3 Steps to Find Mentors and Coaches & 1 Tool to Transform Your Career for Success

Have you ever backed down from an opportunity at work because you didn’t think you were capable enough? Did you have anyone there to tell you otherwise? On this episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Jay Shetty discusses the importance of finding mentorship and how it can help you reach your most ambitious career goals. Want to join my mission? Discover how you can become a Jay Shetty Certified Coach at www.jayshettycoaching.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:43Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop.

• 1:26Jay Shetty?

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• 2:01Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised to yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 3:13Jay Shetty?

  Many of us no longer work within the four walls of an office or even partial walls that form our cubicles. Your workplace may now be your dining room table, a corner of the breakfast counter, or a lap desk in your bedroom. Our workplace has expanded and, along with it, the challenges we face as we try and crush it at work and at home to keep everything balanced among our various roles, be it employee or employer, partner, parent, sibling, or friend. Are you with me? That's one of the biggest challenges we face today. Creating a structure and habits and tactics to help us feel like we're meeting our potential in each of these roles.

• 3:55Jay Shetty?

  Yet regardless of what it looks like sometimes on our social media feeds, here's the truth. Most of us don't feel like we're crushing it. Most of us feel like we're struggling or failing in at least one of our lives, and often several. Here's something that may surprise you. According to the Economic Times researchers from the University of Georgia, pulled data from more than 350 studies run over three decades that included responses from more than a quarter of a million people around the world to questions asking about how they're faring with handling competing priorities. The scientists found that overall, both men and women report the same level of difficulty balancing work and life responsibilities.

• 4:40Jay Shetty?

  Today, we're going to talk about three steps and one massive tool that will help you create and maintain that healthy and productive balance more of the time. Let's dive right in. I'm always talking about how the quality of our life depends on how we experience life. It's about our perspective. Every day and every moment, your brain is processing information and labels it as good or bad. Even though we do most of this automatically, we have a lot more control than we realize over how things get labeled. We can change those labels. Imagine the following. When your life is disrupted by suddenly having to work from home, for instance, instead of focusing on the negative, on missing your coworkers, on not having your regular desk space,

• 5:24Jay Shetty?

  or feeling isolated and unappreciated, instead of focusing on the downside or the challenges, you can start to ask yourself, what can I do now that I couldn't do before? What opportunities are here now? What are the pluses? Simply refaming questions in that way helps to overcome the negative bias in our brains that often makes us automatically interpret change as threatening or bad. That's an example of practicing perspective. We usually think of perspective as something we have and not something we do. But I'm encouraging you to shift how you think about it. To practice a positive perspective, you want to learn to mindfully and kindly control your perspective.

• 6:08Jay Shetty?

  And one of the ways to do that is to be more objective. There's a great metaphor I want to share with you. There's a pair of management and leadership experts named Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, and they say your environment is like a ballroom crowded with people, and you're one of the dancers. They describe the scene in their book Leadership on the Line like this: "A band plays and people swirl all around you to the music, filling up your view. Most of your attention focuses on your dance partner, and you reserve whatever is left to make sure that you don't collide with the dancers close by. You let yourself get carried away by the music, your partner, and the moment. You're surrounded and swept away by all of this stimulation

• 6:53Jay Shetty?

  and activity demanding your attention. You may have felt like you were right in the midst of the action, and you were, yet there was a lot you missed. Instead, as Heifetz and Linsky write, "If you'd have stepped off the floor for a moment and gone upstairs on the balcony and looked down over the crowd, you would have noticed all sorts of patterns. For example, you might have observed that when slow music played, only some people danced. When the tempo increased, others stepped onto the floor, and some people never seemed to dance at all. Yet all of that was invisible to you from your perspective in the middle of the crowd. You were too close to see the richness and vividness of the colors, movements, and emotions around you."

• 7:38Jay Shetty?

