3 Steps To Connect With Your Intuition & Feel More Grounded

Jay Shetty and Laurie Santos discuss how Jay deviated from his original career path, navigated the pressures that came with it, and discovered a life of purpose in the process. Jay jokes that he was given three life paths to choose from growing up: doctor, lawyer or failure. When he decided to pursue a life as a monk after college, he didn’t let the outside pressure and noise from family and friends sway his decision. Listen in as Jay shares powerful life lessons and advice to Laurie Santos’s students at Yale University. Train your mind for peace and purpose everyday. Grab a copy of Think Like A Monk, or listen to the audiobook now! Book: https://books.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewFeature?id=1532264534&mt=11&ls=1&itscg=80048&itsct=js_httlam_book Audiobook: https://books.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewFeature?id=1532264062&mt=3&ls=1&itscg=80048&itsct=js_httlam_audiobook 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?

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• 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?

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• 3:10Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. This episode is a really, really special conversation that I had with my friend Laurie Santos and her Yale students that she invited me to speak to on a private Zoom call. But I really wanted to share it with all of you because it really fascinated me the kind of themes and the topics that students were worried about right now that I really believe apply to all of us. And so I love giving you a sneak peek into what I do behind the scenes and some of the stuff that isn't on the videos or isn't out there. And so I hope you enjoy this conversation. And if you've grabbed a book and you're already reading it and you've posted it, thank you so much. The reviews have been amazing. And if you haven't yet,

• 3:55Jay Shetty?

  you can still go and grab a copy at thinklikeamonkbook.com. And if you're reading it right now, I'd really appreciate you leaving a review. We've already got thousands of reviews across the world and I'm just loving reading them and sharing them. So thank you so much. And I can't wait for you to listen to this conversation with Yale and Laurie Santos.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  Thank you again so, so much for joining us. People are waving. There's so many people who are like excited. I'm not sure if you're looking in the gallery, Jay, but everybody is like...

• 4:27Jay Shetty?

  I'm on gallery view, so...

• 4:28Speaker 01

  They're frantically excited about kind of welcoming you and waving you in. I think that's one of the most fantastic things about your story and why it's so relatable to students at a place like Yale is that it's kind of the same path that they're on right now, but kind of deviated from where you were going. And so, really want to start at the beginning, almost in your early life, because you know, when you hear the kind of punchline of your story, that you're this former monk who's doing, who's helping people find their meaning and purpose in life, you might think that the path was pretty straightforward. And I think one continuity on the path is it seems like you actually always were a seeker in some sense. Is that right?

• 5:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, definitely. First of all, Laurie, I want to say a big thank you to you, and I want to say thanks to everyone who's tuned in on this event. It's always a unique experience right now, as Laurie was saying with Zoom, but really grateful to meet you all, and I really wish I could give you all a big hug and meet you in person, but I'm definitely sending that energy through the screen. And Laurie and I met at one panel last year, which was such an incredible experience. And I think me and Laurie ended up spending most of our lunches and dinners talking to each other. And Laurie, I also gave you an acknowledgement in the book, because you helped me find so much of the resets that made it into the book about the minds of monks, which I was so grateful for. So, thank

• 5:41Jay Shetty?

  you so much for being such a useful researcher and instrument of connecting with incredible researchers for the book. You've really, really, truly helped. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart for helping with that. But yes, I remember around 13, 14 years ago now, when I was at university, I studied at Cass Business School in London, and I was following the path that I thought was set out for me. I've often joked that I had three options growing up, either to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. And so, according to my extended community and society, I'd already chosen option three, because I was pursuing a business and really focused in on behavioral science and management science as a focus for my degree.

• 6:26Jay Shetty?

  And while I was studying, I would often go to sessions like this, but live. And I would want to hear from CEOs and athletes and entrepreneurs and celebrities. And I was just fascinated by learning about people who went from nothing to something. And not necessarily their external accolade, but their journey, the struggle, the pains, the sacrifice. I was, I was really enamored by people who had to work hard for what they'd achieved. And for me, I was then invited to hear a monk speak. And my arrogance made me question what I could learn from a monk. So I was almost apprehensive and didn't feel like going.

