's not like we just naturally love something.
It takes time, it takes meaning.
And so sometimes you can love what you do and sometimes you have to do what you love.
And not all of us are going to be able to do what we love every day, but we can find meaning in what we do, which helps us love it.
So I may not like studying, but if I see the meaning in it, then I love it.
If I see the meaning in that this is going to help me get to this stage and make an impact on these people, then I fall in love with it.
We all fall in love when there's meaning behind it.
So that's the next step, is really finding what you love.
And that takes experimenting and testing.
I think one of the biggest mistakes for children's education today is that you have to decide what you want to do so young without having many experiments.
And all I can say honestly is that I think experimentation is the only way you discover what you truly want to love.
You don't know if you love something.
I've had people say to me, I think I would love this.
I think I would love to host a TV show.
And many people would love to host a TV show, but I don't think many people know what it goes into hosting a TV show.
And then when you get someone into that zone, they're like, oh wait, I don't like this anymore.
And I think that's the problem, that you're making a decision based on the expectation of the result Not on the experience of what the process is.
And so for me, the advice is go and do more processes.
And then the third, which is so important, is figure out if the world needs it and how the world needs it.
Like both of you, the story you beautifully shared on our podcast around how you both created this incredible partnership with Oprah originally and then your show and just figuring out that people needed Healthy advice through television.
You have to figure out what the world needs with your passion.
Because if you don't figure that out, then all you're doing is a hobby or an interest.
So if you're doing something because it makes you happy on the weekend, that's great.
But that's a hobby or an interest.
That's not a passion or a purpose.
And your passion becomes a purpose when you use it to serve others.
And I think people forget that.
That if you're not serving people with your passion, it's not a purpose.
It's an interest or a hobby.
And so if you want to upgrade into that.
And the mistake there or the biggest challenge there is I think we undervalue discipline and expertise.
I'm constantly pushing this.
You have to become an expert in the area you want to help people in.
You have to learn yourself.
You have to constantly challenge yourself.
You have to grow yourself.
It's not good enough to love something.
And I talk about this with soccer all the time.
So I'm a huge soccer fan.
Grew up in England, obviously.
Born and raised in London.
Absolutely love football, soccer.
And I didn't want the process of what it took to be a soccer player.
Mm-hmm.
It doesn't work for me.
I can't be in the gym for that many hours a day.
I like being healthy, but not to that extreme.
I don't like having to sit in that kind of scenario every day.
I don't want to be out at training at 3am in the morning.
I can wake up early in the morning to meditate, but I don't want to wake up in the early morning to go for a run.
That doesn't excite me.
And so fall in love with that process and really deeply become an expert in that process.
And then finally, you'll naturally get paid for it.
Like that you don't even have to think about.
When you do the first three, the other one comes of its own accord.
I hope that answers your question.
It's perfectly.
I'm glad you said that last little bit because in the back of everyone's mind is still I got to make money.
The best way to make a lot of money is to be the best in the world at something.
100%.
And you cannot be the best in the world at something if you don't adore it so much you'll spend the tens of thousands of hours to be good at it.
100%.
Absolutely.
And I think people miss this part of my journey because it may not be the most interesting part but I spent two years at a large corporate company called Accenture building social media.
And I was fascinated by how social media could be used as a tool.
And I used to spend all my weekends, all my time at work, building social media skills and tools that I now use all the time in my work.
And for me, that was so, so important.
I spent two years every single day obsessed with trying to understand social media so that I could use it for good, so that I could use that platform to spread a message.
But it took a lot of time and work to understand that.
We started talking about heartbeat a little earlier.
Yeah, we never got to.
But I'll finish here.
There's a metaphor for life that you find in that.
Share that with us if you don't mind.
Yeah, absolutely.
So we made a video last year and it was all about how...
I said it once in a speech randomly in Europe and then I made a video out of it because people seem to connect with the concept.
And I was talking about how...
When you're alive, your lifeline does this.
Now, I'm not a medical doctor, so you can tell me I'm getting it totally wrong.
That's particularly for tachycardia, by the way.
It's going to have a little bit of a pause.
It's going to have a little bit of a pause, right?
Yeah, there we go.
