Zachary Levi: ON Growing from Depression, Anxiety, and Mental Health

On this week's episode, Shazam’s Zachary Levi opens up like never before. He shares his personal struggles with depression, anxiety and mental health as well as how meditation, prayer, and therapy have helped him grow from it all. If you are going through a tough time, this episode will help you shift your mindset and trust that, as cliche, as it sounds, everything happens for a reason. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:30Jay Shetty?

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• 2:16Jay Shetty?

  And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and is clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1

• 2:59Jay Shetty?

  Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  It's unfortunate that abuse and trauma and mental illness are being passed down generationally, but it can be helped, it can be fixed, we can love ourselves and we can love each other, we can go make the world so groovy.

• 3:27Jay Shetty?

  Hello, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. I'm so grateful that you keep coming back every week to grow, to learn, to educate, enlighten, and enliven your lives. It's amazing that you're choosing transformation over everything else, and I really value that and I appreciate you making that commitment in your life. And today's guest, as you know, we always like to bring on people who are sharing their authentic energy and today will 100% not disappoint. I'm so excited. Today's guest is an American actor and singer. You may know him from Chuck or The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, and now he stars in DC's brand new movie, Shazam, as Shazam. Zachary Levi, thank you so much for being here.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Honored to be here, man. Thank you so much for having me. Jay Shetty, everyone, Jay Shetty.

• 4:15Jay Shetty?

  That is, that's so good.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  I practice it at night.

• 4:19Jay Shetty?

  You were doing accents earlier too, and I was thinking, wow, this, this is really good.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  Was I doing accents?

• 4:22Jay Shetty?

  You were.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  What was I doing?

• 4:24Jay Shetty?

  You're doing the Italian.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  Oh, Italian.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  That's right, that's right. You always have to do it with the hands, though. Otherwise, you're not really doing it well.

• 4:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, you've got it down. But no, I'm genuinely, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart, I'm genuinely so grateful that you're here.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 4:36Jay Shetty?

  When my team and I were looking through your work, your words, your insights, the types of things that you choose to speak about, whether you're on interviews or social media, I feel so aligned and connected to them.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 4:47Jay Shetty?

  And I was like, one thing I love about this podcast, and the reason why we do it, is I want to go beyond the actor, beyond the singer, beyond what someone does day to day.

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Into the human being.

• 4:56Jay Shetty?

  Into the human being, like you said, the first thing you said, Zachary Levi, the human being.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Human being, yeah.

• 5:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, thank you, Zach. I really appreciate you being here.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  Happy to be here.

• 5:03Jay Shetty?

  But yeah, so I want to start, because what I love is that I feel like the world's just getting to learn about you even more and more and more and more right now. And that's very exciting.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, I've been blessed enough to be kicking around this town, or this business, rather, for about 20 years. I mean, almost exactly. I started auditioning for film and television when I was, when I was 18. It was April of 1999, and now it's April of 2019. And it's been a crazy 20 years. I mean, this town can be incredibly exciting. It can also be incredibly dark, a very difficult place to try and find yourself, particularly when you don't know that you're trying to find yourself, as I've come to find out.

• 5:53Speaker 01

  To be here now, and, you know, I mean, I've always had a really blessed career in that I started working pretty much right away. When I was about 18, I started booking gigs. And I've been able to build, you know, some bit of, I don't know, a social awareness or people. I've been living in the public eye to some extent, but this is a whole nother level of what that is. And

• 6:21Speaker 01

  And I'll say, man, I think the timing of all of it, and we can get into more details of it, obviously, but it's one of the things I talk about so much on my social media is mental health and loving oneself and self-love, self-care. And those are things I didn't really quite understand until I didn't want to live anymore a few years ago and then went and did a super deep dive into therapy and had a ton of work that I was doing with psychiatrists and psychotherapists, dialectic behavioral therapy, art therapy, meditation therapy, life coaching, like going to the gym, meditation and prayer, and my friends and family loving

• 7:05Speaker 01

  me through all of that and really just saving my own life. And on the heels of that, I got this job. And that is no coincidence, as far as I'm concerned. I think that I, as a deeply spiritual person who believes in a creator, I believe that this was all waiting to happen, perhaps as things time out in the way that they do, I think that they do in meaningful ways. And I think that the timing of me being able to now have this platform is directly tied to the work that I went and did on my life so that I can now talk about that work and talk about the importance of it. And it's awesome, man. I'm really grateful that,

• 7:47Speaker 01

  not only that I have this incredible new job and that it's changing my life on a daily basis. I mean, I still walk around and, you know, most people don't know who the heck I am. That's, that's, most of the time, I've lived in a reasonable anonymity most of my career, which has been quite an amazing blessing, you know, because I don't know what it's like to be Brad Pitt. I don't know what it's like to be Tom Cruise. I don't know what it's like to not be able to go anywhere without people mobbing you or whatever, or if people do. I don't, maybe, I don't know, maybe Tom Cruise walks around and people don't mob him either. I have no idea. Maybe, you know, with the right set of sunglasses and a hat, you're good. But I do, I've always believed that you be grateful for what you have when you have it. I appreciated that anonymity. If I lose some of that moving into this next

• 8:28Speaker 01

  phase of my life, then so be it. I'm happy for the trade-off to be able to now have more of a platform to be able to speak love into the world because I think. I do believe that God created me to do what I'm doing, to be an entertainer. I think I have a specific skill set and I've always had this skill set even since I was a little kid. I was very good at entertaining people and could keep growing at it and figuring it out in ways that I couldn't grow and figure out other things in my life, still trying to figure out how to be a better basketball player. But, um, but to be able to, to, to believe that I was created to do that is one thing. But after having gone through all the therapy and the life-saving stuff that I've done and

• 9:10Speaker 01

  learned and the self-love that I've learned, I really believe more than that. I think God created me to hopefully just be, or really has created all of us to be conduits of love, conduits of life, conduits of light. And if we can get through our own traumas and our own pain and our own injuries and find healing in that, then it allows us to be even stronger, more efficacious conduits. And so, yeah, I, I don't know. It's, it's all very cool. I just, I daily, I just daily feel like a deep, deep, deep, deep gratitude, like to the point where I, I just start crying sometimes, you know?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  And it's incredible, it's incredible to go from a place where I felt such deep despair and I was crying from despair to now feeling like I just get, I just tear up feeling nothing but like the deepest of peace and joy and gra- I mean, even now, even just talking about it, I just go overwhelmed. I'm like, I can't believe that this is my life right now. It's so cool.

• 10:11Jay Shetty?

  That's awesome, man. That's beautiful. We're three minutes in and Zachary Levi is already talking about self-love.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah, man.

• 10:17Jay Shetty?

  Mental health, going deep in life, talking about humanity. I love that and I'm so glad that we've started there. Like this is brilliant. Usually, usually I'm like, okay, like we're like crescendo, like we're moving through.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  How do I get this out of you?

• 10:29Jay Shetty?

  And like, here we go with Zach and it's like we're three minutes in and you're already saying everything that I know everyone who's listening right now will, will absolutely fall in love with you because that's, that's what this is about. Like this whole community is about that. Now, I, I want to, everything, what's beautiful about what you've just done for us is you've kind of laid out all the things I want to dive into today.

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:47Jay Shetty?

  So, so I love. Love that because everyone's got a feel for who you are now already. And and I want you to be able to tell that story in depth because I'm guessing. And I love what you said there that when you were crying out of despair. And now you're crying out of gratitude. Those two different, I'm also guessing that because of your faith. And and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I also guess that because of your faith, because of your search for meaning in your own life. That even those tears. How far were they from helplessness versus how far were they hopeful? Like, where were you in that? Space when you were really in that middle, how how much were they helpless? But how much were they full of hope?