  It's like this in our minds, especially in the middle of change, when our brains are more likely to be triggered into a fear and survival state. We're on that dance floor with the other dancers crowding around and the music blaring. When we purposefully shift our perspective into observer mode, when we learn to watch and observe our thoughts from the balcony, we get a much richer picture of what's going on and of what possibilities and patterns are there that we couldn't see before. And so that's a question you can ask yourself when you feel overwhelmed and when you feel like things are swirling around you. From what perspective or vantage point am I experiencing or looking at this situation? Am I on the dance floor or the balcony? And chances are, if you're overwhelmed, you're on the dance floor.

• 8:23Jay Shetty?

  So sit down and even close your eyes and visualize yourself leaving that dance floor and walking upstairs. What do you see that you couldn't see before? And take your journal or your notes app and write it all down. That will help you to clear out some of that confusion and help you practice a positive perspective. The second skill we want to nurture and cultivate is focus. Now, I write a lot about focus in my book, Think Like a Monk, because it's one of my favorite monk skills and it's one of the most powerful skills you can develop. Focus is a meta-skill, because when we're more focused, we're more productive and impactful, and we feel we are more effective.

• 9:04Jay Shetty?

  Best-selling author Daniel Goldman calls focus "the hidden driver of excellence." That's how powerful it is. Yet our challenge today is that our focus is so eroded, especially trying to manage multiple roles in our lives. Being an effective worker, and an engaged partner, and parent, and all of the other roles we're in, and trying to do all of this in a high-technology environment where social media and other programming is all competing for our attention, it's tough. I want to acknowledge that. Here's a very simple exercise to develop more focus, and it only takes five minutes a day. That's it. You're going to take a mindful five. What you're going to do is sit in a comfortable position, and it doesn't matter where you

• 9:47Jay Shetty?

  are, at work, at home, outside, you're just going to notice one thing in the room: your alarm clock, a book on a shelf, a leaf on a tree. And for five minutes, you're going to observe every detail you can about that object. Go ahead and set a timer if you like. Inevitably, your mind will probably wander, but that's okay. When that happens, just gently and softly bring it back to notice that one object. Do you see the serrated edges of the leaf? Its deep rusty color in the center? While the outer part is more of a chocolate brown, the lines running through the leaf? What's their patterning? What this practice will do is it will help your brain start to be able to hold narrow, sharp focus for longer periods of time.

• 10:31Jay Shetty?

  Another benefit is that mindful noticing also helps you to calm your nervous system, especially if you're out in or observing nature. And once you start to do this exercise, you'll also notice how much more you notice about the world around you. And that's another superpower. You'll be more intent and engaged in what's happening in here and now. And that's a key element of overall effectiveness, whether at work, in relationships, or just in terms of fostering more contentment in your life. One of the ways I love to do this is always sometimes pick up an object, hold it, touch it, experience it. What it's doing is it's training your mind to be able to experience something more deeply,

• 11:12Jay Shetty?

  more fully, more richly, rather than just taking it on face value. The third way you're going to develop better balance is to turn to key coaches. I've talked about the power of mentorship before. The incredible thing about coaches and mentors is that they actually help us with those first two things. They help us shift our perspective by asking us powerful, perceptive questions to get us to that balcony view. They help us see all of the angles of our situations and all of the opportunities we couldn't consider because we can't see them down on the dance floor. And they also help us focus. They help us key in on our core values, on our goals, and on the next steps we need to take to achieve them.

• 11:57Jay Shetty?

  And the other phenomenal thing about a great coach and about receiving great coaching is that coaches can empower us to improve the lives of those around us as well. As we start to grow and shift, those around us do as well. Yet when things are tough, it's hard to see the forest for the trees. We need someone who provides a fresh perspective and sometimes, as we learn and develop, we can be that person for others. And that's a special thrill and a special gift to share with the world. Here's one thing I hear a lot. Jay, there are so many methods and approaches and hacks to changing old habits and forming new ones and for being more productive. I'm already so busy, I just don't know how to wade through it all. I don't know how to identify what's right for me.

