608 Cultivate a Monk Mindset with Jay Shetty

MEDITATION IS JUST A GYM FOR THE MIND. When I was growing up I always knew I wanted to be a professional athlete. Like many people, and probably you as well, my life changed in a very unexpected way. There is no way any of us can know where our life will go, and today's guest took his life in a very different direction. Jay Shetty grew up thinking he would he an art director and loved design. As a teenager he was a troublemaker. He never would have thought his life of drugs and stealing cars would turn into the life of a monk. He made it to college and did well, but as soon as he graduated, he decided to go to India to spend three years studying how to find inner peace with monks. After three years Jay was asked to leave the monk hood. He was told he could do more good sharing to the world than staying in the monastery. Heartbroken, Jay left and eventually found the power of YouTube. He has gained amazing international success sharing the lessons he's learned from his time as a monk teaching ancient wisdom on modern platforms. You will be surprised at how much of these lessons don't just apply to life but also to business. He's mastered the power of video marketing and storytelling and on this episode, he shared his insights on how to create powerful impact with media. We discussed the lessons he learned from spending time as a monk, what motivates people to take action, and how to find your purpose in the world. Discover all of that and much more, on Episode 608. Some Questions I Ask: Why did you decide you wanted to be a monk in the first place? (7:34) How many summers did you spend with them before you decided to join? (14:54) How would you commute? (21:27) Doesn't personal growth also come from experiencing life? (25:32) Why are we wired for service? (32:42) Are there any weeds in your life right now? (40:06) What was the conversation like when your mentor said you had to leave? (43:24) When did you realize it started to take off? (55:28) Do you think every brand should be using video? (1:01:26) What's the thing that makes someone want to share and leave a comment? (1:05:23) What's something most people don't know about you that you're really proud of? (1:10:15) Is there anything you do during your day that you're not proud of? (1:13:57) In This Episode You Will Learn: Why he fell in love with being a monk (13:46) What a typical day as a monk is like (16:14) How a monk detaches themselves from having a sex life (24:00) What he noticed the most about the outside world (27:54) The greatest lessons he learned being a monk (37:58) The thing he wants to create the most (41:40) When he realized he wanted to start creating videos (48:22) What people don't understand about using videos for their business (58:34) How his wife went from student to master (1:12:26) And much, much more Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 608 with Jay Shetty.

• 0:06Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:31Lewis Howes?

  Joseph Wong said, "Influence is our inner ability to lift people up to our perspective." I am super excited about our guest today. I got to know Jay Shetty over the last year and just feel a great brotherhood with him. And really appreciate the way he thinks, the way he acts, and the way he delivers his message to the world. And for those that don't know who he is, he's a former monk who's known for making wisdom go viral. He's an award-winning life coach, online personality host, and filmmaker. His videos go viral on Facebook. Some of them get 20, 30, 50 million views. He's named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2017.

• 1:13Lewis Howes?

  He's coached millennials all over the world and changed lives on a global scale. Jay went from living as a monk to hosting a digital morning show for the Huffington Post. And he continues to transform the world with his message. And in this interview, we talk about why Jay fell in love with the monk lifestyle, the similarities between monks and athletes to achieving peak performance, also why most of us pretend to be someone else, how Jay grew his social media to millions in just two years, what people aren't understanding about the power of video, and so much more. Love this interview. Again, take a screenshot of this app right now

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  and post this on your Instagram story, on Twitter with the link lewishowes.com/608 to get your friends to listen to this as well. All right, guys, I'm super pumped about this episode. Again, my good friend Jay Shetty is in the house to bring you some powerful wisdoms. Without further ado, let me introduce you to the one, the only Jay Shetty.

• 2:24Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. We have the living legend Jay Shetty in the house.

• 2:31Lewis Howes?

  Namaste.

• 2:32Jay Shetty?

  This is the new greeting.

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  Namaste.

• 2:34Jay Shetty?

  Louis, this is the new greeting.

• 2:35Lewis Howes?

  This is the new greeting. Namaste.

• 2:37Jay Shetty?

  The School of Greatness.

• 2:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes, man. Good to have you here. Very excited. You came and spoke at my Greatness Mastermind over the weekend and people were blown away.

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, man.

• 2:45Lewis Howes?

  Through your wisdom. We talked a lot about viral video and social media there, which maybe we'll get into a little bit, but I want to talk more about the things you've learned from pre-monk-hood to being a monk to now not being a monk.

• 3:01Jay Shetty?

  Sure.

• 3:01Lewis Howes?

  And when I met you, I didn't know you were a monk. I just saw you as the guy who had 50 to 100 million views of video on Facebook, which I think a lot of people are familiar with you from Facebook. You make wisdom go viral. You do these great parables. You do these great stories, lessons, insights. I don't think you really started talking about being a monk until recently.

• 3:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  So I think people just were like, "Who is this guy and how is he so insightful?"

• 3:25Jay Shetty?

  Sure.

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  But then when I met you, I was like, "Oh, it all makes sense now that you have all this wisdom." And you told me that a lot of your videos were just notes from your books, that you were writing, you know, your journal when you were a monk.

• 3:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 3:36Lewis Howes?

  You would take all these notes down from the lessons you were learning.

• 3:39Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 3:40Lewis Howes?

  And now you're just going back and looking at those notes and saying, "Let me shoot a video about this."

• 3:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Lewis Howes?

  And it's like, it's 50 million views, so...

• 3:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 3:47Lewis Howes?

  Why did you decide that you wanted to be a monk in the first place? And how old were you when you did that?

• 3:52Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. So the story starts with something I've been saying a lot called, "You can't be what you can't see." So I didn't grow up wanting to be a monk.

• 4:02Lewis Howes?

  Why didn't you grow up wanting to be?

• 4:03Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I grew up wanting to be a mix of an art director, like for a big magazine or online company, because I loved design, I loved graphics, I loved video and art when I was growing up. I loved philosophy and I loved economics. Those are like my three favorite subjects. Art, design, philosophy and economics. And I always thought I'd be something boring, like an investment banker. Because I often say, when you, when you grow up in a Asian or Indian family, and if you have any Asian or Indian followers, they'll agree. I had three options. I could either be a doctor, a lawyer or a failure. Right, those are like my three options. So that's what I was going to be. I couldn't be any of those, so I was gonna be an investment banker or a strategy consultant. Cause I was like, I'm rubbish at medicine. You know, I'm not very good at law. So I was kind of going down that route because you can't be what you can't see.

• 4:48Jay Shetty?

  And growing up as a young Asian person in London, you don't see many people in the media. You don't see many Asians in sport. You don't see many Asians in anything apart from accountancy, business, medicine and law. That's, that's literally what you see. And then I was eighteen. I'm at university. I'm studying my undergraduate, which is in behavioral science. In London? In London. So I've always been fascinated by why people do what they do. Always fascinated by why we make decisions, why we lie, why people cheat, why people pretend to be someone they're not. Like all those questions always fascinated me. But just from an intellectual point of view, rather than helping people unpackage it. So I was studying that.

• 5:31Jay Shetty?

  And then at my university, we'd have some of the best entrepreneurs coming to speak every week. In London? In London, in London, at Cass Business School. So there's people coming in every single week. And then I found out that the week later, after we've been watching entrepreneur after entrepreneur, loved hearing from CEOs, their success stories. I was a huge fan of rags to riches stories. Like not the riches because of wealth, but just that whole thing of like people going from nothing to something. Like that fascinated me. So I used to read autobiographies. I thought I hated reading until I was fourteen, until someone handed me an autobiography. I think I remember reading The Rock's autobiography back then too, cause I used to watch wrestling. But anyway, so I'm fascinated by people who go from nothing to something.

• 6:13Jay Shetty?

  And then a monk's invited to speak at my university. And I actually get forced along. I'm actually not that interested. I'm like, what's a monk gonna teach me? Who cares? Like, never seen a monk in my life, don't really know what they do. Get forced by one of my mates to come along. I basically have nothing better to do that night. I turn up, I'm hearing this monk speak, and he captivated me like the most beautiful woman in the world, right? I was just completely enthralled and addicted to everything he said. I was hanging off every word, and there was a voice in my head that was just like, who is this guy? And then I find out that he'd given up jobs at Google and Microsoft to become a monk. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, who does that?

• 6:55Jay Shetty?

  You know, everyone that I've ever met, that's all they've been chasing. And all the stories that I'd followed in life were people who went from nothing to something. And here was a guy who had something, but had traded it to have nothing, but looked like the happiest person I'd ever met. So it was like the most paradoxical moment of my life, like the most ironic thing that could have happened. Anyway, so I go and speak to him afterwards. I, I love networking with speakers. I'd always approach people after their speech if I was moved. I went up to him and I just said, you know what, everything you said just resonated with me. And there was one thing that he said that, that stood above everything, and he spoke about this principle about "plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit."

• 7:40Jay Shetty?

  All right? "Plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit." What he meant was selfless service, giving without expecting, using everything you have, doing something for nothing, just being able to give. And for some reason, that eighteen-year-old me, hearing about selflessness, that word kind of just, I don't know what it was, it was just one of those moments that just, it penetrated through, through every desire I had. And service and selflessness became like my biggest aspiration in like a moment. And I started talking to him. So I started interning. With him in India as a monk every summer holidays.

• 8:20Lewis Howes?

  Really, you're a freshman this year.

• 8:22Jay Shetty?

  I was, yeah, yeah, basically eighteen, I I guess so, yeah, I guess that's what you call it, when you've just started out.

• 8:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 8:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 8:27Lewis Howes?

  So after the first year, you had a summer break.

• 8:29Jay Shetty?

  Correct.

• 8:30Lewis Howes?

  Go to India to be with him for a month, two months.

• 8:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, a month or two months, however, so I'd get a summer holiday, I'd spend half of it working at a big corporate firm, because I thought that's what I was gonna do. And I'd spend the rest of it and Christmas holidays that we get in London, I'd spend it in India, just kind of shadowing him. And I described it like that, I was literally interning to be a monk, where you live like a monk, you practice monk principles, you follow what they do on a daily basis and you get to experience what it's like. And I'd work at like the big, I'd work at some of these biggest companies in the world and then I'd go to living as a monk, like polar opposites, we'd be out at night drinking, networking after this.

• 9:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:06Jay Shetty?

  Right, the the stuff you do, bars, clubs, etc. And then like for the rest of the months, I'm like meditating and spending time with these enlightened beings. And I can honestly say, having tested and experimented both, I fell in love with that lifestyle more. So having everything on that side versus having nothing on that side, I I fell in love with having nothing. And so it was like a perfect A and B test, you know, it was like the perfect process, so that's.

• 9:31Lewis Howes?

  Nothing, which, yeah.

• 9:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so I always say you can't be what you can't see, I wouldn't have become a monk if I didn't see a monk. That's my journey to why it started, why did I say I'd become a monk, because I got to meet a monk, which exploded the horizons and possibilities of what I could be, first of all. I became a monk because I got fascinated by giving everything you have in the service of others. At a very early age, I just got fascinated by that principle. And the third thing was I fell in love with the lifestyle of a monk more than I did of a modern person.

• 10:03Lewis Howes?

  Why did you fall in love with that?

• 10:04Jay Shetty?