• 7:07Jay Shetty?

  And I promised my friends, or I asked my friends to promise me that I'd only go to this event if they promised that we would go to a bar afterwards. So if any of you have asked for that after this event, that's totally fine as well. If, if, if Laurie's promised anyone that, but I went along anyway. These are the beautiful moments in life where you go in an arrogant way and you come out humbled because your bubble was burst, right? You went there expecting nothing at all. And I walked out finding new meaning in my life. And that's because when I heard this monk speak, he was speaking about how the greatest gift that we could give the world

• 7:52Jay Shetty?

  is if we used our talents and our strengths and our skills to serve others. And to my 18 year old self, that was very different to what I'd heard from anyone before who talked about, you know, strategic paths to success, or how to make it in this company, or how to make it in the world. And he was actually saying, well, that's what it wasn't about. And I didn't realize this then, but in hindsight, when I look back, I realized that when I was 18, I'd met people who were rich and I'd met people who were famous. And I'd met people who were beautiful and attractive. And I'd met people who were knowledgeable and smart, but I don't think I'd met anyone who was truly happy. And he just exuded this sense of joy and compassion. And I was like, I want that.

• 8:37Jay Shetty?

  And so I ended up spending my summer vacations and Christmas vacations. I spent half of my summers interning at finance companies in London. So I'd be in suits, steakhouses and bars and offices. And then I'd spend the other half of them, or as much time as I could, living with the monks in India. So I'd be in, sleeping on the floor, cold showers, meditating every day. And then when I graduated, at the age of about 21, going on 22, I decided that I would rather turn down my corporate job offers and go and live as a monk. So I left to live as a monk in India and traveled across Europe as well during that time, and lived as a monk for three years.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  And so I want to dig into this a little bit because I think, just like you at university, many of the students who are watching this think that the implicit thing you do after you graduate is to like go off and do finance or become a consultant or something like that. And you definitely were on that path. And if I remember correctly, one of the reasons you were kind of enraptured by this monk, beyond the fact that he was so happy and had this sense of purpose, was that he too, in his story, had turned down that path too, right?

• 9:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so he studied at IIT in India, which is, I guess, the MIT of India. Because, and he was one of the top performers at IIT. So when I'm listening to him speak, he's like got a gold medal from IIT Engineering, I believe, super smart. And I'm thinking, this person, and he's given it all up to be a monk, and he's still a monk now. I actually interviewed him recently when the book released so that I could share our relationship and story because we've kept in touch. And it was just incredible to me at 18. I was like, this person's either crazy or he's on to something. And obviously, he was on to something. But yeah, absolutely. I was really impressed that he'd given up a successful career and a successful journey to be able to do what he did. I actually found out that

• 10:23Jay Shetty?

  He went to a different campus, but he was in the same year as Sundar Pichai, who also went to IIT and obviously is the CEO of Google. So that's the level of, you know, that's the level of his peers and his peer group that he studied with.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  And so what was that like for you? Because I imagine, you know, my Yale students who try to deviate from this path of kind of finance and so on, they get some flack from their friends, right? Like, what was it like when you told all your friends at uni that you're going to do this half, halftime finance, halftime monk gig over the summer?

• 10:51Jay Shetty?

  I think I kept it pretty private in those summers. I wasn't, I wasn't so confident then to share that part of my life. But when I turned down my job offers when we graduated and everyone was going off to work at investment banks or big consulting firms or tech firms, I was the one saying, oh, I'm not going to make it to our graduation ceremony because I would have moved to India by then. And so everyone was just like, what? Like, everyone couldn't believe it. And there was a bit of, you know, a lot of people like, you realize you're going to waste your life. You realize you'll never get a job again. What are you going to do if this doesn't work out? You know, you've let your family down. And my friends at college wouldn't necessarily be that negative, but they were actually

• 11:31Jay Shetty?