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I don't know. I mean, to be honest. Most of my life, I've been a pretty optimistic and hopeful person, but there's been. There have been seasons. Excuse me, there have been seasons of life that have just. Destroyed me and and and sometimes I wasn't even aware that they were destroying me. In fact, I think a lot of the times we're not really aware of the destruction that's going on. And a lot of that we play a big part in, you know, I I think. I think a lot of the destruction that we feel in our life is self motivated, is self destructive. We don't know that we're doing that. We're we're trying to. Feel.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Like we belong with that we have worth. I think from the literally the minute we come into this world, I mean, even though we're not quite aware of it when we're that young, but. We're we're looking for cues from our parents. We're looking for cues from our friends, our family, our our school, our society. Who am I? Do I have worth in this world? And unfortunately. I think most people's parents are not qualified to be able to even help them truly understand a lot of these concepts. Because they were never taught, which then makes all mental health, as far as I'm concerned, a completely generational. Thing. These are just handed down year after year after year. So. I think that I was given a strong enough will and spirit and ego, if you will.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Talking about like sapiens and all that, you know, like the ego that we build, which is our survival mechanism, you know, and we get banged around and. It's denting us and it's forming this thing, but I I survived and I survived pretty well and I found. Entertainment as a way of survival. I found love through entertainment. If I could make somebody laugh and I could get those applause, I found, I was like, oh, there's my purpose. I have value now because I can make this person applaud or give them a good time or whatever. But you know, when the applause dies down, it becomes a very lonely life. And then you try to fill that loneliness with in all manner of things. So I think for a long time, though I was optimistic and though my faith, which is kind of rooted mainly in Christianity, although I

• 13:29Speaker 01

  would say my Christianity feels much more Buddhist than Baptist, I think that I always, I always had faith, a deep, a deep faith, and therefore a deep hope with that faith. But under all of that even, or let's say above all of that, I don't know which current was, you know, which ones sitting on the other, but there was a tremendous amount of despair. There's a tremendous amount of hopelessness, because I still didn't quite understand what it meant to just love myself. And I think that's one of the, I mean, honestly, that's why I can't stop talking about it, because after having gone through what I've gone through, I really genuinely believe that it's probably the biggest root issue that we have in the world,

• 14:08Speaker 01

  in the world. World leaders right now, pick a country, our country, here, other places, the, there, there are people who are in positions of power and they're in positions of power because they've been chasing worth. They don't, they don't know how bereft they are of their own self-worth. They have been flexing power and making moves and feeling, oh, if I make enough money, if I have enough power and if I have enough money, look at some of the biggest, you know, CEOs or, or most, you know, wealthy people in the world. I think they're probably some of, and you hear these things all the time, like, well, you know, the most successful people in the world are some of the loneliest or whatever. And you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, great. I would

• 14:50Speaker 01

  take billions of dollars over, over, you know, whatever that, whatever the alternative is. But I, I really do think that so many of them, even though they might not even realize it are hopeless. They don't realize that they are terrified deep down inside that even their billions or trillions or whatever they've got, it's still not going to give them any actual real value going into whatever is beyond this world, or even while you're here in this world, you know? So anyway, that, that was a little bit of a tangent, a little bit of a tangent, but going back though. What I was experiencing, although again, like you unpack a lot of this stuff in therapy,

• 15:31Speaker 01

  but you know, I grew up in a home where my mom was a beautiful, crazy, intelligent, vibrant, dynamic woman who honestly probably could have done anything. She could have been CEO of a Fortune 500, she could have been a doctor, a lawyer, whatever. She was, she was an incredible force that unfortunately was, you know, that grew up in a home where her mother psychologically abused her and her siblings. And we knew that a little bit growing up, but you know, you just hear mom, you know, honestly, just like yelling about how her mom was such a horrible mom. And it's, it's a difficult thing when you're growing up now

• 16:14Speaker 01

  with a mom who didn't understand the damage that that did to her. And so she just carried on that abuse. And she was very psychologically abusive to me and my sisters, not knowing that she was. And that was one of the biggest things I learned in therapy was as I was forgiving myself and understanding how to forgive my mom, because I just started visualizing the five-year-old version of my mom getting, you know, hit or literally left on the side of the road when they were, you know, on some family road trip and my grandma was mad at her and was like, kicked her out of the car and left her there for hours. And you start realizing how much trauma, like we've all, we all experienced trauma. Trauma isn't just like some really crazy hardcore thing that like, oh, you got like blunt force trauma

• 16:57Speaker 01

  to the head. I mean, we're dealing with these things on a regular basis, on a daily basis sometimes. And my mom was madly traumatized by my grandmother and, and she never went and got the help that she needed to get. And so that just got worse and worse and worse and worse. And the life that I grew up with in my family really, really messed me up, more so than I ever gave it credit for, because my ego was strong enough to keep me going. It kept me going. I was surviving and I was surviving. It's incredible how evolutionarily we've been able to create this whole persona and survive through this stuff. But as a lot of people will tell you, and whether that's like a midlife crisis or whatever it is, you know, you get to a place and mine was, you know, I basically got to

• 17:42Speaker 01

  I had a gnarly childhood growing up. I didn't realize just how much that affected me and my ability to love myself and therefore love others. I ended up getting married and divorced in a very short amount of time to a girl that I thought I was deeply madly in love with, and I still have a tremendous amount of love for. But we were two, I think, broken people, you know, finding each other, which is what happens in a lot of relationships, I think. Because if you haven't done the self-work, and you don't know that you needed to do that self-work, then you're gonna keep attracting the wrong person, and they're gonna be attracting you as the wrong person, and so on and so forth. And so, that was a really, really dark period of my life. And then

• 18:23Speaker 01

  I got divorced, and then months later, you know, within the same year, my mom died, very unexpectedly, although she and I didn't really have a relationship for about 10 years by that point. And it was really, like, and I mourned for a couple of days when she died. But I then kind of, you know, I was, I was okay. Or I thought I was okay. I thought I had dealt with it. And then, you know, work, this business, again, it's a really gnarly business, and it can really knock you around and beat you up. And, and then I made this move to Texas, because I've had all of these crazy, amazing dreams of, well, I think amazing, who knows if they pan out, but to go build, I mean,

• 19:08Speaker 01

  to go build a film studio that's also a resort, that's also a commune, that's also like, like, literally, I, I just, I want to make a better world. And I think that we can do that if we all want it. And we have to just want it bad enough. And I think that if you have a platform to maybe go and try and do that, and you've got some means and some finances to go and maybe build a new type of community that can be an example of how we can get back to knowing each other and loving each other and trusting each other and communing again with one another and knowing your neighbor and, you know, kids running around and parents not feeling like that to helicopter parent them all the time and all of that stuff. So, anyway, that all brought me to Texas. But then, I got there, and then I

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Felt after many years of feeling very optimistic and feeling a deep faith, I felt quite abandoned by God, to be honest. I felt like all of the things that led me there then left me alone and left me sitting alone and, and very deeply hopeless. And, and that was right around my 37th birthday and, and I, yeah, I just, I didn't really understand what the point of life was anymore. I felt like I had fought really hard to go and be a good person, to go and love people, to be an example, to try and use my, my platform and privilege for good. And I felt like all of that amounted to me now being completely alone and completely hopeless.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  And, um, and thank God, uh, you know, I had friends and family that were there and kind of holding my hand and propping me up through some really, really dark moments and times. And then I found this place that I think was essentially initially created to be a place where CEOs of very large companies could, that were dealing with major burnout, major depression, major anxieties, could go and just, you know, uh, get some major deep healing. And I went and it was three weeks of just like the most intense. I got there and, you know, I fell through the door of that place. It was like, I got to 37 and I just fell through the door of therapy.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  And I said, I don't know who I am, or I don't think I know who I am because I don't know how it got me here. So I need to know who I am and I need to know how I got here. And I need to make sure that I, that never happens again because I don't want to die. But I don't really feel, I don't understand why, why I should keep living. And, um, and through all of those things that I was saying earlier, all those various forms of therapy and psychiatry and, uh, and even, and again, like, you know, doing yoga twice, twice a week and Pilates twice a week and at the gym for, you know, because that's all incredibly crucial to our mental and emotional wellbeing. Those things all essentially, and the prayer of, of this, particularly this one woman who kind of,

• 22:01Speaker 01

  and I, I don't think it's any coincidence that God has brought these people into my life throughout my journey, but there have been women. Older maternal women that have come along through my journey that have been those surrogate mothers for me when my mother wasn't my mother and couldn't be my mother. And, uh, and this woman prayed me back to life. And, uh, between that and all of the tools that I was learning about, you know, learning about how bad my self-talk was, you know? That's something that I don't think a lot of people even quite understand how important it is of how you speak to yourself.