  I fell in love with it because I got so fixated on the fact that what if you could spend your whole life just helping people? Like, what if that's all you did? What if you had to learn, grow, create just to make a difference in people's lives?

• 10:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:21Jay Shetty?

  And you didn't need anything back, and you didn't want anything back. And the only example I'd seen of that at that age was the monk. So that was the only kind of test I had, right? That's the only person I'd experienced.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  You hadn't met someone who started a nonprofit or something like that?

• 10:37Jay Shetty?

  I had, I had, but I had met people who'd done NGOs and not-for-profits, but I always found that they were still looking for funding.

• 10:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 10:44Jay Shetty?

  And I didn't necessarily fall in love with their character.

• 10:47Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 10:48Jay Shetty?

  And I think that's a big part of it.

• 10:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Jay Shetty?

  Though when I was with the monks, I felt completely in love with their character, the way they behaved.

• 10:55Lewis Howes?

  Their purity.

• 10:56Jay Shetty?

  The way they spoke, their purity, their, their whole demeanor was just so attractive. And I was like, that's what I want to be when I grow up, you know? So while everyone else wanted to be other stuff, when I was 18, I wanted to be a monk.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:07Jay Shetty?

  So, yeah, but I still, yeah, anyway.

• 11:09Lewis Howes?

  How many summers did you spend with him before you said, okay?

• 11:13Jay Shetty?

  Three. So throughout the whole of university, I spent three, so every break, I spent with him.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  And then after college?

• 11:19Jay Shetty?

  Then after college, that was it. I didn't even go, so I graduated, but I didn't turn up to my graduation ceremony. So my mom's still upset that she doesn't have a picture of me holding the scroll, wearing the hat. I left for India straight away.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  Why didn't you complete it then?

• 11:32Jay Shetty?

  I finished, as in I graduated in the sense of I had my degree.

• 11:35Lewis Howes?

  But why didn't you go all the way, see it all the way through?

• 11:37Jay Shetty?

  Because I had to, I remember it being delayed till December and we finished in May. And I was just like, I'm going, I'm not waiting till December, I'm not coming back for that. It's meaningless.

• 11:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Jay Shetty?

  What does it even mean?

• 11:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 11:47Jay Shetty?

  And I left, so I literally, that's it.

• 11:49Lewis Howes?

  I don't care, I want nothing in my life, yeah, yeah.

• 11:51Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and then I went.

• 11:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 11:52Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so I left and I was 22 years old and, and I just left. I just wanted to be there and be with him and be with the other monks. And I saw them doing all this incredible work. It's not like they were just being monks in the way people think. I always talk about how half the day was silence and half the day is service. So the service side is building sustainable villages, building food distribution programs, teaching, you know, helping communities. It wasn't just being. It was doing as well. So I love that aspect of half the day to grow myself and then half the day to give.

• 12:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Jay Shetty?

  And I was just like, when am I gonna have time to do this if I work a job?

• 12:29Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. What's a typical daylight then? What time did you wake up?

• 12:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 12:33Lewis Howes?

  And you wake up on like a concrete floor with like a little yoga mat type of thing?

• 12:37Jay Shetty?

  Literally, yeah. So we'd sleep on the floor. The floor was wood. It was like this, this nice wood that you have here. It was decent wood. So it was wood. You have a thin yoga mat. So anyone who does yoga knows those thin yoga mats, not the posh ones. And then your sleeping bag, literally.

• 12:50Lewis Howes?

  You got a sleeping bag?

• 12:51Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, you get a sleeping bag, right?

• 12:52Lewis Howes?

  A pillow or no pillow?

• 12:53Jay Shetty?

  Most people didn't use their pillows, but my sleeping, I had a nice sleeping bag, you know? I was still, I was still that monk from London. Like, everyone could tell, right? It was like, oh, his sleeping bag looks a bit too premium, but I was like, you know, this is the, this is the least I can do. So I still had the premium sleeping bag. We'd wake up at about four AM every day, every single day, four AM.

• 13:12Lewis Howes?

  So the first week must have been a little rough to like get into the...

• 13:15Jay Shetty?

  Well, you know what? The way I remember it is that I was so pumped that I'd talked myself into it. Plus, I'd been doing it every summer. So it wasn't new. It wasn't like I just threw myself in. I'd lived like that for three summers.

• 13:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 13:27Jay Shetty?

  So I was kind of aware of what it was like, but I'd pumped myself so much. I was gonna, I'm gonna be there at three thirty, you know? I'm gonna, I'm gonna wake up earlier than everyone, you know? I was in that. And I've always been like that. I've always been someone who wants to push.

• 13:37Lewis Howes?

  I wanted to do a workout before everyone was up.

• 13:38Jay Shetty?

  Literally, like, I was like, I'm gonna meditate two hours before everyone's awake. And so I'm pushing myself to limits that I didn't know and I wanted to test it. I was like, I'm gonna be here for the rest of my life, so...

• 13:48Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:48Jay Shetty?

  So I was like, I'm gonna be here for the rest of my life, so I'm just gonna do this properly. You know, so I ended up, yeah, waking up at four AM. From four till five fifteen, you have collective meditation, collective prayers, collective chant, yeah, group.

• 14:01Lewis Howes?

  Chanting.

• 14:01Jay Shetty?

  Chanting. Yeah, group chanting.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  That must have been very like healing almost at the same time, just like chanting together.

• 14:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Lewis Howes?

  The, the symphony that you create with the melodies and...

• 14:12Jay Shetty?

  We underestimate what it feels like to be in a place where people have meditated for hundreds of thousands of years. Like places take on energies. Mm hmm. And that place was a place where people have meditated, those two monasteries, people have meditated for like forty years in that space. Right. For over four hours a day. So you're like walking into like the most spiritual sacred atmosphere in the world. You only tap into that more. You know, when we go to a place, we know what it feels like when you've been on a stage that Michael Jackson performed at, or when you'd been in an arena where, you know, your favorite artist, whatever it is, the analogy that works for you. It was like walking into the arena of the monks, you know, like that, that. Legendary monks.

• 14:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, the legend of meditate, like everything you expect a spiritual atmosphere to contain. Hmm. You're getting that because it's, it's amazing. So yeah, it was four to five fifteen is group meditation. Then five fifteen to seven is private meditation. So that's your personal practice. So that's already three hours since you've been awake, right? Seven o'clock till seven thirty is group meditation, group chanting again. And then seven thirty to eight thirty is a wisdom class on the Vedas. So the Vedas are five thousand years old, linguistically and philosophically, the oldest books on the planet. And so you're trained in the Vedas for an hour, seven thirty to eight thirty. Five thousand year old book? Yeah. Wow.

• 15:36Jay Shetty?

  It's the oldest book, like, yeah, oldest dated book I've heard of. So, yeah, over five thousand years old. Okay. Yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. It was funny, actually. I, I was sharing this and I share this all the time, but then I, I'm gonna throw this in there, but I was, when I was at Ty's house, he said this to me. He said that, I was telling him about the Bhagavad Gita, which is five thousand years old. And he said to me, five thousand years, just like you did. And I was just like, yeah, five thousand years. He goes, if it lasted five thousand years, that must be a really good book. And it's true, if you think about it, how many. Keep using it, yeah. Yeah, how many things still matter and change lives today that did five thousand years ago? Will the Beatles be around in five thousand years? Will Elvis, will me, will you, you know, will any of this? But the fact that a book has withstood five thousand years. Impressive.

• 16:22Jay Shetty?

  That's pretty impressive. Anyway, so we do that from seven thirty to eight thirty. And then at eight thirty you get breakfast, right? You finally get breakfast. And from eight thirty to nine, whatever, you eat breakfast. And then for the rest of the day, you'd spend the morning studying the books again on a personal level. You'd do basic things like cleaning, you'd wash your clothes, you'd, you know, all the domestic stuff that you have to do. Clean the space you live in. And then usually by lunchtime, everything changed. I'd either be out teaching local communities, or we'd be helping build these sustainable villages, food distribution programs, et cetera. So the rest of the day was not as planned as the morning. So when we now talk about morning routines, when I hear about that, I'm just like, yeah, that's like a monk thing.

• 17:06Jay Shetty?

  Like, as a monk, you're trained to have an incredible morning routine. And then whatever you do in your day will be incredible because you've started off correctly. So it's, it's interesting to see the rise of the morning routine.

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:18Jay Shetty?

  As habits and success, because as a monk, that's what you're trained in.

• 17:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 17:22Jay Shetty?

  So yeah, that's, that's roughly the schedule. And then it changes after nine thirty AM.

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  And where in India was this?

• 17:27Jay Shetty?

  So this is in Mumbai, and four hours south of Mumbai.

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  Okay, wow.

• 17:30Jay Shetty?

  So, but when you go outside of Mumbai, I'm looking at these beautiful plant things you have here. It's kind of like that, you know, it's just like woodlands, like green.

• 17:37Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 17:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, like no, no cars, no traffic, no noise, fresh air.

• 17:43Lewis Howes?

  How would you guys commute then, or travel to speak, or teach, or build homes?

• 17:48Jay Shetty?

  So we would, we would have cars that, that we would either drive ourselves. I never drove in India, I never would drive in India. It's the scariest experience in the world. People get scared about New York, India's just a different level.

• 17:59Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Jay Shetty?

  So I never drove, but they would have drivers, et cetera, who would drive us around, monks that drive.

• 18:05Lewis Howes?

  So the, what's it called, the place you were at?

• 18:08Jay Shetty?

  Ashram, or a monastery. So monastery is an ashram. Ashram is just a Sanskrit word for a monastery.

• 18:12Lewis Howes?

  So it had like some funding, so you guys could rent cars or whatever?

• 18:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so, so the funding comes from donors that really believe in the work you're doing. And then that money is used effectively. Again, people say, oh, how do monks drive? How do monks use money? Well, we'd never use it for ourselves. We had two sets of clothes. We didn't have any possessions, but we were using the cars and what we had to create these communities, to create sustainable villages, to, to create change in the world. So again, everything's being utilized for a higher purpose, rather than the mentality of, oh, you can't use that. So if we didn't use that, we might be happy, but how are you gonna help the rest of the world?

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:48Jay Shetty?

  You know, so that's how we were trained.

• 18:49Lewis Howes?

  Were you in contact with your family as well during this time, or?

• 18:52Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I used to connect with my family because the tradition was taught of like, again, that balance between detachment and attachment. So it said that detachment and attachment are two sides of the same coin. Attachment and aversion. So some people just wanna be monks or wanna have isolation because they wanna get away from reality, which is no better than being fully attached. So the Bhagavad Gita says that attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. So actually, the ideal is the central balance, where you're able to talk to your parents, you're able to give them love, you're able to be grateful. But then again, you're still realizing that there's more impact you can have in the world than just making your parents happy. So it's that perfect dynamic balance between the two.

• 19:37Jay Shetty?

  So I'd speak to my mom and dad every month, probably. Catch up with them on the phone. If I was in Europe and traveling for what we were trying to do as monks, then I'd come and see them, etc. Say hello to them. So I wasn't completely detached, but it was always making sure that balance. The way we were trained is monk life should never be an escape from reality. It shouldn't be that you can't do anything else in life and you don't want responsibilities, that's why you become a monk. Right? So it was very, it was very much ingrained in us that you're not here because you can't do anything else. You're here because you know this is higher and you can have more of an impact in your life and the world.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  So, but you're not supposed to be in a relationship or have sex as a monk?