• 12:41Jay Shetty?

  Or, I know I need to be more productive, I just don't know how to do it. I don't know how to break it down into these smaller chunks. Or, I know the steps, but I just don't take them. I need someone to nudge me and help me stay on course. I was reading an article in Forbes the other week, and it said that studies showed that sixty-seven percent of people said they've experienced symptoms of poor mental health related to work. And this was before the pandemic. I'm sure the number is much higher now. I was reading a recent study led by the World Health Organization that estimates that due to a loss in productivity, that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy one trillion dollars each year due to a loss in productivity.

• 13:23Jay Shetty?

  So when you look at the challenges we're facing, which are only increasing, whether that's because of the pandemic or the challenges we're seeing around in the world, it's clear we need help. We need support. We need guidance. And notice I'm saying we, it's not just you, it's all of us, it's me as well. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now.

• 14:05Jay Shetty?

  In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made twenty-seven hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a seventy-five-dollar sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions.

• 14:50Jay Shetty?

  Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors,

• 15:34Jay Shetty?

  high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in-store or online. Who do you know who couldn't use some support? Some reliable advice? Someone to listen to them and help them really pass out actions and ideas that are going to help them feel more effective and more accomplished in one or more areas of their life? That help is here for you. You may feel alone or unsupported, but the reality is that well-trained and experienced coaches are becoming more accessible every day. Yet sometimes people ask me, "Jay, doesn't seeking or having a coach show that I'm weak or failure? And is being a coach even a real profession?"

• 16:17Jay Shetty?

  Here's a huge myth that keeps a lot of people from getting help and support. It's that asking for support means there's something wrong with us. That we are somehow a failure if we want to need help. Well, do you think these people are failures? Serena Williams, Hugh Jackman, Neil Long, Eric Schmidt, Meg Whitman, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Leonardo DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey. All of these people have turned to a coach or mentor for help in one or more areas of their lives. And it's not just about fixing something that's wrong. Even if you're already doing really well, a great coach can help you take it to the next level. They can help you unlock your potential in ways you've never dreamed of.

• 17:00Jay Shetty?

  As I like to say, coaches help us get far. That's F A R. They help us be more flexible, adaptive, and resilient. And those are skills we can apply to every single aspect of our lives. I was eighteen when I first heard a monk speak. You know that story. I just met my first mentor, though I didn't know it at the time. I knew in my heart this person had something powerful to teach me, and it was something I was so interested in learning. And from there, I started to see the value of being surrounded by people who were more advanced in certain areas of thinking or life, who could help me learn and grow. I became fascinated by stories of people who had mastered particular things, whether it was business, whether it was the mind, whether it was philanthropy, whether it was entrepreneurship.

• 17:45Jay Shetty?

  I was reading and learning all the time. Looking back at it now, my coaching journey started without much fuss or fanfare. When I would learn from the monks in India, they'd talk to me about how coaching or mentorship was a part of community culture, and that everyone was a student and a teacher at the same time. I remember one of my teachers advised that of the people we spend regular time with, we want at least twenty percent of the people to be people we see as teachers in some way. Of course, all people are teachers, but I mean in a formal way. When people ask me, Jay, how did you get here? How did you create this whole business you have around you just through videos with no real practice or experience? The answer is that in some way,

• 18:29Jay Shetty?

  I've been exposed to mentoring and coaching since I was a monk, and even before that. As an eight-year-old kid looking through my dad's shelves full of personal development books. And then, when I was coached in public speaking. I went to a public speaking class three hours a day, three times a week, for seven years, from age eleven to age eighteen. All along, I've had people coaching me in critical areas. I've had people bring information to me that they felt would be meaningful and helpful. But more often, I've proactively gone to people and places with a goal of growing and learning. Check this out, eighty percent of people surveyed who received coaching reported they felt increased self-confidence. Seventy percent reported enhanced work performance, better relationships, and better communication skills.

• 19:14Jay Shetty?