• 22:36Jay Shetty?

  Dive into that.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 22:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, let's dive into that. No, and, and when I'm listening to you.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Sorry, by the way, I am incredibly verbose and tangential FYI. So I'll just keep going unless you.

• 22:45Jay Shetty?

  It's great. No, no, no. And I, and I won't because I, I love listening because I think that's important too.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 22:51Jay Shetty?

  You know, I think as much as, as much as it is important for me to guide, I, I also like to listen and see where you're taking it because, and this is, this is advice to anyone who's listening to a friend or a family member, you learn more when you listen.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:04Jay Shetty?

  And I'm learning so much more about you than I could have ever gained if I was talking, which, which is awesome. When I'm listening to you though, what I find is that today I'm sitting in front of someone who I find is extremely passionate, feels that they're living their calling, feels that they're doing what they were born to do, which is very different from the self that you're displaying or sharing that you were before.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:25Jay Shetty?

  And so what I want to dive into, we'll, we'll dive into the self-talk too. But what I want to dive into is let's take you back to that six-year-old boy who was getting excited by dancing, singing, acting, but at the same time had this home experience that you were describing with your mother at the time. Is that when singing, dancing and acting became that outlet, became that expression, became that connect which you weren't getting at home? Is that when it was or was it, was it actually just something that came naturally?

• 23:53Speaker 01

  I mean, I think, I, I, I can't imagine that there's not some correlation to what my childhood was and, and then ultimately where I found outlets.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  I was the middle boy between two sisters. My dad wasn't in the picture. I was literally just like floating in a sea of estrogen. Like it was my sisters, my mom, my two aunts, my cousin Nikki, who's like our third sister, my grandma. Family outings were, you know, going to JCPenney's and shopping. I mean, that's what, that's what it felt like. So as a middle kid, you're looking to, you know, have a voice and have an identity of your own. That's one thing, you know, being the only boy, I was constantly having to kind of create my own worlds of imagination and entertainment and, you know, and not really having parents. Like my dad was gone, my mom, God bless her and God rest her soul. She had a lot of issues and she wasn't the best.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  She was really incredible as a mom in some respects, and I'm really grateful for those things that she did. For example, like she was way ahead of the curve when it came to like a naturopathic lifestyle. We were taking vitamins and like barley green and not having sugared cereal or soda when we were kids. And when now all the other kids are like, you don't have Cocoa Puffs? And I was like, I know it's the worst, but I'm so grateful that my mom knew and cared about all that stuff well before the curve because I don't now have problems dealing with my sugar levels and obesity in ways that a lot of other people have been addicted to this stuff for so long. Cause sugar is a crazy addiction. Anyway, again, tangential.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  So yeah, man, I think I was always just trying to, and I was, and I always had like a super vibrant imagination. And I was a super, super energetic spazzy kid. So all of those things just, oh, sorry. And then because I didn't, we didn't really have a tremendous amount of, let's say parental supervision or whatever, you know, the television became, and then also my video games through the television became worlds that I explored and lived in and loved. And so I was already being influenced by all of my favorite cartoons and TV shows. And those became, I don't know, that they were my friends necessarily, but I loved them and I wanted to emulate them and I wanted to be a part of them.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  So all of those things, I think, kind of put me into the place for that. Having a household where I, though I didn't know it at the time, where I wasn't, where I didn't understand self-love, where I didn't. Where I didn't know that I wasn't feeling fully loved or fully worthy of the life that I was living as a kid, you don't, these are all very subconscious things. But certainly, I'm sure that led to part of me going and wanting to find that in strangers, find that in the approval, literally, the approval of people going and sitting in seats in a theater and applauding me at the end of a play or laughing at the jokes throughout it. That all of a sudden, like I was saying before, gave me not just an outlet for all

• 27:01Speaker 01

  of this other stuff, but it gave me the validation that I so desperately was seeking and needing, which is, by the way, what almost every actor that comes to Hollywood is dealing with on some level. Because why the heck else are you trying to go and make all these strangers?

• 27:15Jay Shetty?

  And how do we balance that? Like, I love the fact that we're talking about this, because how do we balance that? This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job

• 28:00Jay Shetty?

  credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are. But it can be challenging to balance style, budget, and endless options. I was looking to create a dedicated calm space for my morning meditation and reading, but I was struggling to find pieces that felt grounding but could also stand up to daily use. I went on Wayfair and found a beautiful, solid wood accent chair and a bookshelf. Now that corner is my favorite place to anchor my day. The quality is incredible, it's built to last, and it completely shifted the energy of the room.

• 28:45Jay Shetty?

  Plus, you can shop with Wayfair Verified, where product specialists carefully vet items for quality and functionality. So you can shop with more confidence. And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980.

• 29:29Jay Shetty?

  That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. So, we all love, from a genuine place also, making other people happy. Yeah. We all need appreciation in our life. We all need to feel some level of significance and some level that we matter, that our work and our words has an impact on others. Yeah. Where have you found that balance between not letting other people's opinions and approval lead

• 30:14Jay Shetty?

  or mislead you versus when is it right and okay to feel that? Like, do you get what I'm saying? Oh, I totally, I mean, I'll let you know when I find that balance. I want to hear your thought process. Like, where are you finding that balance between knowing that we all, like, it's the same with me. Like, when I make a video, of course I want people to connect with it, of course I want people to resonate with it because that's also my service, it's my offering, it's where I get to be an instrument. Yeah. And it's where I get to feel useful. Yeah. But at the same time, if you only let the likes and the views and the shares and the reviews of movies guide how you feel about yourself, that's where I found it, that's my balance. It's like, it's like... I should know how I feel about. So I say happiness or self-love to me, and I'd love to your definition.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:55Jay Shetty?

  My definition of self-love is how I feel about myself when I'm by myself.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:59Jay Shetty?

  Right? Like, that's my definition of self-love. Yes. What's your, what's your definition of self-love and how does it start?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Well, I think similar, I, I, I think probably very similar. I mean, I, I didn't realize how much I didn't like hanging out with myself. Until I went to this really incredible life-saving therapy. I thought I did. I mean, people would talk about self-love all the time. I was like, I love me, I feel with me, I feel good, you know? But it's, but I didn't realize that when I would be quiet, when I would just be with me, I was always looking for the, I would, I would go play video games, you know? But that's not really spending time with yourself. Like, you're, you're now a simulated version of you in some cool world on another planet, shooting aliens or whatever, but that's not really spending time with yourself. And I, but I've always been a very, very deep thinker and feeler, so I've spent a lot of time and thought.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  It just wouldn't necessarily be about me and it wouldn't be kind to me. My self-talk, again, that I thought was just normal, when I would screw up, when I wouldn't do things the way that I thought they should be done. And this was all based on the way I was programmed, bad programming by my parents. I would destroy myself in my mind. And when I talked to these folks in therapy and they were like, "Why do you talk to yourself that way?" And I go, "Well, because this, that and the other." And they go, "Well, would you ever, if your, if your friend did something that you thought wasn't great, would you talk to them that way?" And I was like, "I would never. I would never talk to them that way." And then why would you talk to yourself that way?