• 20:19Jay Shetty?

  No, you're a celibate monk.

• 20:20Lewis Howes?

  So why do you detach from that then?

• 20:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, good question.

• 20:23Lewis Howes?

  Why do you escape from that?

• 20:24Jay Shetty?

  So that's to be able to give yourself all the time, focus, and energy on personal growth and development. So we all know this, right? Anyone who's been, and I'd been in multiple relationships before I became a monk. We all know this, when you're in a relationship, things slow down. Because now you're managing two minds, you're now having to give energy to another person, you have to give time to another person. You lose time, energy.

• 20:49Jay Shetty?

  And moments to invest in your own growth. So monks traditionally have lived celibate lives so that they can focus on their own growth. So that they're not distracted, they're not falling prey to any lust or engaging in any flirtatious conversations that again brings down the consciousness and distracts the mind. You're learning to train your mind like an athlete. Like so many athletes, I mean, maybe you had this experience too, but I remember reading David Beckham's autobiography many years ago. And he was talking about that, how they were trained not to have sex before big games, right? No alcohol in the weeks leading up to big games. I remember him talking about how when all his friends were out partying, he'd have to get to bed on time. So it's like, you see, athletes go to very similar training as monks.

• 21:33Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 21:34Jay Shetty?

  So it's not abnormal. We see it in modern life.

• 21:36Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 21:36Jay Shetty?

  Where people who have to be peak performance, they also use the same measures.

• 21:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Jay Shetty?

  Very similar measures to monk life.

• 21:44Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't personal growth also come from experiencing life and not detaching from it? Only isolating yourself, but also experiencing all the things that could happen in life and growing in that?

• 21:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think the whole thing there is that most of us just throw ourselves into the deep end and then try swim and figure it out.

• 22:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:05Jay Shetty?

  Monk life actually begins at like five years old, like the training of, monk life is ultimately training in self-actualization and self-awareness. It's meant to start when you're five. The problem is we all went to normal schools that try to put stuff in us rather than take stuff out of us.

• 22:20Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 22:20Jay Shetty?

  You talk about this.

• 22:21Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 22:21Jay Shetty?

  Right? Like you were told at school that you weren't very good and you weren't good at English and now you have a New York Times bestseller, right?

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 22:28Jay Shetty?

  But no one noticed that potential inside you. No one noticed that, oh, Lewis was really creative.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:34Jay Shetty?

  And you're not the only person. There's so many people who feel like that. So the modern schooling system didn't. Extrapolate your self-actualization, your element, and just try to put maths, English, science inside. So the point is that you're trying to get to such a strong foundation that when you're interacting in the world, you're going with a sense of strength, fuel, energy to make a difference. Rather than going into the world and then going, oh my god, where am I, trying to figure it out. And I find what happens today is that when you don't, we all know this. I mean, self-love has become such a big thing now. And when people don't figure, yeah, it's like a huge trend now. But my point is that if you don't start at a place where you have self-awareness, self-actualization, you have figured out what works for you, what your strengths are,

• 23:19Jay Shetty?

  how you wanna be in an environment. When you walk out there, most of us just pretend to be someone else. Most of us get lost, most of us get carried away.

• 23:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Jay Shetty?

  So my point is strengthen yourself, grow yourself, and then of course, interact with the world. So we had that. We were going out to pitch to Forbes Ritz List members to fund our philanthropy work.

• 23:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 23:40Jay Shetty?

  Right, we'd be in these pitch meetings dressed as monks and then be laying bricks the next moment. So you get the perfect balance. At one point, you're in this fancy office and the next morning, you're laying bricks, like digging. You know, so it's not that you're not getting both, you are getting both. Just the relationship aspect of a female partner, or a male partner if you're a female monk, is limited because the whole aim is to allow you to just focus on first finding yourself before you try and find the checklist you've been following your whole life.

• 24:09Lewis Howes?

  Right. What did you notice about the outside world, maybe a year or two years into the flow of your learning, you know, about yourself and about the wisdom and the philosophy of being a monk? What did you start to notice the most? Most common things of when you're just talking to people or just walking down the street and just being aware of what was happening?

• 24:29Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Actually, I've been quoting the Gita a lot, the Bhagavad Gita, but I'll quote a modern day, I guess somewhat modern day philosopher because I think this encapsulated perfectly. He said that, this is Cooley, a philosopher, writer. He said, "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. Right, and I always feel that blows my mind every time I say it. 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. So we live in this perception of a perception of ourselves. So we've all seen the movie Inception. Imagine you get lost so far into someone's perception. And that's your perception.

• 25:11Jay Shetty?

  So if I think Louis thinks Jay's good, then I feel good. But if I think Louis thinks Jay's not good, then I don't feel good. And we live like that today. If I think someone thinks I'm confident, I feel confident. But if someone thinks, if I think someone thinks I'm not confident, then I don't feel confident. And that's what I noticed when I lived as a monk. That people were so far removed from their own understanding of themselves. That they were either lost living a life they didn't want to, lost living up to someone else's expectations, or lost becoming someone to impress someone else. And so people were so, their, their real identity is almost buried under six feet

• 25:55Jay Shetty?

  of multiple identities they've created. And that's what I started to notice. We have a social media identity, we have a LinkedIn identity, we have a Twitter identity, we have a Facebook identity. Then we have an identity we are to our boss. Then we have an identity we are with our Friday night friends. Then we have an identity we are to our Sunday people. And we've just created all of these identities. And if you ask people, who are you? We struggle to answer that question. And so as a monk, you're just taught to dig deeper beyond all those identities and kind of, again, bring out yourself rather than define yourself. So that was what I noticed. I just started to notice that people had a big lack of self-actualization. They were very disconnected from what they wanted, needed, and understood about themselves.

• 26:38Jay Shetty?

  And most people's identities were crafted by the reflection in this mirror of their mom, dad, friends, boss, partner, whatever.

• 26:47Lewis Howes?

  Right. How do we start to tap into self-realization?

• 26:52Lewis Howes?

  Better.

• 26:53Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 26:53Lewis Howes?

  How do we learn that about ourselves?

• 26:54Jay Shetty?

  So I think it starts even at a physical level. I'll give a basic example at a physical level. Anyone who's a physical fitness or a health coach will know that different bodies need different food, different sleep, different fluids. We don't all need the same thing. Me and you with different body types can't do the same workout.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:13Jay Shetty?

  Right? We can't. I would die if I tried to lift what you lift. It just wouldn't work.

• 27:18Lewis Howes?

  And I would die trying to sleep on the floor.

• 27:19Jay Shetty?

  Right, exactly. Yeah, but exactly, right? And that's the point, that our bodies have different tolerances in different things. That's self-awareness at the physical level already. So now, what I realized by living as a monk is I can't survive off a four-hour sleep a night. Like, I realized that about my body.

• 27:37Lewis Howes?

  When you were a monk?

• 27:38Jay Shetty?

  When I was leaving and when I kind of came back to my real bed and I was just like, oh, I like this. This is, you know, this is good.

• 27:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Jay Shetty?

  Right? And I kind of came to that realization that I'm not able to function as effectively as I want to. I could when I was a monk because we meditated so much.

• 27:53Lewis Howes?

  That just got you to a higher vibration?

• 27:55Jay Shetty?

  Exactly. So now I meditate two hours a day. Then I used to meditate four, six hours a day, plus the collective, plus the environment. All of that helps. So now that I don't have that, I can't. But if I have that, I can.

• 28:06Lewis Howes?

  Could've just slept for those four hours and been a battery.

• 28:10Jay Shetty?

  Exactly. So the point I'm making is that's physical self-awareness. We know our limits, we know what we can do, we know what we can't do, we know what are challenges. On a mental level, what's self-awareness? Knowing what type of people I like to be with, knowing who helps me grow and who drains me. That's mental self-awareness. So self-awareness at every level, and then we go into the spiritual consciousness level. That's disconnecting from all these identities and understanding the identity that we are wired for generosity and we're wired to serve. And only in service can we be happy. And that's us on a consciousness level. That's the identity of consciousness. Like, water is wet, the sun is heating and light. Consciousness is service.

• 28:54Jay Shetty?

  Like, that's how it fits.

• 28:56Lewis Howes?

  Why are we wired for that?

• 28:57Jay Shetty?

  We're wired for that because all of us... As consciousness have been designed, and we see it since like even kids. Like I was, I was giving this example of this beautiful, and you may have seen it. It is, it went viral on Instagram. It was this little girl, probably about two years old, watching a cartoon. And she takes a handkerchief and the cartoon character is crying. And she goes up to the television and she tries to wipe it off. Right? And it's, it's incredible because this girl's two years old and she thinks this cartoon character animal is crying. And she gets a real tissue and tries to wipe it on the TV. Obviously it doesn't work. And there's another, another one that I saw with this statue of this rabbit.

• 29:40Jay Shetty?

  And there's like four rabbits and one rabbit's like falling off the end. And this little boy is trying to push the rabbit up, but it's a stone rabbit. It's just a statue, but he's trying to help it back up. So we see, and there was a great article in Wired about this, about how we're wired for generosity. Our brain is happier in service. Why are we that way? I'm not fully sure. But what I do know from my experience as a monk, or what I can verify is that we've been created to connect and serve. We've been created to connect and serve. But you don't know why? I can give you my opinion and the Vedic opinion. I, I can't tell you why for everyone. Right, right. The reason is that the main deep, or the, the main Vedic reason is, is that we've

• 30:23Jay Shetty?

  been created that way because that's our nature and that's what makes us most happy. Because this whole world is almost a school, an education system to make us realize that one truth, to make us realize that one truth. And we see that when we're serving, when we're doing that, we feel genuine happiness. But when we're trying to gain and greed and power and strength, we, we even feel empty as it slips through our fingers. So the why is because that allows us to connect to our deeper self, the happiest self that we have. And modern studies have shown that. So Michael Norton at Cambridge University, he did a study where they gave people five, ten, twenty dollars to spend on themselves.

• 31:08Jay Shetty?

  Have you seen this? Go ahead. Yeah, and then they spent five, ten, twenty dollars on others. So people spent five, ten, twenty dollars on makeup, Starbucks and the normal stuff, right? That was the, that was the three comment, three makeup Starbucks and then something else, I can't remember. And then people who spent on other people, they also bought other, the same stuff, Starbucks was still in there.

• 31:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Jay Shetty?

  And they're buying all this stuff. What they found is that when people self-assess their happiness before and after, without knowing about this A B test, people who spent the money on themselves didn't feel any happier or any less happier. But the people that spent on others felt ten to twenty percent happier.

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 31:46Jay Shetty?

  And then he went and tried this out, this was a college in, in the United States. Then when they did in Africa, they did it all over the world and the stats and the patterns showed the same.

• 31:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:55Jay Shetty?

  That we're wired for generosity, we're wired to serve, to make us realize that that's our real nature, that's our greatest self-awareness.

• 32:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:03Jay Shetty?

  Right? So that's, that's the Vedic opinion and that's why I was, that's why you had to probe me to go to why it is, I know why it is, but yeah, I want to give people an answer that I feel they can connect with.

• 32:12Lewis Howes?