  kind of confused because it was so against the grain of what everyone had been working towards for three years. And so I wouldn't say that they were negative towards it, but they definitely didn't understand it. And this is something that I think is so important in, the biggest lesson I learned in becoming a monk was that you're going to have to make decisions that other people don't understand. And that's something that applies to each and every single person in the world, whether you want to become a monk or not, that in some part of your journey, you're going to have to make a decision that no one understands. And most of the time, no one understands when you start, and they might understand by the end, but it's not really about whether they understand it or not, because if it's something that's true to you,

• 12:16Jay Shetty?

  it's something you're going to have to do anyway.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  And this is something that kind of resonates in your story, and I mean, I saw it in the book as well, this idea that there are these paths that don't necessarily bring people happiness, but they're the paths that we're like supposed to be on. Like, talk a little, I know you talked a little bit about kind of parental pressure and what your parents thought of this stuff and what you were supposed to do in life. This idea that they were kind of carving this future for you that you didn't really think was going to make you happy.

• 12:44Jay Shetty?

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• 13:29Jay Shetty?

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• 14:13Jay Shetty?

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• 14:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I think all of us have different, what I call in the book, opinions, expectations, and obligations. So you may have opinions that impact your choices, you may have expectations that are put on you that impact your choices, and you may even feel like a sense of obligation towards family, friends, school, teachers, professors, whatever it may be. I definitely felt those too, less so from my parents. My parents, I kind of allowed my parents in on early on chasing my intuition that they'd kind of started to back off by the time I was 21, and they've been very encouraging and supportive ever since. But my extended family and my extended community, I come from an Indian background, and if anyone has any Indian friends, or Asian friends, or is Asian or Indian, or maybe you have

• 15:41Jay Shetty?

  it in your own cultures too. I think every culture has its own pressure. And all of my cousins are doctors, and so I was already messing up by doing business. And then on top of that, I was now trading that all away. And for me, I think I was only confident about the decision because I'd dipped my toe in those summers in Christmas vacations, because I'd already experimented and felt the experience of working in a company and then living as a monk. By the time I had to make the decision, I was so convinced that I was taking the right path, that all the other noise just dissolved away. And I'm not sure if you're allowed to say this word here, but I have to quote Steve Jobs in his

• 16:25Jay Shetty?

  Stanford commencement speech. And the only reason I say it is at one point in my life, and it was probably around the same time, I used to listen to that speech on repeat every single day. And I personally think it's the best brain training I've ever done, because this is exactly the message that he has in that speech. And I think listening to that every day literally rewired my mind to make me feel like I had to do this, otherwise I'd regret it at the end of my life.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Another thing I've heard you mention before is this idea that one of the things you saw during that summer was this kind of back and forth between, like, looking at what, you know, partners' lives looked like, and like, what older people's lives looked like in the finance world. And it wasn't necessarily something, versus like, looking at what life looked like for monks, and somehow, one looked better than the other, I guess.

• 17:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up Laurie, actually. The number one thing, and I really think this is a really useful principle, and we always talk about the power of hindsight. And we can use hindsight looking forward through other people. And I think we struggle to learn from other people's choices, mistakes, challenges. And so I was really fortunate growing up that a lot of my friends were older than me or a few years ahead of me. And I could see that despite them having the ideal career or the perfect partner or the beautiful house and the beautiful car, whatever that was, I could still see, and they were very honest with me. And I really owe my friends a huge point of gratitude because they were so vulnerable with me.

• 17:51Jay Shetty?

  And just saying, Jay, like, I still think I haven't figured it out, like, there's something missing. And that honesty from my friends that were older and a few years ahead in life was what allowed me to look for alternative paths. And so I'm not saying that every monk in the world is also completely happy and satisfied either. There's a lot of dissatisfaction in the monastery and ashram too, just like there is in everywhere. But what I could definitely see that there were principles and practices that everyone could have embodied to find meaning where they were. And that's what I've realized more and more. It's not really about where you are and what you do. It's not just that. It's about how you do it. It's about why you do it.

• 18:32Jay Shetty?

  It's about how you have the tools and the techniques to navigate where you are. So it's not so much about leaving everything and becoming a monk. It's about changing the wiring of our mindset that can allow us to look at things differently and appreciate things differently.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  And it seems like these were some of the skills that you actually learned once you kind of actually joined the ashram. So talk a little bit about that, like, how long were you there? You know, what was it like, I guess?