• 32:30Jay Shetty?

  Hundred percent.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  And it, I don't know why I'd never put that together, but it leveled me. I was like, I, I guess because I genuinely don't like myself. I genuinely don't love myself. So what self-love is, I mean,

• 32:45Speaker 01

  It's a very difficult thing to kind of define, I suppose, but because there's so much around it. But I would say that to love yourself is to hopefully, finally, and by the way, and it's a daily thing because we can go back and forth on it, right? It's not like, oh, it's that solved and we're done and we can move on. It's a process. It's a journey and you always have to check in with yourself. And I think that, you know, for me, it's, it's been a matter of, you know, one of the things I, I, I spend time in prayer in the morning and I spend time in prayer at night and that's kind of my meditative time as well. And, you know, I, and, and a regular part of those

• 33:25Speaker 01

  prayers is thanking God for my heart, my mind and my body, because these are all things that I have ridiculed in various ways over the years and not embraced and not been great grateful for. A gratitude is one of, to me, the most powerful balms for your soul, for your heart, for your mind, to start with that and to say, wherever I'm at right now, thank you for what, who I am and, and where I'm at, and to appreciate that and be okay with where you are right now. If you can be okay with where you are right now, you can really start to love yourself. If you're, if you're not okay with where you are right now, it's very difficult to then love yourself because they're, they're working, they're

• 34:09Speaker 01

  contradicting one another, you know? And how to balance that, I mean, I mean, one of the things, I've never, I don't have like notifications on my social media. I've never, I, I started social media at a time where I was already living the public eye. So that's, you kind of get inundated, you know, with, with that many followers. And so fortunately, I've never lived, my world has never been one where I was constantly looking for the likes, even when I was unhealthy and didn't know it. I always knew in the back of my mind that that's not a healthy way to be living your life. You can't, if you're, if you're posting things and you're constantly checking to see

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Who checked in and who liked it and whatever. And by the way, not that I'm completely faultless and all that. Certainly, there's times I'll post something and I'll go back and see, I wonder who's I wonder who's chimed in or whatever, you know, but I have never, never found my worth there. But I have definitely tried, you know, I've looked for and found my worth in, in my work in, you know, how, am I doing good work? I mean, I, I thought I was failing my life for a long time because all of the jobs that I had done never really put me into the next echelon or, you know, that higher level where I was with all the cool kids, doing all the cool kid movies and

• 35:35Speaker 01

  a part of those conversations, I was always, I just always felt like I was on the outside looking in. And that wrecked me on a regular basis. I always felt like I wasn't doing something right, or I wasn't good enough, or

• 35:48Jay Shetty?

  And I think that's the question. Like when I'm listening to you, that, that's the question to me. It's, it's when you're doing something, do you feel fulfilled by doing it in and of itself? Or are you only gaining fulfillment? When someone appraises, right? Like that's that differentiation, that self-awareness. And for me, self-awareness is like the heart of self-love.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:08Jay Shetty?

  Because just getting to that point.

• 36:10Speaker 01

  Know yourself, to love yourself.

• 36:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, to know yourself first and then to love yourself because you can't love someone you don't know.

• 36:16Speaker 01

  No.

• 36:17Jay Shetty?

  Right? Like I can't say.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  Go on. I know, I know what you're saying and I, and I agree. I don't know that you, you can't, you can't fully appreciate or, or, or love. To fully love yourself means to love even all of the failure, even all of the, all of the, all of it. Exactly. Yeah. But I do think on a general broad philosophical sense, we 100% can and need to love those that we don't know.

• 36:41Jay Shetty?

  Oh, that 100%. Oh, 100%.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  That's all.

• 36:43Jay Shetty?

  No, no, I 100% from a humanity standpoint, I'll give you an example of what I mean. Like today you walk through the door.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:48Jay Shetty?

  And I love you for being a human and I love you for what I've learned about you in preparing for this.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Ditto.

• 36:54Jay Shetty?

  100%. But I can't love you fully because I haven't got to know you. Whereas the more I get to know you in this interview, the more I fall in love with you.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 37:00Jay Shetty?

  Does that make sense?

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, totally.

• 37:02Jay Shetty?

  And, and that's what I mean that even with ourselves.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Knowledge makes the, the love deeper.

• 37:05Jay Shetty?

  Correct. That's what I mean. Yeah, that's what I'm coming for. Like when you're subconsciously.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Well, that's empathy.

• 37:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  That's empathy, you know, but, but again, but, and how interesting though, is that then take it another step, which is. Certainly, the more you might get to know somebody, the deeper you can love them. But that's only if you, that's only predicated on how deep you know and love yourself first.

• 37:27Jay Shetty?

  Correct, 100%.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Which is so, like, I really thought I was somebody who loved people really deeply. And I did, by the way, I've always been a, God, I'm so grateful that he gave me a heart that, for a long time, by the way, really screwed with a lot of parts of my life. I may be a very sensitive kid that, you know, I would, I would get really wrecked about certain things that would happen in the world that had nothing to do with me. And I would just, I would literally feel the pain of people in other parts of the world. Or, I mean, to be perfectly honest, like, like India, for example, I can't wait to go to India, and I'm also dreading going to India because there's a part of me that feels like I'm gonna go walk around in those streets and I will be devastated because I will see these kids

• 38:12Speaker 01

  and these lower castes and I will be like, where is this, where is the justice? Where is the love for these people? Where's the love for the unlovable? That stuff just wrecks me. But I have always had that deep, a deep love for people. I didn't realize how much deeper I could love people. And by the way, not even deeper, but also in healthier,

• 38:32Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  more focused ways. If you're just a raw, if you're just raw love and you're just feeling, that can be powerful, but you can't, but you're not perhaps accomplishing as much as you could with that love. And if you can go and then work on yourself and tighten all this and get this strong, and then not just be overwhelmed and screwed up every time something happens, then you can have more of a, an even, steady, focused, strong, effective love, I think, in the world. And that's where I think I'm now, hopefully, going into that phase of my life, you know, coupled with wherever my platform might lead me.

• 39:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Wait, but you had said something earlier and I'm trying to remember what.

• 39:17Jay Shetty?

  Take your time.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, well, I can't, what, we were talking about knowing yourself, loving yourself. Yeah, I mean, I, no, I don't know, I'll think of it if we get back to.

• 39:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and that's what I think everyone who's listening right now, I think, is gonna take a lot of.

• 39:32Jay Shetty?

  A lot of confidence from the fact that the way you're opening up, the way you're sharing your journey and challenges and everything, I'm hoping that everyone who's listening or watching right now is listening going, oh my God, I'm there too, or I've been there too. And this is a common experience across the board. Like getting to a point in life and going, I don't know who I am. I don't know what I'm doing.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:51Jay Shetty?

  I don't know if I love myself. Like, these are all such normal things.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  100%.

• 39:54Jay Shetty?

  We're all going through.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Everyone.

• 39:56Jay Shetty?

  And, and you reminded me when you were mentioning this point about being in your solitude in space. This, this study that I love that I share that talks about how when men and women were given the choice of either being alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes, or give themselves an electric shock. And 60% of men chose an electric shock. And 30% of women chose an electric shock. And when they were asked afterwards, it was because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts. So we're all in that. So now I want to dive into, so everyone who's listening right now, we've all been there.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:23Jay Shetty?