  So what was one of the greatest lessons you learned in those three years then?

• 32:17Jay Shetty?

  Do you want me to share the one I shared before or share another one? I've got an.

• 32:20Lewis Howes?

  Share another one.

• 32:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, okay, I'll share another one. This is, this is probably my, one of my favorite things. It's because this was what I learned on my first day of monk school. So if you think about what you learn on the first day of school when you were three or four, if you remember what it was.

• 32:35Lewis Howes?

  A B C D.

• 32:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly, alphabet, the numbers, right? One to, one to ten, A B C. Right? The twenty-six letters of the alphabet. So I remember my first day of monk school, I've just shaved my head, I'm now wearing robes. I still look like I'm from London, like I can't get away with it. I'm walking around and I notice this monk who's teaching, this monk's ten years old and he's teaching a group of five-year-old monks. Right? And I see him teaching, he looks like an adult, like.

• 33:00Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 33:01Jay Shetty?

  You know, his ability to like teach these five-year-olds and conduct himself and he's got this great aura about him. And so I'm kind of eavesdropping on his class, I can't obviously go and sit with a bunch of five-year-olds even though I really want to, because I'm like, I feel like a five-year-old next to that ten-year-old. And I went up to him and I said, what are you doing? And he said, oh, well, we just taught their first class ever. And I said, oh, cool. And he said, well, what did you learn in your first class at school? And I said, oh, well, I learned the alphabet and numbers. And I said, well, what did they learn? He said, do you want to know what they learned on their first day of school? I said, yeah, of course. He said, the first thing that we teach them, the first thing you learn at monk school is learning how to breathe. I said, why?

• 33:43Jay Shetty?

  He said, because we're taught that the only thing that stays with you from the moment you're born to the moment you die is your breath. All your friends, family, the country you live in, all of that's gonna change. The only thing that doesn't change, that stays with you from the moment you're born to the moment you die is your breath. And he said, notice, when you get stressed, what changes? Your breath. When you get angry, what changes? Your breath. When you're sad, what changes? Your breath. When you're happy, what changes? Your breath. Every emotion is experienced with the change of the breath. So he said, when you learn how to navigate and manage your breath, you can actually navigate any situation in life.

• 34:28Jay Shetty?

  And I was just blown away. I was just like, wow. And then I remember researching it and noticing how athletes were taught how to breathe, musicians, singers, especially those who play wind instruments who have to reach really high notes. They're all trained how to breathe because they have to use their breath in challenging, stressful, pressure-filled situations. But I was like, so are all of us. You've got to go on stage in front of 10,000 people. You've got to go do a concert. You just lost a deal or a contract. Our breath changes in all those scenarios, yet we don't know how to use our breath to change our life. And so for me, that was a huge learning point where I just thought, wow, that's what you're taught.

• 35:08Jay Shetty?

  The priority is on the root of things, not the leaf of the symptoms. And that's the biggest thing about living as a monk. You're not dealing with your challenges at symptomatic level. You're dealing with it at root level. Right? People say, oh, if you're stressed out, just take a stress pill. If you're stressed out, just go to get a massage. If you're stressed out, just relax, watch Netflix and chill. But all that's doing is pacifying you, escape for that hour, two hours, maybe a week. But going to the root of it and learning how to change your breath, I mean, you can manage any situation in life. And that principle, that's an example of the principle which is so much deeper, that always go to the root. It will take longer, but it will last longer.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 35:53Jay Shetty?

  Right? If you go to the root, it takes longer, but it lasts longer. But if you go for the symptom, you get it quick and it

• 36:00Lewis Howes?

  Never lasts.

• 36:01Jay Shetty?

  And it never lasts, and we don't know that.

• 36:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:03Jay Shetty?

  So that was the deepest principle I learned as a monk. You always go to the root. Cut down the root of that weed in your heart. Cut down the root of that weed in your mind. Don't just let it grow and kind of water a little bit and snip, snip, cut a bit. Like, just really go to the root and just knock it out there, you know, just get rid of it. Get a big axe and cut it down.

• 36:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Are there any weeds in your life right now?

• 36:22Jay Shetty?

  Loads.

• 36:24Lewis Howes?

  In your heart or in your mind?

• 36:25Jay Shetty?

  Always. My daily practice is to refine my intention. The biggest weeds that we all get is on our intention. So when I say intention, I mean, my current intention is to use everything I've been given, everything that I have, in the service of others. So I wanna use the following that I have to help people. I wanna use the money that I have to help people. I wanna use the network that I have to help people. But every day, that intention, which is a beautiful little plant that's growing, gets weeds around it. "No, do it for the money," I hear that voice, right?

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  Do it for the fame.

• 37:01Jay Shetty?

  Just do it for the fame, do it for the followers, do it for this. All these weeds are like going around, my real intention every day, every day. That's a weed. A weed is the intention that you don't want. And the problem is, sometimes you've let it grow so much, the weed looks like the plant. Right? The weed looks like your intention, and you start believing it's the same thing. So for me, my daily practice is going back in, reflecting on what is my voice right now in my head? What am I saying to myself? And I'm hearing, "Make that deal, it makes a lot of money, do this, do that, do this, more followers, fame," all that stuff, and I'm cutting it down. I'm cutting that weed every day. And you've gotta do it every day, because the more you're surrounded by that energy,

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 37:45Jay Shetty?

  the more it's gonna keep creeping in, like a creeper weed, right? Like, I'm just using the plant analogy because I don't got it at all, by the way. Like, I have no idea, but...

• 37:53Lewis Howes?

  What's the intention you set every morning for yourself then? If it's going back to the... The core of what you really wanna create, what is that thing you wanna create the most? Service?

• 38:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, service. To help people find their purpose, whatever that may be, and help them help other people find their purpose. I think Mark Zuckerberg said it brilliantly at Harvard. He was saying that finding your purpose isn't enough. You have to help other people find theirs, and I know you're passionate about this. Whatever that definition is, but it has to lead everyone. So if I'm, whether I meet a celebrity, an entrepreneur, or whether I meet somebody who's starting out, I'm always asking them the question, "How can you use what you have to make a difference in the life of other people?"

• 38:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:31Jay Shetty?

  Because if you start there, everything else will work out. But if you're starting from the point of, "What am I gonna get?", then you're always gonna feel disconnected. And I see that. I see people who live like that and feel pain in their lives every day. I see that. It's not like some conceptual philosophy. We see it. I see people who are only in it for themselves, and they feel disconnected, dissatisfied every single day. And then you see the other extreme where people are just trying to give too much more than they even have themselves, and they also feel disconnected.

• 39:01Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:01Jay Shetty?

  And again-

• 39:02Lewis Howes?

  And they have nothing at all.

• 39:02Jay Shetty?

  And they have nothing at all, right? So we know, again, attachment and aversion, two sides of the same coin.

• 39:08Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:08Jay Shetty?

  So we wanna be in that dynamic balance of growth, but always to give.

• 39:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:13Jay Shetty?

  So I always think, "How can I go three steps deeper so that I can move three steps forward, so I can give three times as much?" Right? It's, that's always my mentality. How do I go deeper to go more forward to give more?

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 39:27Jay Shetty?

  And if I can get those three in action for that reason, see, it's all about the reasoning. You can do anything you like, but it's why are you doing it?

• 39:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course, yeah. So you were in there for a few years-

• 39:37Jay Shetty?

  Three years.

• 39:38Lewis Howes?

  And you told yourself you were gonna do this for the rest of your life.

• 39:40Jay Shetty?

  I was, I really wanted to, genuinely, genuinely from the bottom of my heart, I wanted to.

• 39:44Lewis Howes?

  And then, all of a sudden, one of your mentors, a teacher there at this ashram, right?

• 39:49Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 39:49Lewis Howes?

  And he said, "Time for you to go."

• 39:50Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 39:51Lewis Howes?

  So what was that conversation like, when he said, "You're no longer welcome"?

• 39:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 39:56Lewis Howes?

  And how did you start to plan for your exit?

• 39:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, definitely. So I've been there for three years. I've literally traded everything. Been celibate for the first time in my life for that long. It's, you know, for that long, ever, like, it's huge.

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:09Jay Shetty?

  And then- He sits down with me and he says, I think you'll be able to share what you've learned if you leave. You'll be able to share this with everyone if you leave. And I, and I felt like it was this nice way of saying, you're not ready to be a monk, like get out of here. That's how it felt. It felt like I'd failed and it felt like he was like breaking up with me, like I, I equate it to a divorce. It was almost like him saying to me, it's not you, it's me, you know, it's not working out, like it kind of felt like that.

• 40:36Lewis Howes?

  Is this the same monk that you, who came to speak?

• 40:38Jay Shetty?

  No, no, it was his teacher.

• 40:39Lewis Howes?

  Oh wow.

• 40:40Jay Shetty?

  So, his teacher, so like a.

• 40:41Lewis Howes?

  Even more so.

• 40:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, even more so, right, like, it wasn't disingenuous on his part. It was just, it was a reality check. It was a reality check that this wasn't gonna last forever. And it was one of the most toughest, humiliating, ego bashing, crushing things that happened. Because here I was thinking, I'm gonna be a monk and I'm gonna do this and I've got all these plans. Then all of a sudden, three years on, all your plans have failed.

• 41:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 41:08Jay Shetty?

  I've got no money, I've rejected all my corporate job offers and I moved back in my parents five years ago. With twenty-five thousand dollars worth of debt. From studying, which is a lot less than what you have in the US because UK education's cheaper, but still twenty-five K debt. No work experience for three years. And, and also just, it's not even just no work experience, you've literally been in another world. Right, you've been in another world, it's not just like, oh, I've been on the same planet. You've been disconnected, I forgot who won the World Cup.

• 41:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:38Jay Shetty?

  Right, I have not read a newspaper, I've kind of kept up to date, but, but.

• 41:41Lewis Howes?

  Not much.

• 41:42Jay Shetty?

  And not much, you know, so I moved back in my parents. And I'm thinking to myself, what am I gonna do, like now I'm gonna have to think about paying bills and I'm gonna have to think about, my, my parents aren't well off, so. I didn't have anywhere to just, I had their home to hang out in. But it wasn't like, oh yeah, I'll just live off my parents for a bit, I'll figure it out, I was just like, I literally have nothing, like if I don't figure this out. I'll be sleeping in my bedroom that I grew up in for the rest of my life and that's it, like that's life.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 42:08Jay Shetty?

  So it was tough, it was the closest I've ever been to like a very low point because. Your biggest dreams have just crushed and I know no one can really understand my dream of becoming a monk, but.

• 42:17Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:18Jay Shetty?

  You can equate it to, I don't know, playing in sports, like I, I know for you it was like that, but whatever it is. Music, it was, it was like your biggest dream on the planet just comes crumbling down. And I felt it, it hurt, it really hurt and it hurt the ego because. All my friends or family who I just about convinced I was becoming a monk. When I was coming back, they were all like, wow, I thought you were gonna be a monk. What are you doing? Like, do you fail at that? You know, it was kind of like, you failed at being a monk. You can't even do nothing? Exactly. You can't even think about nothing. You can't even focus on nothing. So I was getting a lot of backlash. And I was feeling like the monks, I was like, you know, you start judging yourself and you put that mirror on to others. And I was like, oh, the monks are gonna judge me, my friends are gonna judge me, like, I'm gonna feel so...