And so it goes up and down, and it has multiple ups and multiple downs, and it's not always exactly the same.
And when you're dead, it does this, right?
It's just a flat line.
And I said, just imagine and think about how the first is what life looks like.
Life is full of ups and downs, stagnancy, ups and downs and pauses.
And death is having consistency.
And so life is not about consistency.
And I think we're so addicted to things being the same.
I often say this in relationships and couples as well.
Everyone's always like, I want to feel like that again.
But I'm like, why don't you want to feel new?
Like, why are we not open?
Every time you say, I want to feel like that again, all we're saying is, there was an experience before that can never be surpassed, and I only want to feel that.
So we're so addicted to staying the same, when actually everything, our body, our minds, everything in the world is constantly changing.
Which means the only way you're aligned with the world is if you're changing.
And the only way you're unaligned with life is if you're not changing.
Yet we're so addicted to staying the same.
And so for me, that analogy of the lifeline just draws it very clearly.
And I've had all the ups and downs in my life.
Very clear.
And I don't want this.
No one wants this.
No one wants a flatline because you're dead.
Positive competitive state versus negative competitive state.
Yes.
How do you tell the difference?
Oh, so hard.
So hard, right?
I think competition...
I'm a very competitive person.
I always have been.
And that's something that I really had to work on.
But I always...
Positive competitive state is when the competition allows you to grow yourself.
Negative competitive state is when you're trying to put the other person down and prove them wrong.
And that's how you know it.
When I'm trying to create content that is shareable, that will help people, that will serve people and it gets millions or billions of views or the podcast or whatever it is, I'm doing that because I want to...
Prove to myself that I understand people and I know how to help them.
That helps me put me in a positive competitive state.
If I'm trying to put someone else down or show someone else they don't know what they're doing and it's always about being better than them, that's a negative competitive state.
And I think what that results in is envy, jealousy.
It results in spiraling downwards.
It results in negative talk about other people.
Whereas when you're in a positive competitive state, you can actually...
Positively affirm your competition.
You can look at people and actually say, I want to collaborate with you.
I want to work with you.
And that's where I saw it, that being sitting here with you today, someone that I admire and respect so much, and I've watched for so many years in my life, for me it's like, I want to collaborate with people.
And so let's forget about positive competitive state is recognizing that when we collaborate, we all serve, we all have an impact, and that you're helping people in a way that I can't help.
And hopefully I'm helping in a way that someone else can't help.
And that's beautiful.
If we really want to help people, positive competitive state is about the goal.
If the goal is to help people, you should be happy with everyone who's helping people.
You can't have an issue with someone who's having impact with people if you genuinely want to impact people.
The most damaging four words in our jargon-filled language is what will people say, which I hear a lot.
Why'd you make those four in particular?
I genuinely feel that when you narrow it down, and I do this with people I work with and people I've coached in the past, where I sit down with people and I ask, okay, what's stopping you from doing this?
People say, oh, you know, my parents are stopping me, or my friends are stopping me, or money is stopping me.
And I'm like, okay, well, no, what's really stopping you?
And then they'll say, well, I'm worried about if it will fail.
And I'm like, okay, well, what is really stopping you?
And they'll be like, I'm worried what people will think if I fail.
Like, that's what's really stopping us.
If you get to the heart of any time we don't do something, whether it's as simple as I don't post on social media, or whether I don't wear what I want to wear, or whether I didn't style my hair a certain way, or whether I didn't read a book, or whatever it is, anything we don't end up doing usually boils down to what will people say.
Yeah, but the social media, that is why we do it too.
Yes.
We also do it because of what people say.
Right, right.
So it's not just what you don't do, it's also what you do.
Correct, correct.
And I feel like, and when we do it for that reason, we're also molding ourselves to what will people say.
So you're always living for what will people say.
Right.
This is actually what it is.
You're not living your truth because of what will people say.
So you're living your false for what will people say.
That's actually what it is.
You just made me think of that now.
That's what it is.
We don't live our truth because we're worried what will people say.
Hence, we live our mask because we want to know what will people say.
How do you avoid that?
I mean, you're in the public eye.
You live on social media.
How do you avoid being too tied into how people respond?