  And of companies that invested in coaching for their employees, eighty-six percent reported that they more than recouped their financial investment by a measure of employee performance. That's according to data from the Nonprofit Institute of Coaching and affiliate of the Harvard Medical School. But here's the thing, I started out with a lot of informal mentorships, and that's great. But what I've realized over the years is that when there are formal processes and standards, and where there is a solid, reliable framework, your results are exponentially increased. When you engage in a formal program, what you're working on is laser-focused. It is so much more potent. It is so much more powerful. It is so much more effective.

• 19:57Jay Shetty?

  And I've seen that result over and over again. I've experienced it as the learner and the mentee, and I've experienced it as the coach. And that's why I'm such a strong believer in formal coaching. This was the reason, around a year and a half ago now, I created the Jay Shetty Certification School, my coach training school. And to date, 1,300 students, coaches, have walked through our virtual doors and become part of our like-minded community. One hundred and fifty have graduated to receive their certification, an honor that earns them the spot among the best globally. If you'd like to see who these incredible folks are and to read their stories, you can visit the Coach Platform portal on my website. The world can feel like a crazy place, right?

• 20:42Jay Shetty?

  Wouldn't it be amazing if you had someone to help you create a map? I always imagine a coach as being like, you know, like you're in a maze. You're walking around, you keep taking the same route, trying to find the lesson, you keep making mistakes. Imagine there's someone who's in a helicopter, who's not giving you the answer, but helping you ask the right questions, helping you understand yourself better. My friend Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist and a bestselling author, told me this great story. When Adam joined the diving team in high school, he was not what you'd call a superstar athlete, far from it. Yet he was dedicated and he had a coach who was willing to commit to him. Even though Adam didn't come to the sport of diving with innate talent and he really struggled at first,

• 21:24Jay Shetty?

  his coach told him that as long as Adam was committed to improving, he wouldn't cut him off the team. The coach also told Adam that if he kept showing up by the end of the high school career, he'd be a state-level competitor. And that prediction came true. Adam says that coach gave him one of the greatest gifts he's ever received in his life, seeing more potential in Adam than he saw in himself. How many of you listening right now would love it if someone believed in you more than you believed in yourself? Because that's how it started for me. I remember one of my coaches saying to me, "Jay, you will be an entrepreneur." And I was like, "I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm an employee." I was convinced about that. And so much changed in my life when he believed that. Yet another challenge so many of us face in life

• 22:08Jay Shetty?

  is feeling like we aren't seen by others. Our boss doesn't give us assignments for our potential. We don't get considered for promotions or new projects. We feel unrecognized, isolated, and unappreciated. After I left the monastery and was working in the consulting world, these were the same kinds of complaints my friends and coworkers had and the same issues they struggled with. I struggled with them too. And then I realized I can't wait and depend on someone else to spot my talent. I had to create opportunities to strategically demonstrate my abilities. I had to make people aware of what I could do and what I wanted to do. After all, people don't know what you don't show them. Over lunch, my friends would talk about it, saying, "Oh, I wish the company let me do this. I wish my manager or boss let me do this." Well, they may do if they knew you had a plan.

• 22:53Jay Shetty?

  If you want that visibility and if you want that opportunity, you have to develop and communicate that plan in a way at a time that's effective. And you can figure out how to do all of that on your own by reading books or watching videos. But again, it's a lot of information to synthesize and much of it's not personalized. And that's another area where a skilled, certified coach can help. They can help you create a plan, along with a plan for how to introduce that plan to the people who matter and who can get you the opportunities you're looking for. They can help you put an effective effort towards your goals, which brings me to another thing I wanted to highlight. Because it's not just about working hard, or working harder than you are now. It's about working with help, working with support.

• 23:38Jay Shetty?