• 42:59Jay Shetty?

  And I felt alone. I really felt alone because I'd let go of a lot to go there. I hadn't talked to my friends for ages. And so anyway, I moved back. And I literally, from the day after I left, I just started reading and learning more about what was happening in the world. Started reading about personal development and started reading about the Vedas again, like, my practice. So I never left my practice. I brought it with me. And I had that moment where I had to decide. I was like, wait a minute, I've been taught how to deal with anxiety, pain, pressure, and everything as a monk. And for the first time in my life, I had to put it into like, Practice, yeah. Practice, but in like acceleration mode. Like, I had to put everything I'd learned into practice and everything I'd learned was tested in that moment.

• 43:44Jay Shetty?

  And that was hard because I was just like, wow, I really need to now apply everything I've been talking about, teaching, all this kind of stuff. And I had been tested, but now this is a real test. Right. Real world. Yeah, real world. It took me like nine months to 12 months to feel like I could go into a normal space again, maintain my energy, and still be able to interact without feeling drained or without feeling like I'm in a lower space or without feeling like, what's the point of this? You know, all that kind of stuff. Because that's your mentality. You walk by and you're like, what's the point of this all? You know, it's so meaningless. Yeah. But then having to realize, actually, it's not meaningless because I was trained to realize that everything gets meaning when I give it meaning. So if I see it as meaningless it is, but if I use it as a service, it can be the most powerful thing in the world.

• 44:26Jay Shetty?

  And it took me like nine to 12 months to be able to adapt that. Mindset, so that I could kind of live with normality again to some.

• 44:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 44:35Lewis Howes?

  So when did you realize you wanted to start creating videos?

• 44:38Jay Shetty?

  That was much later, so I ended up doing two things when I left. One thing was all my friends who work now at big companies, they were stressed out and hating their lives. And so they started to invite me to speak at their companies like Google and Starbucks and they worked.

• 44:51Lewis Howes?

  What you learned from being a monk?

• 44:52Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's it. They were all working at these big brands and they were like, Jay, come teach us what you've learned. Like, we're stressed out, maybe you learn how to meditate. And I was like, oh, yeah. This is five years ago when mindfulness and all this stuff was just on the rise. It wasn't huge yet, like now everyone talks about it. So I kind of had come back just at that moment.

• 45:09Lewis Howes?

  Good timing.

• 45:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, good timing, but without any strategy whatsoever. And I actually remember, this is, I know you've got Andy Pudicam on your wall. I remember finding about, finding out about Andy Pudicam when I was still a monk. And, and I always talk about this, I always say.

• 45:22Lewis Howes?

  He was there for ten years or something, twelve years.

• 45:23Jay Shetty?

  He was a monk for ten years. And I think when he left and started up Headspace, I remember learning about Headspace when I was a monk. I remember hearing about it. And it was very early days then, like.

• 45:32Lewis Howes?

  Monk made it.

• 45:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:35Lewis Howes?

  That's possible.

• 45:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and now I always look back and go, that was my big, I wish I could have invested then.

• 45:39Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 45:40Jay Shetty?

  That's like my thing, like I was like, I had no money to invest, but anyway, it's brilliant app. But the point being that I kind of came back at that moment in our world where mindfulness, well-being, all these things were coming into the corporate workplace. And so all my friends were inviting me. So I started speaking at all these venues. And I'd been speaking while I was a monk, I've been speaking since I was sixteen, so that was a very natural part. Teaching was very natural. And I loved it and people were getting so much out of it. And I was like, wow, like my monk experience is really there to help so many people. And because I'm still living it, I can still give it. And all of a sudden, all of this environment had a meaning and purpose again. And I started to see what my teacher had said, that you're, you're there to share this with people.

• 46:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:22Jay Shetty?

  But then I saw this barrier that I was hitting, that most of the companies that wanted it were corporates. And I saw this rise in technology and I hadn't even joined social media yet. So I avoided Facebook when I was, when I was in university because I thought I was gonna be a monk, so I tried to avoid it. Then I never used it when I was a monk, so I never used Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, anything until 2014. And I just had a normal friend page where I didn't do anything on it. So I joined social media in twenty fourteen, ten years after Facebook's launched. So I noticed this rise in technology and I also start thinking I need to understand companies better. So I start reapplying to loads of companies to get my job back, to see if I can learn about technology. Because I'm like, I need to get technology, I don't get it enough.

• 47:05Jay Shetty?

  So I'm applying to all these companies, I get rejected by the same thirty, forty companies that would have let me walk in three years ago. And finally, one company gives me a job, it's called Accenture. And so I get this break at Accenture and I join it when I'm like twenty-six, twenty-seven. And I'm joining with a bunch of new grads who are twenty-one, so I'm like the oldest guy there. And I'm joining and I'm like, I'm just here to learn, like I keep reminding myself, the intention here is just learn, consume, and you're not gonna be here for a long time. So I start learning about social media technology. So happens they were growing digital and social media at the same time. And I just got stuck in self-learning, spent every hour trying to figure it out, had training from their experts.

• 47:45Jay Shetty?

  And I ended up becoming the top social media influencer in Accenture, inside four hundred thousand people. Just through just experimenting, learning and figuring it out. Because I had a feeling, and it wasn't because I was preparing, I just had a feeling that social media would be useful. Right. That was it. So anyway, then I've been at Accenture for twenty thirteen October to twenty fifteen October. And I'm recognizing that now I'm not playing to my own passion. Everything that I'm teaching about living your passion, your purpose, you're living what really matters to you, I'm not doing that myself. Right. Because I'm still talking about digital and technology, when actually what I wanna talk about is life and the mind and wisdom. So I quit my job, comfy corporate job, doing really well for myself.

• 48:26Jay Shetty?

  And I'm trying to get into media and so I'm writing to every big media company before my videos, and saying, please give me a job, like I'll come in at like a video journalist salary. I was looking at salaries at like a quarter of what I made. I was like, I don't care about the money, I wanna make videos and I wanna spread a message. I'm getting rejection email after rejection email saying, Jay, you never studied media, Jay, you have no background. So I'm getting rejected by all the biggest companies, Business Insider, HuffPost, The Economist, Wired, you name it, I've got all the emails. And then I try and network with the editors of these magazines. So I find out where they are, I go to the events, I try and talk to them. And they're like to me, hey man, you're like twenty eight years old. Why do you wanna do this? You make more money right now, hang in the corporate world, do it as a hobby.

• 49:11Jay Shetty?

  I remember running after one of our biggest news anchors in England called John Snow. And he rides a biker in London, but he's like, he's huge, he's on Channel Four, one of the biggest broadcasters for us. And so I run after him when he's on his bike and I'm like, John, please, please stop. And he stops, he's really kind and say, John, can you please give me a job? I'll just, I don't even wanna get paid, I'll just watch you. And I, because he creates these powerful documentaries, he's interviewed the best of the best, like Mandela and all this stuff, life changing conversations. And he goes to me, he gives me a card and he goes, Jay, go get a masters in media and then come back. And I'm thinking, oh.

• 49:46Lewis Howes?

  Spend two, three more years.

• 49:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly, I've gotta go back, like, anyway, so I came to a point where I literally had no other option than to start a YouTube channel. And my honest limiting belief at the time was, that doesn't work for anyone. And that's what I said to myself, I was like, this is not gonna work for anyone, but I literally had exhausted. I think it's Thomas Edison who says, when you feel you've exhausted every option, remember you haven't. And I'd come to that point where I felt I'd exhausted every option apart from starting a YouTube channel. So I launched the channel, Jam third, twenty sixteen, two years ago. And it's doing pretty well. And so I started to make videos because I felt that was the only way we could scale this message beyond corporates, beyond companies, to people in the world who can't pay for that coaching, who aren't part of this industry.

• 50:32Jay Shetty?

  When you grow up in that circumstance, you think everyone has that. But when you look around the world, most people do not work at a huge Fortune five hundred company.

• 50:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:39Jay Shetty?

  And I wanted to go to them and beyond. And I always, always had this scale mind in my head, I've always been a big thinker and wanted scale. And when it comes to helping people. There's nothing more important than scale to me. Like, being able to impact everyone in the world, right? You can't, if you really wanna help, you can't say, "I'm happy helping ten people."

• 50:57Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 50:58Jay Shetty?

  You know, you wanna help more people.

• 50:59Lewis Howes?

  That's why video is the most powerful platform to spread a message.

• 51:02Jay Shetty?

  Incredible.

• 51:03Lewis Howes?

  Speaking in front of a hundred thousand people at an event isn't as powerful.

• 51:06Jay Shetty?

  It's not.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  But it's limited still.

• 51:09Jay Shetty?

  Exactly.

• 51:09Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot of people.

• 51:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Lewis Howes?

  But if you wanna take it to as many as you can, I think video is the greatest option.

• 51:14Jay Shetty?

  At low cost, to them and yourself. Like, at completely, like, at no expense to anyone.

• 51:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Jay Shetty?

  You can change, you can have an impact on someone's life.

• 51:22Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 51:22Jay Shetty?

  And I didn't know that then, but I knew that video was the form. So I just tried, and that's when I started making videos, because I felt anyone in the world with a phone, like, more people have a phone than a toothbrush. Right? So I was like, anyone who has a phone can watch this, and it can impact them, and get their journey going, whatever that is.

• 51:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:39Jay Shetty?

  And so that, that's why I started making videos.

• 51:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow. When did you realize it started to take off?

• 51:43Jay Shetty?

  So, it was after a month. I was doing okay, I was getting like ten, twenty, thirty, fifty K views on YouTube, which was pretty decent.

• 51:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:51Jay Shetty?

  And it was just all organic, me pushing it out, sharing my videos, again tweeting it out to lots of editors and publishers, saying, "Please feature my video." And then coming back even on Twitter and saying, "Not sure about this message, don't quite connect with it."

• 52:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:06Jay Shetty?

  "We don't think it quite works." I got a lot of negative feedback as well. But the audience liked it. I was getting good feedback on YouTube, but from official people, I was getting quite, not negative, but not, not great feedback. But I kept going, I, I've always had this mantra that I always believe, "All you need is one person to say yes." And I still live like that. When I have an idea, I'm just like, "I'm gonna knock on every door, and all I need is for one door to stay open." It doesn't matter how many that is. And so I started doing that, and somehow, someone showed it to Arianna Huffington. She was at the World Economic Forum, and someone showed it to her there. And then I met with one of her team members who's now a really good friend of mine.

• 52:48Jay Shetty?

  He was like, he was the editor in chief of the HuffPost at that time. And he loved my videos, he liked me, and then I pestered him for a month after I'd met him to actually get my videos on HuffPost. Then Ariana called me, she said, I love your videos, we wanna feature them. Just make a series for us and we'll post them up. So I made a series of four videos. So this was about three months after I started on YouTube, so it's March twenty sixteen, March, April twenty sixteen. They launched my first video, it gets a million in a week views on Facebook on the HuffPost, which was great for them. They're like, let's try the second one. They launched the second one a week after, and that video is now on forty million views. And has another hundred and twenty million across Facebook on other channels.

• 53:31Jay Shetty?