  We all find distractions, whether it's video games, whether it's movies, whether it's Netflix, whatever it is, we're all trying to find distractions.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  Relationships, everything. Oh, my God. Relationships is one of the biggest.

• 40:32Jay Shetty?

  Definitely. Really, yeah, I, I just made a video a couple of weeks ago where I was talking about if you find someone in your loneliness, you often attract emptiness.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:39Jay Shetty?

  Right?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:39Jay Shetty?

  Because you've got that in you and therefore that attracts back.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:42Jay Shetty?

  So I want to dive into you because meditation, prayer and therapy are three tools that you really live by and stand by.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:50Jay Shetty?

  I want to hear about each of those from you, including the self-talk element of how those key foundational principles, and you mentioned yoga and pilates earlier too.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 41:00Jay Shetty?

  I just want to hear about those kind of like building blocks that have helped you change and transform and grow.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so, so prayer.

• 41:08Jay Shetty?

  Start whichever one you want.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I would say, well, the therapy was, the therapy was kind of like, prayer's always been a part of my life. My, my spiritual convictions and path have always been very prominent in my life. Although, again, that's been a, an ever-evolving and very interesting journey that I've been on with God for, you know, these 38 years.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think of like, what's a good way to explain it, but you know, we can, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Therapy to me was probably the most important initial part of it all because you can do a lot of meditation and prayer, but if you're, if you're like, like in Japan, you know how in Japan, uh, there's this tradition that if a ball breaks, they put it back together with gold, right? And you can see the veins of gold to the, and really makes it a beautiful piece. You don't just throw the ball away. You put it all back together. So I feel like the therapy was the gold that was putting it all, galvanizing me back together, making me whole again. And

• 42:13Speaker 01

  again, supplemented by and helped by the meditation and prayer around that. But if you, if your head's not right, if you don't see reality, the way that reality actually is, and therefore, and who you are and how you fit into reality, prayer and meditation are going to help treat symptoms, but I don't know that they're going to get to the root of digging up all of that bad, bad programming, you know? Moreover, and I, and I don't mean this to be offensive to anyone. In fact, I find, I, I find it to be quite, um, inclusive. We're all mentally ill. I personally feel like mental health is something we all deal with. If we put health with physical,

• 42:57Speaker 01

  physical health, nobody has any problems talking about any of it. In fact, there's a whole broad spectrum. Physical health is anywhere, or like if you're, if you're physically ill, uh, that can mean anything from the common cold to cancer. And if you say that I'm ill, no one's like, oh God, you know, they're going, oh gosh, what's, you know, what's going on with you? Uh, there's not a stigma that's necessarily attached to that. Nobody's judging you necessarily for what's going on in your physical wellbeing. All of a sudden you, you switch out mental for physical and you say mental illness. And the only thing that, I mean, now, thank God, we're coming to a much better place in society, but for the longest time, mental illness was straitjacket, rubber room, you're crazy. That's it.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  We have to start reassessing that massively and understand that to be mentally ill, to use a, I think, a dental analogy probably is the best I've come up with. All of us have cavities from time to time. All of us deal with mental illness, little cavities in our heads. And that can be literally how you start your day and you pass somebody on the street and they did a thing and that affected you and now you're allowing it to affect you and now that started a little cavity in your brain and you've got to root that thing out. And for some of us, we're much better at being able to attend to that stuff. Sometimes we don't and then that cavity becomes a much bigger cavity. And then all of a sudden, you need a root canal.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Some of us out there in the world, I needed a major root canal. The way that I saw myself and the way that I saw how I fit into this world needed to be rooted out of my brain big time. So as soon as I could do that, going back to the dental analogy, once the dentist could get in there and clean all that crap out and then, you know, fix that and seal that, well, then it was a matter of Maintaining. Exactly, maintaining that and loving myself through all of that. And that's where I find the meditation and prayer and I, and I kind of, to me, prayer and meditation are kind of synonymous. I, my prayer time is my meditative time. Occasionally I will do actual just straight, you know, kind of mindfulness meditation

• 45:06Speaker 01

  or centering prayer, which is very similar where you either just focus on your breath or you focus on one word and you kind of have that mantra and you go through that to really just calm it all down, calm the mechanism. Cause we live in a world that is so go, go, go, go, go, go. And it is completely not what our biological evolutionary kind of path has been. I mean, we were hunter gatherers, going back to like Yuval and sapiens and stuff like that. By the way, reading that book helped me because that context and perspective, I think, is so important in understanding who you are and how you fit into this world. And why you got there. And why you got there, exactly. So I will still have some actual meditation, like proper meditation, but my prayer time.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  Coming before the Creator and on my knees and asking to be able to walk always in humility, gratitude and trust. Those three words are the, to me, the foundation and cornerstone of my entire life and

• 46:02Jay Shetty?

  Me too.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Yeah, man. In fact, I was thinking about getting HGT tattoos somewhere on me. I don't know. I'm still working on it. I don't have any tattoos, but I think I might at some time, at some point, but

• 46:13Jay Shetty?

  I think that's an awesome description.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 46:14Jay Shetty?

  I love that. I love the dental analogy.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:17Jay Shetty?

  I love it. I think it's brilliant. And I think what you're saying is so true that we sometimes think of meditation and prayer as the be all and end all of our transformation. But actually initially it requires that step of really uprooting, really rewiring the ego, doing the work of just

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Oh, killing the ego.

• 46:37Jay Shetty?

  Deeper self-reflection.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:39Jay Shetty?

  And meditation and prayer, of course, aid that.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Jay Shetty?

  But then they become that, they become that momentum that keeps it going, right? They're the daily cleaning. They're the daily cleansing.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  And some people, by the way, and some people are really blessed where they, they grow up in a household where their parents gave them a great foundation of mental health. They gave them a great foundation of knowing that they're loved completely unconditionally or, or, yeah, uncond- right? Unconditionally, yeah.

• 47:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, unconditionally, yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I was like, all of a sudden, I was like, wait, what, what is that definition? Yeah, where it didn't matter if they, you know, in my home, if I accidentally dropped a glass and it broke on the ground, if my mom, who as it turned out was a borderline personality, if my mom happened to be in a good mood, it was like, oh, that's fine, honey. If she was in a bad mood, it was the end of the world. Now, I didn't realize that every time she snapped at us and yelled at us or smacked us or whatever that was, I mean, not like smacked us, but, you know, would give us a swat on the, on the ass or something. Those things were all leading me to having literal trauma switches in my head so that every time I, then I drop a glass and break something, I beat the shit out of myself. I beat myself up when I would do that. So I needed to, those are all those little

• 47:52Speaker 01

  things where I needed to reprogram, literally rewire the operating system that my mom had given me when I was a kid. I needed a, an updated operating system. And I think that's what therapy really hopefully allows us to do. If you're born into a home where you're given a pretty good operating system, then meditation and prayer Maybe all you need, at least for quite some time, until you maybe have more trauma or more abuse or whatever, where you need some more help. But for me, the therapy, help to clean that, uproot that, all that, and the daily practice of going and literally falling before God and just wanting to remain in reality, knowing who I am, knowing, knowing

• 48:37Speaker 01

  that my worth has nothing to do with how successful I become or don't become, that there is purpose for me in this world. And that's where I think the trust part comes in. You know, if you're not a very spiritual person, or you don't believe in a creator or a higher being or whatever, perhaps you trust in something else. I don't know. For me, it's a matter of trusting that I don't have all the answers. I don't know where my journey is going to go. I don't know how I'm going to be used in this world and in this life. But I'm going to trust that as long as I keep doing this work, the really the only important work, that if I do this, then everything else will happen the way that it's supposed to happen. And that gives me a tremendous amount of peace throughout the journey as well.