• 18:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so the externals that you expect are definitely true. So we woke up at four AM every day. I did not enjoy that. That was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. We'd have cold showers every day. And by the way, showers are not showers in the way that we have showers in the West. Showers are buckets underneath taps and small, like even tinier buckets to pour water on yourself. So you can't even stand under a normal shower. So that's what showers are like. And they last like three or four minutes because you can't handle any more of the cold. And then you're meditating for about four to eight hours a day and you sleep on a really thin mat and all your possessions fit inside a gym locker. So everything you own fits into a gym locker. Very different for me now, I have a wonderful wardrobe and many nice clothes, but I did not

• 19:44Jay Shetty?

  have that then. And one of the biggest things that I learned from that was the morning of our life was dedicated to the self and the rest of the day was dedicated to service. And I think this is actually a great blueprint for even our lives today. When we look at the challenges with mental health or pressure or stress, I find that that's because from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep, we're exposing ourselves to high forms of stress, pressure and overwhelming conditions. And so I, studies show that eighty percent of us look at our phones first thing in the morning and the last thing we do at night. That in and of itself is a habit that exposes your mind to news notifications. And I know Laurie talks about all of this in her incredible course, which, which I'm

• 20:28Jay Shetty?

  so inspired by. But we're already starting our days, whereas as monks, we started our days with gratitude and thankfulness. So the first thing you did was offer your gratitude to the earth. So when you'd get up, you'd bow down and you'd bow down to the earth because the earth was giving you nutrition, the earth was going to give you oxygen, the earth was going to give you water, the earth gave you something to walk on. There was so much to be grateful for. And then the early meditations would be gratitude to mentors and teachers as well. So you really started your day off with gratitude. And now I think of that as a modern day, if I think of like a modern comparison of the way to do that, I really believe that waking up and making sure that the first

• 21:11Jay Shetty?

  thing you see in your day is inspiring and fills you with energy. It could be a work of art that you love, it could be a picture of your family, it could be your favorite quote or your favorite prayer or a paragraph from your favorite book. I think it's really important that the first thing you see in the morning is something uplifting and not draining.

• 21:33Jay Shetty?

  And then you give yourself the opportunity to win and seize the day, as they say, as opposed to start your day. So I almost feel like, let's say you had a good night's sleep and you start your day at zero. And if you start your day by looking at your phone and getting news and notifications, you're almost going into minuses straight away. And then the rest of the day, you're just trying to get back up to zero. So you end your day at zero. Whereas if you start your day the right way, you might get up to six, plus six, and then you kind of get to minus three by the end of the, uh, sorry, you get to three by the end of the day because of the negativity that comes in the day. So you at least end your day in the positive. And so for me, setting yourself up in the morning was a really useful trait, living as a monk. We'd set our day up with gratitude, with meditation and almost putting on our shield and our armor to be protected throughout the day.

• 22:18Jay Shetty?

  And the rest of the day would be service and trying to give back.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  And that second part seems to be kind of what inspired you to take these next steps, right? Was this focus on service? And so talk a little bit about how that's different than I think what a lot of people hear about in university, right? Because I think your university was anything like my grades, my internships, you know, my future prospects, you know, there's service in there, but it's less of a focus on what counts as a successful life.

• 22:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I think that's where so many people have been misled. Because we find, and I, and I coach and work with so many people that have everything you'd want materially, everything. And they found that unless they used it in the service of others, they couldn't be satisfied. And so it's not about not having, and I think that's the mistake that people think that they think that monks or even spirituality is about not having things. And actually it's not, it's about what we do with those things and what we do with what we have that makes the biggest difference. So what I found through that service element is that we were constantly asking ourselves, well, how does this improve the lives of someone else?

• 23:25Jay Shetty?