  But that video did forty million, it did one million in twenty-four hours. And then like twelve million by the end of the week, and then twenty-four million in two weeks, and then forty million overall. And then the third video did another fifteen million, and the fourth video did another twenty million. And so that was the most views HuffPost has ever had on any of their series in their history. And then Ariana was just like, hey, do you wanna come over and be a part of us? So that's when it really took off. When Ariana spotted it, and her team spotted it, Danny Shea, one of my favorite people in the world, who really had faith in me and fought my battle when I was just this guy making videos on YouTube, which I still am. But he really saw that it had potential, and Ariana, so them two were like the best, and Danny's, Ariana's, one of her favorite people.

• 54:16Jay Shetty?

  They made it happen. He invited me to New York to host a show on HuffPost Live, which was their partnership with Facebook Live. And I had a show called Follow the Reader that I created and produced, where I interviewed self-development experts. I would have loved to have you on that show, had I still been there. But we interviewed Deepak Chopra, Tim Ferriss, Gabby, Dr. Shafali, Russell Simmons, et cetera.

• 54:40Lewis Howes?

  Shafali's great.

• 54:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, Shafali's awesome, yeah.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  She's really cool.

• 54:43Jay Shetty?

  So I got to meet all these incredible people and more on that show. And that's when it, so that was September twenty sixteen. That's when I came to New York.

• 54:49Lewis Howes?

  What are the people not understanding about video?

• 54:53Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 54:53Lewis Howes?

  What are they not understanding about how powerful it is for their business, their brand, and ultimately their message to impact people?

• 55:01Jay Shetty?

  You mean people who are already doing it or people who don't get why video is important? Which side?

• 55:05Lewis Howes?

  Both.

• 55:06Jay Shetty?

  Both.

• 55:06Lewis Howes?

  What are they not, what are they not getting? People that are doing it, maybe it's not working well for them.

• 55:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:10Lewis Howes?

  The people that aren't doing it.

• 55:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Let's start with the people that aren't doing it and then move to one. So the people that aren't doing it, it's always that same question. What's the ROI on social media? Right, what's the ROI? Now, the funny thing is, your business work and service, my business work and service, literally lives off of social media. So there's obviously an ROI. But the problem is, we live in a world where we want everything to be measurable. And there's a beautiful Einstein quote that says, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that you can count counts."

• 55:41Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:41Jay Shetty?

  Right? And we live in this world where everything needs to be measured. But it's like, life doesn't work like that. There's a load of adverts and billboards on the street that the biggest brands pay for that don't convert into direct sales. Do you think that Coca-Cola looks at the billboard out there and goes, "How many people saw that advert today? And how many people bought Coca-Cola because of that advert?" They don't have that number. It doesn't exist. And they're one of the biggest brands in the world, but they still do it. So social media and video is just a new billboard.

• 56:07Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:08Jay Shetty?

  And the biggest brands know that the more you see it, like, I mean, this is funny. I saw this today. I saw a big billboard outside of my hotel that has all the Jenners and the Kardashians wearing their Kelvins. Have you seen it?

• 56:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:20Jay Shetty?

  Right, I saw it straight away this morning. Then I saw it on Instagram, and then I saw it everywhere. So already, I've seen it in three places. Now, I don't need women's Calvin underwear. But the point is that I've seen it in a million places. So anyone who's not using video hasn't understood that more people are gonna see video than anything else. And notice that video is so much better than a billboard. You can say so much more.

• 56:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 56:44Jay Shetty?

  So for me, it's just a lack of seeing opportunity. There's a, there's a great, I think this is a old tale. It's not true. But it's told that when Nike first went to India, they went there, and it's not Nike, it's any, any sneaker brand. It's, it's, it's a nice story. And when they first went to India, they swore everyone was barefoot. So the first reporter came back and said, oh, there's no market there because no one wears trainers. And then the second reporter went, then he said, oh, no one wears shoes. And then he came back and says, we've got a huge market out there. Right? And it's the way you see it. That someone saw no one wearing shoes, there's no market, but another person saw everyone not wearing shoes as a market.

• 57:23Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:23Jay Shetty?

  And that's what video is. That you can sit here and debate the ROI on video for as long as you want. The truth is, every major brand has invested in a front window that may not translate to direct sales or work or whatever it is.

• 57:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:37Jay Shetty?

  But it does.

• 57:38Lewis Howes?

  Do you think every brand should be using video?

• 57:40Jay Shetty?

  Every brand should be using video.

• 57:41Lewis Howes?

  And what's the best way they should be using video?

• 57:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 57:44Lewis Howes?

  Should it be like, just buy my product?

• 57:45Jay Shetty?

  No.

• 57:46Lewis Howes?

  Or should it be more telling a story and inspiring people?

• 57:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so I don't like to advise and work with brands I believe are selling things that I don't believe are legitimate. So this advice that I'm giving is me saying the brands that I think are having a positive difference in the world.

• 58:01Lewis Howes?

  Or have a product that's good or certain.

• 58:02Jay Shetty?

  A product that's good and helps people. Yeah, that helps people. Yeah. My advice is that the story is one thing, but you really have to go into the heart of the emotion. What are people experiencing? When they use your product, what experience are they having? How is it transforming their life? How's it making a difference? And building an experience and a story around that emotion, rather than, hey, if you drink this, you're gonna be really happy and, you know, but it's like, well, where's your proof? Right? How is this changing lives? I think people look at it, how is it changing your current day to day life? But they're not looking at how it changes lives in general. How can a very simple product actually make a huge difference in people's daily lives?

• 58:47Jay Shetty?

  So every company is trying to sell VR. So, so I recently made a video for a brand about VR, but I took a completely different spin on it. And they'd asked me to make a video about VR. And I said, well, I like VR, but that's boring. I don't want to make a video about VR. So my spin on it is, what if VR was used to increase empathy in humanity? So what if a young child could put on VR goggles and live through the eyes of another young child who doesn't have what they have? Could that increase gratitude? Could that increase empathy? That's looking at how VR can change lives. Right. That's not looking at, oh, VR is gonna let us play more games and be in 3D environments. Like, who cares? And that's what really touches our hearts, right?

• 59:30Jay Shetty?

  It's like, how can this product, service, or tool change lives? So, brands are not focused on that. Brands are focused too much on the transactional purpose as opposed to the transformational purpose of a product, service, or tool. Hmm. So, I'm requesting brands switch away from transactional thinking to transformational thinking. How can that technology, service, or tool transform people's lives? Not just get you another transaction. Yeah. And, and people need to move away from that direct selling, that direct kind of, kind of cheesy, salesy stuff that, that doesn't work on any of us and neither does it change lives. Hmm. Does that answer your question? Of course, yeah. So, it's really learning how to master telling a better story. Storytelling. Yeah.

• 1:00:13Jay Shetty?

  It's all storytelling and creating experiences. How can you create an experience that really touches on human emotions? So, I was talking to you the other day that the main emotions are adventure, emotion, positive or negative, like controversy, debate. You've got comedy, you've got inspire or motivate, and you've got surprise. Those are the five key emotions that all of us are triggered by. So, brands need to figure out which of those fit their brand and are aligned with their ethos. Hmm. And it has to be content-led. Too many people are making bad content and expecting good marketing to sell it. Right. And that's what I see everyone interested in. Every brand influencer, expert, author comes to me and says, Jay, I wanna sell this. What tools do I need? What techniques do I need?

• 1:00:59Jay Shetty?

  What marketing do I need? And I'm like, no, but the content doesn't work. So, you can put a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million dollars behind a bad advert or a bad piece of content. Hmm. And it won't get anywhere. Right. Or you can have an amazing piece of content and you can just touch a few distribution channels and it will have millions of views. Yeah. And so, too many people are not content-focused, they're marketing-focused. And that's where people are, that gap is ruining brands. Right. Tell better stories, give more value. Yeah. Tell better stories, give more value, craft content.

• 1:01:32Jay Shetty?

  That makes people understand what you're creating, how you're making a difference in someone's life, and why you're doing it.

• 1:01:39Lewis Howes?

  What's the thing that makes someone wanna share it and leave a comment?

• 1:01:42Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:42Lewis Howes?

  What is that main thing that someone watches, keeps them watching the whole time and then says, "I have to share this"?

• 1:01:48Jay Shetty?

  So, first thing is, people need to see themselves in the situation. They need to be able to see themselves in the story you're creating. If they can't identify with the character, they'll switch off. Why is it that Marvel and DC have so many different characters? Because we can all connect with one of their origin stories, whichever one it is. Now, I know a lot of people wanna be Wolverine, but the point is, there's multiple, right? Everyone has a favorite X-Men. Everyone has a favorite Justice League character, because we all identify with a different origin story. So, the more deeply you understand your origin story of your customer or client or audience, the more deeply you can create a story around it. So, people have to be able to see themselves in it.

• 1:02:33Jay Shetty?

  That's the first thing to keep them watching, to even get them to watch in the first place. The way you keep them watching is to create a scenario where there will be a surprise or a reveal at the end. Who doesn't wanna know how a magic trick is done?

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:02:47Jay Shetty?

  Who doesn't wanna know how something finishes? There's a beautiful movie called The Prestige by Christopher Nolan. I don't know if you've seen it. It's my favorite movie of all time. Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, directed and produced by Christopher Nolan. And he talks about how every magic trick has three elements.

• 1:03:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:04Jay Shetty?

  And the third element is called The Prestige, which is the reveal.

• 1:03:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:03:08Jay Shetty?

  Where you're surprised, where you see what you didn't think was gonna happen. Video has to have that. Video has to have a message, a link, a surprise at the end that delights people, that has taken them on a surprising journey or a different turn. And then finally, what a video needs for someone to share it after that is you need to help them experience that emotion at the deepest level, where they feel compelled to want to tag their friend. Now, you can do this through language. You can do it through crafting. So, title of a video. These are the more logistical aspects. But you, again, you can have rubbish content and put a good title. It won't work. But titling, the caption, all of this stuff is gonna impact the audience.

• 1:03:50Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:51Jay Shetty?

  So, things that help people watch and share immediately. So I have a video called "Before You Break Up, Watch This." Right, we've released it just before summer, because a lot of people break up just before summer.

• 1:04:04Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:05Jay Shetty?

  I wanted to try and see if people didn't have to break up before summer, because it hurts a lot of people. So I made a video called "Before You Break Up, Watch This." But the "Watch This" makes you wanna watch it now. It makes it instant, it makes it current, it makes it relevant. And the "Before You Break Up" is pulling in on an emotion

• 1:04:21Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:22Jay Shetty?

  that most people don't wanna go through. How many people wanna break up? Right, most people don't wanna break up.

• 1:04:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:04:27Jay Shetty?

  So we're tapping into an emotion, and then I'm presenting a video that isn't lying, isn't manipulating. I'm sharing how so many of us are in love but not together, and so many of us are together but not in love, and helping realize, helping people reflect and realize where are they at on that scale. So I'm also offering a solution through the video. And, and that video is of course completely free, it's completely there, but people are sharing it because they've realized the value in the message.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:54Jay Shetty?

  I think too many people are not message-led, they're like cool effects-led, or cool text-led.

• 1:05:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Jay Shetty?