• 49:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love that, man. And I think you're right. I think we all need to trust timing, the process, universe.

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh.

• 49:27Jay Shetty?

  Creator, like you have to find patience.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Patience.

• 49:31Jay Shetty?

  Patience, right? That you've been living in your life. And I definitely know that in my life, too. When I went off to become a monk at 22, and you know, the reaction from all my friends and family was, well, you're never going to get a job again. Like, you know, you're going to be years behind. And I will, and all of those things of like, well, where's, where's your future going to go? And, and for me, it was no, I trust that this is the best investment of my time, that this time that I'm going to be spending in meditation and self-growth and awareness and destruction of my ego and all of that is the best thing I could be doing right now. And, and almost all we can do is trust the present and trust what we're doing right now. Because we all don't know what's going to happen in five, 10, 15 years.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  No, no. And in fact, I It's so cra- I mean, it's easy for me to say, I'm in a, I'm in a position now where I, I'm literally living in the, some of the most rarefied air that anyone could ever live in to be, you know, the, the titular role in a superhero franchise and this 20 years of incredibly blessed life, like it's not lost on me that people say, man, you know, I'm so, I'm so happy for you. You really deserve it. And I'm always like, I appreciate that. And I know what you mean by the sentiment, but I actually disagree because I don't know that anybody deserves this. I mean, look at all the incredible people that have unbelievable hearts and minds that are living in third world countries that have nothing. They deserve it. Those people are doing everything

• 50:55Speaker 01

  that they can just to survive. So I don't know that anybody deserves any of this, but had I known what my life was going to be like right now, a year and a half ago before, like if, if somehow, uh, you know, the crystal ball said, oh, don't worry, you know, all the, all the things you're worrying about right now. No, no, don't worry. Cause what's going to happen is you're going to do this and that's going to happen, blah, blah, blah. And now you're going to be there. Well, that would have been pretty incredible, but would have been, would have been even better is if, you know, a year and a half ago, two years ago, I would have just known to trust, to be patient with where this is going because I can't, I wouldn't have changed anything. A year and a half ago, there's so many things in my past, in my, in my past that I would have changed in

• 51:40Speaker 01

  order to maneuver, to get somewhere that I felt like would have been a better place for my life. But now that I am where I am, where I'm sitting, where I'm sitting, I literally wouldn't have changed anything. I wouldn't have changed the trauma that my mom put me through. I wouldn't change anything about the abuse that I went through because had I not gone through that, then I wouldn't be able to sit here literally right now, talking to you and hopefully talking to people out there and saying, you're okay, we're okay. We can get through this. This is something that we all are dealing with. It's unfortunate that abuse and trauma and mental illness are being passed down generationally, but it can be helped. It can be fixed. We can love ourselves and we can love each other. We can go make the world so groovy if we can just

• 52:22Speaker 01

  get this out. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to talk about it as deeply or passionately or as authentically had I not gone through all of that stuff prior, you know?

• 52:31Jay Shetty?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I couldn't agree more.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  And being patient with that, you know?

• 52:34Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. I'm so glad you've, you've driven that. I mean, you're like on fire right now, by the way. Like as it just, it's, it's so great to hear you drive that message home because I feel- All of us need to be open to the plan. Like you can get to where you want in life, just not in the way you imagine it.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:50Jay Shetty?

  And that's the challenge that because it doesn't look like your imagination, you don't want to walk down that road.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:57Jay Shetty?

  Right? It's like you want, right? You want it to look this perfect way or a certain way. And I've done that in my life where I thought that success or happiness looked like this. And then when what I was faced with was completely the opposite, it was scary to walk down that path. And the same is what you're saying, like, I don't think we, I don't think we want to blame this on our parents. I don't think we want to blame it on, and I don't hear that from you at all. You don't want to blame it on any of those things because those building blocks are going to give you the journey you need to help more people too.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  Hopefully.

• 53:25Jay Shetty?

  Because this is going to be a common experience. It's going to be a shared experience.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:29Jay Shetty?

  And you can only help someone if you've been there before.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Well, and that's why it's important, I think, that people, you know, particularly when it comes to mental health, we need to, we need to be brave enough to be vulnerable enough with our journey and our testimony.

• 53:42Jay Shetty?

  You're doing it, man.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  That, well, I appreciate that, but I, it's, it's not even, I don't even feel like it's an option. I, it's, it is completely like, it's God, it is, it is, uh, I, I, I literally like, it, it excites me so much that I have, that I personally have gone through what I've gone through in order to be able to go talk about this stuff. Because I, there is so, there are so many people out there that are, that are, um, that, look, I see them on Twitter and on, on Instagram on a regular basis. People that are going through so much, that are, that are feeling quite lost, quite alone. And that's why I spend as much time as I do on my social media. Because I feel like, yes, it's on one hand, one of the most destructive things that's ever

• 54:26Speaker 01

  come across all of us, you know, we get lost in it. People are, it's creating mental illness in a lot of people, but we can use it for such powerful good. And being able to reach out and say, yes, I deal with this, I have dealt with this. And by the way, we're all dealing with it. Everyone is dealing with it, like it, no one is immune to, well, maybe the Dalai Lama, I don't know. But you know what I mean? Like it, it, because this is how our brains work, this is how our hearts work.

• 54:51Jay Shetty?

  And the wiring is so old. School, right? Like as in it's so embedded into the way we're wired that it takes time to unwire that and unravel that. Like if something's happened for thousands of years, right? It's gonna take a considerable amount of time to rewire that. It's like you don't just unwind something. If something's been tangled in your closet for for days, how long does it take? Or if your room's been messy and yeah, you just throw it out. Yeah, exactly. Which you can't do with yourself and you don't want to do with yourself. And so, and I love how open you've been about it. A few interviews that we looked at and saw with you talking about how, you know, comparison on social media and comparing yourself to your peers, which is such a big thing. And you were open about the fact that when your character first gets killed off in Thor,

• 55:35Jay Shetty?

  and talking about how like that felt like a bad moment. But actually now with what you're getting to do, you realize that actually it was just preparing you for something much bigger. Exactly. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making, and that extends to the practical stuff, too. Like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a 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.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd, causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 56:59Speaker 04

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 57:05Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 57:09Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 57:12Speaker 05

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  This is exactly why you're going back to what we're talking about, about patience and trust, trusting that even though you might not understand or agree with what is happening in your life right now, if you can, look, if you're not trusting, you're flailing, you are, that's where anger can come in, that's where doubt comes in, that's where fear comes in, that's where anxiety comes in. I was, I didn't realize how much anxiety I dealt with probably my entire life. I didn't know that that feeling that I felt on a regular basis was anxiety until I went to therapy and I was like, oh my God, that's what anxiety, that this is what I've been dealing with for so long. Had I known, like when I was doing that, that last Thor, um, yeah, it was, it was a bummer. I mean, I, you know,

• 58:03Speaker 01

  I felt like I was, I was so stoked that I made it into the superhero world and then just to kind of, you know, for it to do that, like there wasn't much to do. And I was definitely feeling a little salty and a little, uh, a little down on myself and a little like, okay, well, I guess that's it. I guess I'll go have to pivot and figure out something else in my career, whatever that's going to be. But again, had I known, had I known that, you know, if anybody's like, no, no, Zach, don't worry about it. Cause you're gonna, you're gonna die here. But then, you know, two years from now, that means that you're just gonna be reborn in the DC universe. I mean, obviously that would have made me feel much better back then, but I don't think that's how life works. Because if we know

• 58:44Speaker 01

  what is going to come, then we don't ultimately appreciate what that's going to be. We need to go through these valleys in order to appreciate those mountain tops. It's, and that's a

• 58:55Jay Shetty?