I was very fortunate to experiment with that at a mini level.
I remember a time in my life where I became the president of a youth organization when I was around 18 years old.
And that youth organization was promoting positivity in England, etc.
And when I did that, I went through experiencing a group of people who thought I was a terrible leader.
And then the next moment I did one good thing and everyone thought I was a positive leader.
And I still remember that time.
I think I was like 20 years old and I remember that event.
I'd gone through being told I wasn't a good manager and I'm not a good manager at all.
And I was being told I wasn't a good manager.
And then the next day I think I did an incredible fundraiser for the group and we raised a lot of funds.
And everyone was like, oh my God, Jay's amazing.
And I remember that day, literally saying to myself at 20 years old, I was like, I will never live for the validation of people ever again.
Because I saw how bad it felt to be told I was terrible.
And then I was like, the more I buy into the compliments, that means I'm going to buy into that degree to the criticism.
And I think this is it.
It's like, you don't let compliments get to your head and you don't let criticism get to your heart.
And the only way to live that way is to know why you're doing what you're doing.
And have people who you check with.
And I think it's important.
It's not just about me versus the world and no one else matters.
You have your selected group of mentors, coaches, guides in different areas of your life who can continue to realign you.
You're still open to people, but you're now selecting those people.
And I think that's the mistake.
We don't select the people that have an impact.
I'll give an example.
I love my mom and she loves me, but all she cares about is, is her son healthy?
That's all she cares about.
My mom does not care about social media or views or videos or awards or any podcast.
She doesn't care.
She's like, is my son healthy?
So if I take her opinion seriously for my business, it could be very detrimental to just that area.
But if I take her opinion seriously for, hey, I am looking a bit tired, I am feeling a bit tired, then it's very apt for that.
And what we are usually doing is unconsciously creating A group of people who are deciding our life in areas that they're not experts in, in areas that they don't know about.
So if you sat down with me today and we talked about my health and you told me something, I'd take it seriously.
If you talked to me, I would take it seriously.
But I wouldn't do that with everyone just because I met someone on the street.
Not saying they can't be right, but I think we have to curate a group of people that are advisors and coaches and mentors.
So I've done that for social media, for spirituality, for meditation, for my business.
And I think that's what helps you We're almost crowdsourcing our life, right?
It's like you can't crowdsource your life.
You have to choose the crowd that you listen to.
You had 300 million views on a video you made on the topic of stress and how we cope with it.
But what's the solve for the growing epidemic of a pressure we don't seem to be able to handle?
Yeah, what a tough question and something that I'm trying to address as well and help people with.
I think we need to give people more permission so that they can give themselves permission to slow down and realize it's not the end of the world.
Or give themselves permission to recognize that everyone's timing isn't the same.
So I think when we see some news that there's a new 21-year-old billionaire or there's a new 25-year-old millionaire or there's a new app, it's like people start thinking that that's the norm of their whole generation.
I'm like, wait a minute, that's one in eight billion people who've done it at that age.
And I think perspective, patience, And pace are gonna help people take that pressure off themselves.
But it's something that needs to come through organizations.
It's something that needs to come through parenting.
It needs to kind of come into our system too to make it really practical.
But I would just say that people need to look back and just be honest with themselves and just say, I'm not gonna take that on as my pressure.
And you have to give yourself the permission to do that.
And that permission is going to come from, again, who you're selecting to surround yourself by, which books you're reading, which articles you're reading, what podcasts you're listening to.
People listening to this podcast aren't going to go away thinking, oh my god, I need to become successful tomorrow, because that's not what we're amplifying.
And so if that's the noise you're listening to, that's the song you've got playing.
It's as simple as that.
You can't say, I want to listen to hip-hop music, but you're playing heavy metal every day in your ear.
Doesn't make sense.
You're not going to hear hip-hop music.
So if you're saying you want to be calm and live a beautiful life of impact and service, but all you listen to every day is hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle.
It's not going to evolve in itself.
So I think you've got to select what music you're listening to.
Jay Shetty, it's been a real pleasure.
You're so kind.
I'm Purpose with Jay Shetty, a very successful podcast.
And to all of the great things you're doing, not just on social media, but in life, keep it up.