  But it has to be message-led, like what are you really sharing? And how are you taxing your brain to craft a message without just saying it? I could just say to you, "Lewis, I think you need to use more video." Right? Or I could do what we've just talked about, which is share with you why you should use more video.

• 1:05:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Jay Shetty?

  And, and we all know that we're more compelled when someone talks about the "why," as Simon Sinek says.

• 1:05:24Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:24Jay Shetty?

  Like, "Why do you use video?"

• 1:05:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:05:26Jay Shetty?

  You know, what's the message that you're crafting?

• 1:05:28Lewis Howes?

  Right, wow.

• 1:05:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Lewis Howes?

  If you were starting over again, you didn't, you just came out of the monk world,

• 1:05:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Lewis Howes?

  would you go right to video again?

• 1:05:36Jay Shetty?

  Oh, no, you know what, my experience at Accenture was hugely helpful. It also gave me time to kind of

• 1:05:43Lewis Howes?

  Transition, yeah.

• 1:05:44Jay Shetty?

  observe and transition. I think if I went straight to video, I'm not sure, because, first of all, at Accenture I learnt social media. Second of all, at Accenture I understood corporate culture properly again, which was very useful. Thirdly, I made a bunch of great friends that I'm in contact now that I love.

• 1:06:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:01Jay Shetty?

  And I have a great relationship with the company and they're one of my biggest clients.

• 1:06:04Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:06:04Jay Shetty?

  So it's like, there's nothing that could have been done differently. But did I know that then? No. So you can't connect the dots moving forwards. You only can when you look backwards. Steve Jobs. And I feel like that with Accenture, that I wouldn't change it. Because the amount I gained there in the two to three years that I was there, two years that I was there, is priceless, you know, on so many levels.

• 1:06:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool, man.

• 1:06:26Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:27Lewis Howes?

  What's something that most people don't know about you that you're really proud of?

• 1:06:30Jay Shetty?

  Ooh, what do I, what people don't know, I mean, I'm really proud of, wow. I don't think a lot of people know that I meditate two hours a day. Which I'm not proud of in the, oh, look how good I am sense. But I'm proud that I've been able to maintain that since living as a.

• 1:06:45Lewis Howes?

  It's tough. It's really tough. I went to India a year, a little over a year ago.

• 1:06:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, I wanna hear about that.

• 1:06:49Lewis Howes?

  For two weeks and practiced all day, for two weeks essentially. Until we'd stop at like, I don't know, nine o'clock at night or whatever. But, and then sometimes we'd do like two AM meditations

• 1:07:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Lewis Howes?

  to kind of be in this space of like, am I asleep, am I awake? To see what was possible for the mind then.

• 1:07:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  So it was two weeks. And for about six to eight months, I was very consistent afterwards.

• 1:07:13Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:07:14Lewis Howes?

  And since then,

• 1:07:14Jay Shetty?

  It's amazing.

• 1:07:15Lewis Howes?

  I sometimes am and sometimes not.

• 1:07:18Jay Shetty?

  But you felt, you felt compelled to carry it on.

• 1:07:20Lewis Howes?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:07:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:21Lewis Howes?

  Like I wanted it and when I was doing it consistently, it was profound, right? No, I was still not perfect and had my flaws. But it was so much more powerful for me. And I haven't been as consistent, so it's amazing that you have been. I mean, if you do it for three years every single day.

• 1:07:37Jay Shetty?

  For four to eight hours a day.

• 1:07:39Lewis Howes?

  You should be able to keep it for hopefully like ten years. I did it for two weeks.

• 1:07:42Jay Shetty?

  It's amazing.

• 1:07:43Lewis Howes?

  And kept it for like seven months or something, so.

• 1:07:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. That's great.

• 1:07:48Lewis Howes?

  But it's definitely. I feel much clearer when I'm meditating, even for fifteen minutes.

• 1:07:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Lewis Howes?

  You know, I don't know if I could do two hours every day like you, but fifteen minutes a day.

• 1:07:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:59Lewis Howes?

  Is powerful.

• 1:08:00Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 1:08:00Lewis Howes?

  Just to reconnect the intention, right, and to get rid of the weeds.

• 1:08:03Jay Shetty?

  Exactly.

• 1:08:04Lewis Howes?

  So.

• 1:08:04Jay Shetty?

  Most people don't know that. I think people think that I, like you did as well when we met, that people think I make videos and I teach. But for me, my personal practice is such a big part of grounding and who I am that I don't feel proud like, oh, look how good I can do two hours. That's when I go live with the monks and I'm like, I'm only at two hours. You know, it's like, it's not a big achievement. And it's also about the depth of the two hours.

• 1:08:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Jay Shetty?

  Anyone can meditate for two hours, but it's like, what's the depth? It's like, I go to the gym for two hours and do nothing, right? Listen to music all day, like, but those people are going to the gym and really going deep. So those, meditation is just a gym for the mind.

• 1:08:37Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:38Jay Shetty?

  That's all it is. It's a gym for the mind.

• 1:08:40Lewis Howes?

  And your wife supports the two hours in the morning and the lifestyle?

• 1:08:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so my wife, I actually met her while teaching her meditation and philosophy. So when I left being a monk, she used to come to my classes. I met her before that. I'd actually met her before I became a monk, but we didn't, we weren't friends. We didn't really know each other. I knew of her and I'd seen her around. But then after I left, she used to come to my classes and I used to teach meditation and philosophy. And, and I have to be honest and say, she's a better meditator than me now.

• 1:09:06Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:09:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, she's way better than me. Because she's so genuinely pure, like she's a sincere soul who's more monk than I'll ever be.

• 1:09:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:09:17Jay Shetty?

  You know, yeah, she just has it naturally inherently within her. So she's now wakes up earlier than I do. Yeah, she wakes up earlier than I do. She meditates better than I do. She reminds me to meditate. She's the one who's like always questioning my intention and purity level, not in a negative way, in a good way, where I feel accountable to someone who's, who's really grounding me and make me value what I have and what I've learned. And it's not just because she's newer to it, because now she's been meditating for around four or five years. So she's been doing it for a long amount of time, for two hours a day as well. So the great thing is I wake up and I don't feel good at all because she's just finished two hours and I'm like, oh yeah, I gotta start.

• 1:09:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:09:57Jay Shetty?

  So yeah, she supports it because she's better than me at it. This is gonna be my, my ego moment. I'm gonna have it where, where you feel like I'm a good teacher, right? If the students, if the students better than the teacher, then I, then I must be pretty good. So, but no, she's, yeah, she's a better meditator than me.

• 1:10:12Lewis Howes?

  Is there anything you do during, during your day that you're not proud of?

• 1:10:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, loads. I I'm

• 1:10:17Lewis Howes?

  Besides a couple of moments are of, oh, am I chasing this for the money for like a moment or something?

• 1:10:22Jay Shetty?

  No, you know, I have my moments where I'll snap at my wife or I'll I'll be, you know, I I won't communicate with her in the most compassionate, beautiful way that I want to and I'm busy and I'm carrying all this stuff and that release happens and and I never feel proud of that. I always end up feeling bad about it. Because I'm like, here's this beautiful, amazing person who is supporting me in every way possible. And here I am being ungrateful, not following my own advice, not communicating with empathy and love, and falling prey to the stress that doesn't even matter that much anymore. So yeah, that's something that I really, really am not happy about when I do that. If I snap at her or I don't give her the the right energy or I'm not connecting with her

• 1:11:06Jay Shetty?

  with the right language and the right tone and the right mood. Because I'm kind of trying to focus or and I'm quite an extremist. I like to get lost in creative worlds. So when I need that, I need like complete silence. I need like enough. Yeah, literally. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's like I'm trying to write a script for another video, you know, for another video. And she's asking me what I want for dinner or something, which is like her trying to serve me. And I'm just like, no, just I I need, you know, and I hate that about myself. Like, I don't like it when I'm like that way. Because it's it's ungrateful. So yeah, that definitely is something I need to change and I'm working on it.

• 1:11:39Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. Is there anything that you're ashamed of that you've done in your life?

• 1:11:42Jay Shetty?

  Oh, loads of stuff and I feel it back. Karma is real, right? Like, I used to be a really stupid kid. So when between fourteen and eighteen, I experimented with all the worst stuff. I was never a saint. I was never meant to be a monk. I just got lucky. I met the right people. I used to do stupid stuff. We used to, we used to mess around with drugs. We used to steal. We used to hotwire cars. We used to all the stuff that you would never be proud of. And we did it from fourteen to eighteen. And now I have the worst car karma in the world, right? Like, and that's not just for the play on words, like I literally have the worst car karma. I always get parking tickets. Always something goes wrong with the, I don't have a car in New York now, but every time I'm in London, I rent a car, something will go wrong with it.

• 1:12:26Jay Shetty?

  And I realize I'm just getting back all the pain I caused to people from whatever I did to their car when I was fourteen to eighteen. Whether we stole it, whether we hotwired it, whether we scratched the car, whatever it was, all the stupid stuff that I did. I'm just so ashamed of because, but I was just, I was that kid who was just looking for, I was looking for a thrill in life. And I was looking for something in life that had more meaning than just being someone who did well at school or, you know, that just wasn't enough, like that can't be life.

• 1:12:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:12:53Jay Shetty?

  But unfortunately, I went down the wrong, you know, I was suspended from school three times.

• 1:12:58Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:58Jay Shetty?

  For everything from violence to stealing to, you know, all this kind of stuff, like, so I'm super ashamed of that. It's the best grounding thing because I look back and I go, no matter what anyone says about me today, or how I think I've grown today, I've got all these anchors that humble me.

• 1:13:15Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:13:16Jay Shetty?

  And remind me of who I was and could have ended up as if I didn't meet these great people.

• 1:13:21Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:13:22Jay Shetty?

  I'm hugely ashamed of how many bad relationships I had, how many girls' hearts I broke.

• 1:13:28Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:28Jay Shetty?

  People that I, I wouldn't say I never, I never cheated on anyone. So that was, that's kind of like my, my like, holding up my card and going, I never cheated. But the kind of pain that I caused anyone through leading them on the wrong path or breaking up with them when they thought there was a future or all that stuff, like, my favorite thing is finding out their ex-girlfriend got married and has a baby. Like, when I find that out,

• 1:13:49Lewis Howes?

  It's happy.

• 1:13:50Jay Shetty?

  I'm just like, oh, please forgive me, you know, like, yes, like, you know, I didn't ruin your life. And, and that, that, that I'm super ashamed of. And those are my biggest grounding moments because before I became a monk, that's what I was like. And it was me failing people rather than the relationship failing. I was getting lost too quickly in relationships, not treating people properly. And yeah, that stuff I'm like, you know, that, that stuff makes me grounded all the time.

• 1:14:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:15Jay Shetty?

  And I'm reminded of how low I can go and have gone.

• 1:14:19Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. And so to never. You need to stay consistent with the practice.

• 1:14:22Jay Shetty?

  Exactly. And never to buy into your own hype.

• 1:14:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:14:25Jay Shetty?

  I always just don't buy into it. Like, yes, it's beautiful to be able to live a life now where I don't, I'm not like that. And I don't feel like that anymore. But it could happen to anyone. Anyone can fall at any moment. And I think the moment you think you can't fall. I was talking about this with someone the other day, uh. Benjamin Franklin's thirteen precepts. He had thirteen things he wanted to achieve by the time he died. Includes things like integrity, honesty, principles of that sort, values, deep core values. And at the end of his life, he was asked, which one did you not accomplish out of the thirteen? And he said it was the thirteenth one. And the thirteenth one is humility. And I give that example because if he felt he'd achieved humility, then he would lose all humility in that one statement.