  And we don't, we don't grow to become that in the best way.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  And that, and you don't get the growth.

• 59:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  If you don't go through the hardship where you have to actually come to the end of yourself and trust and be patient and know that I don't know, I don't know what's coming, but I'm going to be grateful for what I have and I will trust in where this path is leading me, then you don't get the growth and the growth is the most important part. You could become the biggest, most famous, most rich person in the world, but if you have not grown during any of that, then all of it's meaningless. I want to be, you know, you said earlier, I love the alliteration. I don't know if you use it when you start every interview, but what was it? Enlightened, enlivened? And there was another word you said that I can't remember.

• 59:34Jay Shetty?

  Educated or empowered?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Educated, yeah, all educated and empowered, all of those things. That is the real rich richness, the riches of life. Like I, again, I know it's, it might even sound a little trite. Somebody in my position saying like, you know, it's not about the fame or the popularity or whatever, because I'm somebody who now has, who has that and has had that and has done very well financially in my life. And I'm not saying, and I'd give it all up if I could, but in some ways, yeah, I suppose I would. In some ways, there's, there's deep down in me to know the depth of the joy and the peace and the gratitude that I feel now on the other side of the darkness. Yeah. Because of the darkness.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  If I didn't experience that darkness, if I didn't, if I didn't ever sit in my room, literally crying out to God to help me, to save me, to, to show me the way, because I was so lost, what I feel today, I wouldn't be feeling. I would feel like, oh, this is all part, this is all, I mean, I, you know what I mean? It's, it's the, you, you get to the place, you get to, you, and it's not even the destination. I mean, because, you know, it's all, it's still the journey. We're still journeying. And by the way, who knows? I could, I could walk out of here and get hit by a car and that's it. I could, I could live 10, well, yeah, I mean, either, but I mean, but I, but I think it's

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  important to always be aware that, you know, I, I think that we are both infinitely valuable and entirely unimportant. Yeah. If that makes any sense, you know what I mean? Invaluable and insignificant. Exactly, exactly. And if we can always maintain that and know that right now, right here is all we actually have, and to keep digging into the depth of the right here and the right now, which is why, one of the reasons I'm so grateful that we're having this conversation, because this is a right here, right now, let's be present and let's talk about what really matters. You know, I can go talk about Shazam all day long and I'm grateful that we got to make it an incredible movie that is really genuinely bringing people so much joy. But, you know, that's, that's all the trappings of what the most important stuff is, which is let's go.

• 1:01:48Speaker 01

  Heal the world. Let's go make this place. Let's go teach more empathy. Let's go feel more empathy. And you were talking about earlier about, you know, the, the, the, knowing how much deeply, more deeply, we can love someone when we know someone. I mean, that's empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, empathy, you know? Oh God, I just, I just.

• 1:02:11Jay Shetty?

  I love it.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  It's the best.

• 1:02:12Jay Shetty?

  I love it. Let's, let's, I want to, we always do a final five.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:16Jay Shetty?

  At the end of every interview.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:17Jay Shetty?

  But before we do that, I do want to talk about Shazam.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Jay Shetty?

  Because what I loved is you were talking about how like you felt like you got to play yourself.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  In some ways, yeah.

• 1:02:24Jay Shetty?

  The childlike.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Jay Shetty?

  You know, man-child element to the role and character. I'm excited to go and see it this week.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:31Jay Shetty?

  I'm really looking forward to it, but tell me about that playful aspect of you and that joy that people are going to feel through you being able to be part of yourself.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I mean, I, I, look, I've always, um, I've always been, like I said, like a super energetic spaz of a kid. And I, and that's never really left me. And when I was about four, I realized that I could intentionally make somebody laugh. And if they laughed, they felt good. And that made me feel good. Even aside from the applause or whatever, I loved making people feel joy. I loved it. It's the greatest drug in the world. And I, and I, and I feel like genuinely, like when I do Broadway or whatever, like I feel like I'm living, literally living out my purpose.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  And when you feel like you're living out your purpose, it is the, the most fulfilling thing ever, more than anything. But part of that, you know, and I think also just part of working in this business, you get to hopefully use your imagination and should use your imagination. And I have always tried to hold on to that. I've always tried to hold on to joy. I love feeling joy. I love bringing joy. I love having, therefore love having a great time. I love hosting parties. I like dance parties. I like singing. I like karaoke. I like riding motorcycles and jumping out of planes. I mean, I, this is just my personality. It's always been. And all of those things, I, I think I've tried to grow up and be a responsible human being in the ways that that's important. But I've also, you know, kind of shirked some of that stuff where I feel like people tend

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  to feel like, you know, well, we gotta take this more seriously, or we gotta take, or or rather, take ourselves more seriously, which I think we need to do far less of. We need to take ourselves far less seriously. And so all of those things, I think, have, I don't know, helped kind of protect the little kid in me. And by the way, and maybe even some of my mental illness that I, again, I'm so grateful to God that even all of that bad stuff he used, or he, she, or it, or whatever, used to maintain this, this essence of who I am deep down inside. And all of that, I just got to filter right into the character. I mean, on top of the fact that ever since I was a kid, I dreamt about being a superhero, like I think most of us do. All of us do. So it's total wish fulfillment.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Like, you know, I feel bad for a lot of the actors who play the serious superheroes, which by the way, most of them are. Most of them are very serious adults who are concerned with saving the world. And so Which is you in real life. Exactly, right? Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I know that Christian Bale was probably super chuffed that he got to be Batman, but he had to sit on it. He had to like, he was like, oh my God, I get to be Batman. And then the cameras were rolling, and he's like, I'm Batman. You know, I got to just not, I got to, you know, literally not rein myself in at all. All that enthusiasm that I felt for like, oh my God, I'm getting this dream job. I just got to, you know, put that right into the character, onto the screen. Plus, hanging out with the kids, of which we have a whole incredible and talented cast of kids and that I worked with all the time, and they would constantly remind me what

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  it meant to be a kid, which in a lot of ways is just not having responsibility. They don't, they're able to still be silly and not take themselves so seriously until they start getting into like, high school years. And then all of a sudden, it's all about cliques and cool and all that garbage that, oh my God, I can't wait to maybe do a school tour one day and go to high schools and say, stop, stop, don't, don't care about social constructs anymore. Stop it. Go do all the homework, do all the things that your parents and your teachers are asking you to do. There's a whole life beyond high school. It's all just one big bubble. It's gonna blow up. You're never gonna see those people again. Oh my gosh, there's so much time that we waste wishing that we were a part of whatever this cool clique is. And by the way, Even that, I want to redefine the word cool. Cool, all the people that think they're cool or are trying to be cool are the least cool.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Being cool means you're trusting. Being cool means you're not phased. You're not worried about fitting in. Let's go be actually cool. Let's not go try and be like, oh, I need to wear the right clothes or I need to have the right style or whatever that is. That's all nonsense. I can't, oh, I want all that to die a horrible death. Yeah, for real. But yeah, so on top of all that, yeah, just like, you know, getting to, getting to, to be that kid and bring that kid to life on screen is a lot of fun. But I really, again, like the movie's done well and I'm really grateful that it's doing well, not even just domestically, but internationally and all that. But the thing I'm most proud of in this film and the thing I'm most grateful for is that I believe that, you know, again, God is using me to portray a character that is bringing people joy.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  People are leaving the theater and they are floating a foot off the ground. Kids and adults are yelling shazam as they're leaving the theater and feeling that imagination come back to life in them again. And if what I believe is true, which is that I was put on this planet to, to love people and to bring them joy and that this is what is now happening in my life, like I just gratitude, just like the deepest gratitude, man.