  So if I'm going to become a lawyer, which you might well be, and that's wonderful, there's nothing wrong with that. It's like, how can that be used to improve the lives of other people? Are you going to help other young people get into law and find their passion? Are you going to only fight for causes that are important to you? Are you going to apply that knowledge in a local charity so that charity has legal support? There's so many ways of taking your passion and your strengths and adding compassion to it. And that's the definition. In chapter five, I talk about a Concept in the Vedas and the Bhagavad Gita called Dharma. And Dharma can be translated into many things, but one of its translations in English is eternal

• 24:06Jay Shetty?

  purpose or your inherent nature, which can be perfectly described between the synergy between your passion, your strengths and your compassion. And so a lot of successful people you'll find will find the synergy between their passion and their strengths. So most people who are successful today in the world do something that they're passionate about and they're really good at it. And that's kind of how they're where they've got to where they are. And that builds success, but it doesn't build happiness. Happiness comes from adding compassion to the equation. So it's where does that passion and strength get used in compassion and service?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  And so then I wanna, so you've kind of learned these lessons about, you know, starting your day the right way, the importance of service, just in general, the importance of kind of happiness and meaning. You're able to enjoy some of these things without all these possessions and things like that. You know, the story could have ended there, you know, you could still be a Vedic monk and I don't know if I would have met you in the same way, maybe, whatever. But kind of, so how did it transition? What was the transition from kind of monk life, which it seemed like you were learning a lot in where you are now or closer to where you are now?

• 25:12Jay Shetty?

  So the crazy thing about monk life is it's like accelerated self-awareness. And so the hardest thing about monk life for me was realizing I wasn't meant to be a monk. And that was a really painful realization at the time because I'd left everything to do it. And I had been doing it for three years, which is a fairly long time of everyday commitment. And I got to a point where I realized I wasn't meant to be a monk because I wanted to share the wisdom in a particular way. I was always looking for references and parallels to modern life. And I almost still wanted to be able to connect everything I was learning back to the world that I'd left. And I could see that that wouldn't be sustainable to live as a monk and do that. And that I had to really make a really tough choice.

• 25:57Jay Shetty?

  And my teachers at the same time, they said to me that they felt would be best if I left so I could share what I'd learned. And that really felt like a breakup, like it was one of those like, it's not you, it's me conversations. And, and I really felt like my monk teachers were breaking up with me and it felt like a divorce, like it literally felt like a divorce. Because even though now I can talk about it really easily in hindsight, it all makes sense, at that time I was like, well, what am I going to do? And all of a sudden, all the noise started to come back of when I moved back especially. We told you so, you were never gonna make it, you're never gonna get a job again. Now, what are you gonna do about money? You know, that was like the noise that I came back to when I moved back in my parents' house. Eight twenty five going on twenty six.

• 26:41Jay Shetty?

  And all of a sudden, I was behind everyone, or so I felt I was behind everyone because my friends had now been working for three to five years and they were buying homes or getting mortgages and they were in committed long term relationships and they were doing well in their careers. Maybe they've been promoted a couple of times. And so I was behind or so I felt at the time. And that was a really like low point in my life. I felt depressed, I felt the closest thing to feeling stuck and depressed that I possibly ever have. And I was rejected by forty companies before interview. So I went back and reject, applied to all the companies. I have a first class honors degree from Cass Business School and been a straight A student my whole life. So I thought, oh yeah, I'll get a job again.

• 27:26Jay Shetty?

  And no, forty companies, surprise, surprise, no one wants someone with a monk on their resume.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  And like literally on your resume, just like monk.

• 27:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it was like I was trying to do all the transferable skills and they were like, what are your transferable skills? Silence and staying still like that's not useful. And so I applied to literally forty companies, consulting companies, investment banks, finance companies, and they forty of them rejected me before interview. And that was a really tough point to live at because I was just like. And you know, my parents are not well off. And so I was like, I don't know how long I'm gonna try and live off my parents. And I have no money coming in, so I don't know how I'm gonna take care of myself. And yeah, that was really tough. And finally, Accenture gave me a job. And so I I went back into the corporate world with the intention that I wanted to share these messages and principles with the corporate world.

• 28:17Jay Shetty?

  But I needed to learn how an organization functions to see where it's relevant. And so that was always my intention. I was I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna do my job, but really I'm gonna be figuring out how to help implement mindfulness and meditation in these circles because I definitely found through my friends that even though I thought externally that they had nice cars, houses and long term relationships, they were all stressed and burnt out at work.