• 1:15:10Jay Shetty?

  You can't be humble if you say, oh, I'm humble, you know? If you feel humble, then you can't be humble. That's what I feel about, if you feel safe, that's when you're at your most vulnerable. When you feel you're infallible and you feel that there's no moment where you could ever fall, that's when you're at your worst moment. And, and I think too often, when you do good, you feel good, you live good, you can get to a point where you're like, I've got this. And, and I think that's where most of us fall and fail. Ryan Holiday, I know, was on your show, Ego's the Enemy. It's a beautiful book. I think it's a great book. And that's what I mean, that ego becomes the enemy, even when you start living the most pure, well-intentioned life. Like, that's the last, you know, that's the last step of ego and the ego is just like, ready.

• 1:15:54Jay Shetty?

  So, so for me, that self-reflection, that grounding, that meditation, remembering, you know, there, I think it's, there's always, as a monk, we were taught two things to remember, two things to forget. Always remember the bad you've done to others and remember the good others have done for you. I always remember the bad you've done to others and the good others have done to you. When you remember the bad you've done to others, you'll always feel grounded, you'll always feel humbled. You'll never let your ego get over you. And when you remember the good others have done for you, you feel grateful. Two things to forget, forget the good you've done for others. If you get fixated and fascinated by that too long, your ego is gonna grow. And forget the bad others have done to you.

• 1:16:38Jay Shetty?

  That doesn't mean you have to be their best friend again, but to forget, because otherwise that's just gonna drain your energy forever. And those two points have really stayed with me because... They both stop you from ego and they increase gratitude.

• 1:16:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:52Jay Shetty?

  And they keep you humble and grounded. And so I aspire for that.

• 1:16:55Lewis Howes?

  That's powerful, yeah.

• 1:16:56Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:57Lewis Howes?

  Final few questions for you.

• 1:16:58Jay Shetty?

  Go for it, yeah, I'm loving this.

• 1:16:59Lewis Howes?

  This one's called the three truths.

• 1:17:00Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 1:17:01Lewis Howes?

  From all the things you've learned in your life.

• 1:17:03Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Lewis Howes?

  Monk life to stealing cars, to everything else.

• 1:17:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:07Lewis Howes?

  Breaking hearts before you were a monk, all those things. To what you've learned now.

• 1:17:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:11Lewis Howes?

  Uh, if this was the last day for you, many years from now. You've created every video you want, you've told every story. Shared every parable, you've shared every lesson. You've written all the books you wanna do, anything you wanna do, you've done.

• 1:17:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:24Lewis Howes?

  Those thirteen things that you want, it happened.

• 1:17:26Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 1:17:26Lewis Howes?

  But for whatever reason, they're all erased. Everything is gone from the internet, the world, print, it's all gone.

• 1:17:32Jay Shetty?

  Hmm.

• 1:17:32Lewis Howes?

  Your words of wisdom.

• 1:17:33Jay Shetty?

  Okay.

• 1:17:34Lewis Howes?

  Uh, but you had a piece of paper, a piece of paper and a pen.

• 1:17:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:37Lewis Howes?

  And this would last for five thousand years. The three things that you wrote down would last for the next five thousand years. But that's all that would last.

• 1:17:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:45Lewis Howes?

  What would be your three truths or three lessons?

• 1:17:48Jay Shetty?

  Your consciousness and the soul, not the body, that would be the number one thing. Your consciousness, you're not this physical, mental, emotional being. You're a spiritual being in a human experience. You're not a human in having a spiritual experience. That would be the first thing that would be on. The moment we realize that, you cut through so much nonsense in your life. So that would be number one. It's one of the biggest principles in the Bhagavad Gita. The second principle would be the second principle that's huge in the Bhagavad Gita is play to your own element. Don't try and perform someone else's expertly. So in modern terminology, how would I say that is? Steve Jobs, don't waste your time trying to live someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma.

• 1:18:29Jay Shetty?

  Focus in on your own strengths, your own element, what you have to offer. Don't get lost in trying to become like someone else or pretend to be someone else. There's a beautiful, one of my favorite quotes by Einstein and then Steve Jobs again. Einstein said, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it's stupid. And too many of us are fish trying to climb a tree. Too many of us are monkeys being taught how to swim. Too many of us are lions being taught to live like cats. We're not getting to live in our element. So my second piece of advice is live in that element that you've naturally been given. Don't try adopt another. You know, we've all got a special genius inside of us.

• 1:19:12Jay Shetty?

  It was Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, this conversation. Steve Wozniak looked, Steve Wozniak, for those who don't know, is the tech guy behind Apple. He practically invented the technology and the software and everything. So Steve Wozniak looked at Steve Jobs and he says, this is in Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. Steve Wozniak, Wozniak looks at Steve Jobs and he says, what do you even do? He said, you're not a coder, you're not a designer, you're not a marketer, and you're not an engineer. What do you even do? Imagine challenging Steve Jobs. And Steve Jobs replies, he says, he says musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra. That is the most deep understanding of one's role in life. And not getting lost in other people's identities and perceptions of you.

• 1:19:57Jay Shetty?

  Steve Jobs knew that he wasn't a marketer, he wasn't an engineer, he wasn't a coder. So he hired all of those. But he played the orchestra, he brought it all together. And that's when you, when you find confidence in your own role, you won't be envious of anyone else's. So that's the second one. I don't know how big this piece of paper is, but anyway. And the, and the third one is lead with service. Like just serve. Try and use the understanding of the first and the second to make a difference. If you're a musician, serve. If you're a coder, serve. If you're a orchestra leader, serve. If you're a entrepreneur, serve. Like make your life about service and helping other people. Not just to feel good, but make that the reason why you do what you do.

• 1:20:42Jay Shetty?

  Don't make that what happens because you have money. Make that the reason you do what you do.

• 1:20:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:48Jay Shetty?

  And if people start with service, then you'll experience love, then you'll experience compassion. Then you'll experience gratitude, services. Gandhi said it, you find yourself when you lose yourself in the service of others. And that's the deepest level of self-actualization. So know that you're the soul and the consciousness, not the body. Know that you have a unique genius and don't settle for any less. And use both of those to serve other people as the reason for the first two. That would be my three.

• 1:21:19Lewis Howes?

  Those are great. I love those. I love those.

• 1:21:20Jay Shetty?

  They're from the Vedas. They're not mine.

• 1:21:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I like them though. You told them well. You use good analogies to tell them well. How can we connect with you the most? Where do you spend the most time online or how can we support you? You're Jay Shetty on social media.

• 1:21:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, Jay Shetty on social media. Facebook's the place where I am most in terms of content, but Instagram and YouTube. Any of those three are perfect places to find me and my content. My content generally sits across three areas. Relationships, passion, purpose, success and greatness. Those are the three things I'm most fascinated by. So whether you're an entrepreneur, whether you're working a corporate job, whatever you're doing, wherever you are in the world, I'm very fortunate to have a very global audience. So I'm very grateful that got everyone from Australia to South Africa to South America to India to China. So wherever you are in the world, the US, UK, Europe, please come and find me on any of those three channels that work for you. And there's always like two to three new videos a week.

• 1:22:16Lewis Howes?

  That's great. Two or three a week. Okay. Make sure you guys check them out. Check them out there. We're gonna make sure he has a book out soon too.

• 1:22:23Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:22:23Lewis Howes?

  We're gonna make sure that happens soon. So stay tuned for that in the future. Before I ask the final question, I'll acknowledge you for a moment, Jay, for your ability to really dive into a place of letting go of everything and then coming out the other side to be of service. I think you went through, you know, a lot growing up where you realized it wasn't the life you wanted. Then you saw you had the realization that you wanted to do something greater than just steal cars or chase girls or whatever it was. And you learned some important principles that now you're able to simplify and share with the world. So the things that you talked about, your three truths. You've gone through the work, you've given up a lot so that you can give a lot to so many people.

• 1:23:07Lewis Howes?

  So I want to acknowledge you for showing up beautifully, man. You've got a huge heart of gold. And your discipline, your patience with people who maybe don't think the way that you do, to just love and give is really powerful and inspiring. So I want to acknowledge you for that, man.

• 1:23:22Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, man. It's a reflection of you. I definitely feel a lot of love for you. And I genuinely feel that we were connected beautifully last year.

• 1:23:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it was fun.

• 1:23:31Jay Shetty?

  And I feel you're one of the most genuine people I've met in a long, long time.

• 1:23:35Lewis Howes?

  Thanks, man.

• 1:23:35Jay Shetty?

  And so I feel really, really touched to even know you, man. So the gratitude is mutual, yeah.

• 1:23:39Lewis Howes?

  Appreciate it, appreciate it. Final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:23:42Jay Shetty?

  Oh, God, leave that one till the end. Oh, yeah, okay. I have a definition of greatness. You sparked something, so... I said this in a class as a monk eight years ago. No, no, that wouldn't be true. Six years ago. I said this in a class. It came out spontaneously. Since then, I've repeated it. So I said that it's easy to be great, to be personally great, to do something big yourself, build a big business, have a good relationship, have a nice house, have a nice car. It's easy to be great. It's harder to be great and teach others to be great. To actually then go a step further and say, "I'm gonna help other people be great." That's greater.

• 1:24:24Jay Shetty?

  It's easy to be great. It's harder to be great and teach others to be great. It's even harder to be great, teach others to be great, and then teach them to be great. And then they can teach others and pass it on to be great. But real greatness is when you're great yourself, when you teach others to be great, when they learn how to teach others to be great, but you don't feel that you're great at all. That's my definition of greatness. It's where you start and come back to humility and insignificance, and you embrace your insignificance. That's the greatest thing in the world. The most powerful, most admirable, most captivating quality in a human

• 1:25:07Jay Shetty?

  is when they've achieved everything that looks great in every arena, but they don't consider themselves great. That's my definition of greatness.

• 1:25:16Lewis Howes?

  Jay Shetty.

• 1:25:17Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, brother.

• 1:25:17Lewis Howes?

  Thank you, man.

• 1:25:19Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, man. Beautiful.

• 1:25:27Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please share the message out to your friends, to the world on the social media. All you need to do is post this link, lewishouse.com/608. Share it out to your friends, take a screenshot of this podcast on your phone and tag me on Instagram, @lewishouse. Make sure to tag @jayshetty as well. Connect with us both over on Instagram story and let us know what you think. I try to respond to as many people as I can there, so post it there. Put your feedback and we'll try to get back to you. Again, the full video and show notes is over there as well, so make sure to share this with your friends.

• 1:26:07Lewis Howes?

  Super pumped to get this out there in the world. We're all about making ancient wisdom go viral. Again, we have some big interviews coming up. Super excited about what we have coming up next, guys. Make sure to subscribe if this is your first time here. And every single Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we bring you inspiration, information, and inspiring interviews to help you unlock your inner greatness. I hope you enjoyed this one with Jay Shetty, and as Joseph Wong said, "Influence is our inner ability to lift people up to our perspective." I love you and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.