• 1:07:27Jay Shetty?

  That's awesome, man. I love that. And hearing you say that reminds me of something I read a while ago is, I think it went along, I want to get this right. It went along the lines of, we don't stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing.

• 1:07:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:40Jay Shetty?

  And, and I think whatever play means to you as you get older, obviously you may not be messing around with action figures, maybe you are, but the point is of continuously having play in our lives and being playful.

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:51Jay Shetty?

  And being childlike, not childish.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:53Jay Shetty?

  And we see a lot of humans, we continue to be childish, but not childlike.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:57Jay Shetty?

  And I think keeping that fresh eyes, looking at things as brand new, living as if every day is just some new exploration and curiosity, that, that can stay with us. So I love this, man. I'm going to ask you my big final five question.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 1:08:10Jay Shetty?

  Uh, these are rapid fire, quick fire answers. So I mean, you'd be great at that. So here we go. The first one that I have for you is, this is, this is. Probably a slightly trick question, but I want to know anyway. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Teleportation.

• 1:08:24Jay Shetty?

  Oh, interesting.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  I've thought a lot about that.

• 1:08:25Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just think, I think teleportation, it would be, A, very fun, but also probably the most handy and practical. Because you can go, you can do anything from, you know, going on a trip with all of your friends. We all know from the lore of comic books that whatever you're touching goes with you with teleportation. So obviously, as long as you can connect like all your fingers and toes to a bunch of bags and a bunch of friends and family, then you're all on a vacation together, which would be great. Or if you're just feeling lazy and you want to zap like from your bed into the bathroom and then back again, you know what I mean? It's very handy.

• 1:08:56Jay Shetty?

  Awesome. Second question, you were saying you're even thinking about building like a communist space.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:01Jay Shetty?

  If, if the world, if your, if your ideal world, ideal community, ideal town or city had a set of ideals, values and beliefs and habits, what would those be?

• 1:09:10Speaker 01

  Oh, well, um, minimalism, that's one of the things. I am a huge proponent of minimalism. I think that we, we've all been fed a lie for a really long time, which ties directly into consumerism and materialism, and I really do believe it's a lie. We don't need all the things that we think that we need, and we are now owned by what we own. And that is another thing that's leading us into more mental health issues. And I, I, I want to get back to basics. So it'd be, it'd be community, it'd be minimalism. It would be love and grace and tolerance and understanding and forgiveness and more forgiveness and more forgiveness and more grace, because these are seriously lacking in the world right now.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  And empathy and more empathy. Uh, yeah, and just helping people heal.

• 1:09:59Jay Shetty?

  I love that.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Jay Shetty?

  I love that. If you could get the world to practice one habit or one tool for 30 days, what would that habit be?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Gratitude.

• 1:10:06Jay Shetty?

  Gratitude. Nice. I like that. That's awesome. Yeah. I think that could change a lot too.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  I, I mean, it's, again, I know it's, it's, I know it's different for everyone and every place that they're in in their life, and I don't expect everyone to have as easy a time being grateful for where you are in your life. But I, I, from my own personal experience, to start with that, if you can get there, it helps to put other things into place, and then it makes a lot of your life a lot easier.

• 1:10:34Jay Shetty?

  I love it. Question four out of five, what's one big thing you want to learn this year?

• 1:10:40Jay Shetty?

  Anything you want to learn, something new you want to do?

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Well, you know, at New Year, I was on a trip with a bunch of friends and we were all, on New Year's Eve, we were all talking about what was, if you could have one word that described your last year, what would it be? And to be perfectly honest, I, oh, I think, I think transformation was last year's, because it was. It was incredibly transformative time for me. But then, and what would be one, one word for the next year? And the word that I chose was patience. So, and then my friend actually made me this bracelet, which is Morse code, that says forgiveness, or it says patience on it. And I think, I think that, that's what I want to continue to learn this year, because I've always been a super deep forward thinker of like, future thinking and like, you know, like, I want to go build

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  this film studio and all the things that go with it. And I, I see it all in my head, and I want it now. I want it to be right now, because I want to, I want to be enjoying it right now. And I want all of my friends and family and strangers and everybody to be enjoying it right now. And I have to know that it's not up to me. This timing is not up to me. Your timing of your life is not up to you. We get to pay a, play a part in it, and a very significant part in that. But there are so many other factors that are going on. And so, I really want to learn to just be more patient in this life. Yeah.

• 1:11:54Jay Shetty?

  I love that. And the final five, fifth question, what's an ideal role or collaboration for you in the future? Something that you'd love to?

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Man, oh, so many, so many. Um, I don't know. I mean, from, from an acting standpoint, I mean, there's so many directors and other actors that I would love to work with. And, you know, so, I don't know, working with Tom Hanks, I think would be pretty amazing. He's always been my idol, you know, since I was a kid. Or, and to that matter, Steven Spielberg, you know, working for, for him as a director. But outside of the acting world, I, I do want to start recording more music. I don't know with whom or how that's going to work out. But then beyond that, I really do want to somehow figure out how to parlay all of this stuff into more of a leadership role in helping the world heal.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  You know, that's the collaboration that I really want to figure out, and the trajectory that I really want to figure out. And again, I'm just gonna wait on God and be patient for what that is gonna look like. But

• 1:12:53Jay Shetty?

  We should work on that together, too.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  I would love to. Jay Shetty, we're gonna do it. It's gonna happen.

• 1:13:00Jay Shetty?

  When you say it like that, it feels like it's actually gonna happen.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Dude, I would love that. I would love that.

• 1:13:06Jay Shetty?

  No, but thank you, Zach. Like, honestly, you like really brought it today. Like, the energy, this man is like, I'm sitting in front of him, he's sweating.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:14Jay Shetty?

  Literally sweating. He's literally given like every ounce of his energy.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Partly the coffee.

• 1:13:19Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, no, he's literally put every ounce of his energy into this podcast. So everyone who's listening, make sure you share this. Make sure you share what you've learned. Tag Zach, tag me as well on Instagram. I love seeing what people took away. I love seeing what messages are the ones that really resonate with people. So if you are listening to this right now, make sure you put it out on Instagram. Would love to check you out there as well. Zach, thank you so much for turning up. Thank you so much for showing up. Keep doing what you're doing on Instagram, using it as a platform for service. Everything that you're doing, I'm so excited.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:13:46Jay Shetty?

  And I'm excited for our new friendship too.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Love yourself, love yourself, love yourself, love yourself, love others. You are lovable, you are loved, and you are worthy of that love.

• 1:13:55Jay Shetty?

  I love it. That's Zachary Levi, everyone. Thank you. Thanks so much, bro. You're amazing, man. Thank you.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:14:05Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much for listening through to the end of that episode. I hope you're gonna share this all across social media. Let people know that you're subscribed to On Purpose. Let me know, post it. Tell me what a difference it's making in your life. I would love to see your thoughts. I can't wait for this incredibly conscious community we're creating of purposeful people. You're now a part of the tribe, a part of the squad. Thank you for being here. I can't wait to share the next episode with you.

• 1:14:49Speaker 02

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' healthcare to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November...

• 1:15:10Speaker 04

  Vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the HouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  On October 2nd.

• 1:15:23Speaker 03

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:15:28Speaker 04

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:15:35Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 1:15:39Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:15:42Speaker 05

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:15:44Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 1:15:49Speaker 06

  This episode is brought to you by EA Sports FC27. Welcome to the world's game. FC27 is introducing The Grounds, where the streets meet the stadium. Connect with friends, go pro, and express yourself, on or off the pitch. Play FC27 with the ultimate edition September 18th. Learn more at EA.com. Rated E for everyone, includes in-game purchases including random items. The Grounds is only available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2 versions.