• 28:45Speaker 02

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• 28:48Speaker 03

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• 29:31Speaker 07

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• 30:00Speaker 01

  How did you marry the two? What a lot of folks think is, oh, I'll just go into the corporate world and I'll figure it out. But then you kind of get sucked in. I mean, perhaps it was your monk training allowed you to kind of get rid through the noise. You would develop skills that really helped you.

• 30:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so I really describe my monk life as going to school. And the last seven years have been the exam. And so I've been testing all of my monk school training in life, in this world that we live in. And it all works. And so I can genuinely say that any joy, happiness, or success I've experienced in my life today has come because of what I learned as a monk. And one of the biggest principles was that of Dharma and there's a beautiful verse in the Manu Smriti which says, "When you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you." And what I love about that is when I joined Accenture, and I love the company by the way, it was hugely good for me and I had a great career there.

• 30:57Jay Shetty?

  But when you join a company like Accenture, there's such a pressure to become a generalist. So there's such a pressure to be good at Excel and PowerPoint, good to be communicator and be good at logistics, and you almost have to become a generalist to be able to succeed. And I was dedicated, I was like, "No, I'm gonna stick to what I know. If I don't know how to do a V lookup or a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, that is okay." And I still don't to this day know how to use Microsoft Excel. So, and I'm really proud of that. Like, that's like my greatest achievement in life is never having to have learned how to use Microsoft Excel. And so I was convinced that, I was like, "No, I've got to protect what I love and what I'm good at and what I'm passionate about." And what I was passionate about was education. So I was really involved in a lot of educational programs inside Accenture

• 31:42Jay Shetty?

  for our clients and inside the company. I very early on got introduced to social media at the company. And to me, it wasn't about social media, it was about connecting people and understanding people and people's behaviours. And so I got really drawn into that. And so I straight away started to follow my passion inside the company and my curiosity inside the company, rather than try and be good at what they said you had to be good at. And that was probably the best thing I did because I naturally learned and I would use my weekends to upskill in those areas as well. And so when I was coming back to work, it was like, "Oh, Jay's passionate and he has a strength here." And at the same time, I would always bring about meditation and mindfulness wherever I could.

• 32:25Jay Shetty?

  And so a year in, one of our executives asked me to speak at our summer event for all the analysts. And so there were a thousand people of my peers in the audience. And no one knows who I am or I don't have a profile at work, I'm one of the group. And they'd asked me to speak about social media and mindfulness onstage. And I was like, that's like the biggest oxymoron in the world. Like, how am I gonna do that? And so I remember teaching a mindfulness exercise onstage. And it was just one of the most scary moments of my life because I went on in between, sandwiched in between the CEO of the company in the UK and Will Greenwood, who's a rugby World Cup winner with England, the national team. Here's literal me, who's just come out of being a monk and doesn't know

• 33:10Jay Shetty?

  if anyone's even gonna care. And I went onstage and I taught a mindfulness exercise that I learned as a monk. And it was just amazing because everyone appreciated it. And there was such amazing feedback across the company, teaching mindfulness and meditation. And that's why I'm so grateful to Accenture because they really gave me a platform inside a company to go across the company and share that because they were prioritizing mental health so much. And so that's kind of how they ended up getting married by the time I was there.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  And sure, you know, it was hugely helpful for the company to have you there doing this stuff. But part of your skill set really is kind of your knowledge of social media and how well you've been able to use it. And this gets to a principle that the first time we met, which was at a ranch in Montana as part of a foundation event. You know, you mentioned this idea that sharing wisdom, educating people, doesn't have to be boring. And one of your realizations is that, you know, education can be fun. And if you harness that, you know, good things can come from it. So let's talk a little bit about that philosophy and how it kind of played into what you did next.

• 34:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so I started giving presentations pretty much as soon as I left meeting the monk and spent my time in India initially when I was eighteen, nineteen years old. And so I set up a society at my university. I guess you call them clubs and societies here in the US. And so I set up a society. It was called Think Out Loud. And every week I would dissect a movie based on psychology, spirituality, and philosophy and science. And so I'd take a movie like Inception, or I'd take a movie, mainly Christopher Nolan movies. I'm a big movie junkie, so Memento, The Prestige, Inception, all of those types of movies. And we'd show the movie and then I'd break down the characters and analyze their behavior and all that kind of stuff. And I loved it.