  It's not about the ten things you can do to get noticed at work, or the ten things you can try at home. It's about knowing that someone knows how to get the best out of you and helps you get the best out of you. And to be that specific and targeted and thoughtful, once again, you can do it alone, but it's faster and more effective to lean on collective intelligence, to have a partner, to have someone who knows you and understands your priorities and motivations to help you cut through the clutter and come up with a clear, concise plan of action, and what's more, to hold you accountable to the plan. When I coach individuals and teams and organizations, I'm always trying to get them to do experiential activities and getting them to interact and discuss. Because when you hear it and you imagine you actually went through that

• 24:23Jay Shetty?

  and you learned that, you now realize what's blocking you, what's stopping you, and how to look for opportunities, how to create an opportunity mindset over one focused on obstructions. And this is something a coach can help you do. I also want you to realize, not just the value of coaching for you, but the value in being a coach, having the ability to serve others in that way. A lot of people that join our school because they realize they're good at listening, they're good at supporting, and they realize that that's a skill that they haven't learned, how to turn into an actual livelihood and a passion. And the ability to ask the right questions of our friends and family and others, and to support them, and to help them make sense of their lives and find a solid path forward,

• 25:07Jay Shetty?

  is an ability the world needs. We need it desperately. We need you desperately. Maybe you're that person who feels driven to help others in this way, but you doubt your abilities or don't feel like you have the qualification. If helping others in this way is something you'd like to try, I want to share with you something I've learned in my more than ten years of coaching and mentoring others. Coaching is not just a profession or a personal venture, but a skill set. It's a life skill that can help anyone in any field of life. I've taken my years of experience, learning and teaching, and synthesized it into a framework. I call it the ABCs of Coaching. It is a practical model, a nine-step blueprint, that guides people to achieve their goals. Success, fulfillment, all of it.

• 25:51Jay Shetty?

  They find and live their purpose because a coach helps them along the ABCs, from developing insight and awareness through building new habits and commitment to stretching their potential. Helping others feel comfort, courage and empowerment. Helping them feel that power of connection and hope and the excitement of possibility. So many of us have lost that. We're so overwhelmed that we feel like we don't even know how to get through today or what to put on our to-do list for tomorrow that's going to make a difference. While lots of us are struggling, others are telling me, Jay, I wanna help. Here's one way to do that. Being a coach is an incredible opportunity to be able to help people regain their hope and perspective and to feel empowered. And if that's something you want to do, then I wanna support you.

• 26:36Jay Shetty?

  I want to co-sign on your desire and dream to become a coach and help others in this way. To engage your intuition and to develop your insight and the skills that will really help people and really make a difference in this world. At this time, when so many of us are feeling lonely and like we're struggling on our own to make a go of it and be impactful at work and in our bigger lives, most of us would love some help. Most of us would love to have a skilled professional on our team and some of us would love to serve others by being that professional. Again, maybe that's you. If either one of these describes you, I'm here to tell you this. You can do it. You can have this in your life. The dream can come true. Imagine being in a position to guide people to see the fantastic possibilities

• 27:21Jay Shetty?

  and positivity in their lives that they haven't been able to see before because they were lost in all that negativity. I'm consistently so amazed and humbled at the change I can help people make in their lives. I'm tremendously proud of what coaching has offered me, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to share the power of coaching, both as a coach and as someone who trains people to become coaches. If you're interested in coaching, if you're excited to get help or to help others, head over to my website, that's jshetty.me, and click on Coaching, or become a coach. You can book a chat with my friendly and competent team to discuss how you can join my fully certified coaching school, or to get coaching from me, or one

• 28:01Jay Shetty?

  of my certified coaches. And if that's not for you, I want you to keep listening, because I truly believe that we're on a journey together to create a conscious community. See you next time.

• 28:33Jay Shetty?

  This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions. Our executive producer from Dust Light is Misha Youssef. Our senior producer is Juliana Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions. And special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the Dust Light Development and Operations Coordinator.

• 29:03Speaker 01

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

• 29:32Speaker 02

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

• 29:43Speaker 03

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

• 29:49Speaker 04

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

• 29:53Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 29:57Speaker 03

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