• 34:47Jay Shetty?

  And I started that when I was around eighteen, nineteen, and ten students would come. And by the time I graduated, a hundred students would turn up every week. And it was totally free and open to anyone inside the university. And so I'd always had a Desire to share psychology, philosophy, spirituality in a way that was relevant. And during my time at Accenture, where I learned so much about digital strategy and social media, I was just watching social media and just thinking, I was like, okay, so cat videos, dog videos, inappropriate videos. And then I was like, well, where's the space for wisdom? Like, where does wisdom fit into all of this? And where does wellness fit into all of this? Because even though it's ironic to use social media as a way of spreading wellness,

• 35:29Jay Shetty?

  it's still one of the few ways that we have an opportunity to share knowledge in a large way. And so I pitched my idea to ten media companies in London. I said, why don't we start a wellness series, which are these short videos speaking about these important topics that we were never taught at school? I got rejected by all ten media companies because they said that I didn't have any media background. I didn't have any qualifications and that I'd never made a video before, which they were right about. And they also said that I was too old to be in media because I was twenty eight years old. And so I remember like networking with anyone I could. And I remember there's a famous exec who rides his bike around London. I remember chasing him on his bike, wanting to be like, oh, wait a minute, like, give me a job. I'll work for you for free.

• 36:15Jay Shetty?

  And I remember networking with another exec. My wife's best friend growing up is nephews of a famous exec. And I was like, all right, that's an in, let's jump on the phone. And he was like to me, aren't you marrying my nephew's best friend next year? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, well, why do you want to career change if you're getting married next year? And I was like, because I love it. And he was like, oh, you're too old, like, just stay in your job, it's safer. And so I was getting all this clapback. And then I ended up getting an opportunity. I heard about an ethnic minorities TV training day that was running by the BBC at Pinewood Studio. And so I went along to this ethnic minority TV training day. And there were six people in the room. Everyone was brown or black. And I walked into the room and they were training us to be presenters.

• 36:59Jay Shetty?

  And I went there to test whether I actually had the skills because I thought, well, maybe I'm just not skilled enough. And so we did this test and they were like, oh, Jay, you've got some really good skills and qualities and you can do this. I was like, okay, give me a job at the BBC. And they're like, there's no jobs at the BBC. I was like, literally, did you invite six ethnic minority people here to tell us that there's no jobs? That's not, that's not great. And so they said to me, well, you should start a YouTube channel. And I said, yeah, that works for Justin Bieber. And that was genuinely my response. And it's how I felt inside. I was like, yeah, that works for Justin Bieber. Like, that's not gonna work for me. And I got to a point where, and there's a beautiful Edison quote that that speaks to this. He said that when you feel you've exhausted all options, remember this, you haven't.

• 37:43Jay Shetty?

  And I realized that I'd exhausted all options apart from starting a YouTube channel. So using social media was never my first choice. And it wasn't even my intention, or I didn't think anyone would ever watch the videos. It's just the only choice I had left. And so I started, I started my YouTube channel. And, you know, my first video did okay. And in the first three months, I had about thousand five hundred subscribers. But luckily, what happened is my global HR leader at Accenture, Ellen Shook, she showed my video to Arianna Huffington at Davos that year. And that was the tipping point that changed my entire media career. Because I then got involved at that point in 2016 with the Huffington Post and Arianna Huffington when she was there.

• 38:29Jay Shetty?

  And then ended up moving to New York to work with her and the team there. And that was like the first tipping point of how my career took off four years ago.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  So it's really just, I mean, the key is like, you're putting out content that's really genuine, that's really purpose driven. And, you know, the nice thing about YouTube is like, it's a great equalizer, right? Like, it means that people with a message can kind of get up there and and do really good stuff and become incredibly viral too.

• 38:51Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and I was pushing it out to everyone. So I would like, I had a database on an Excel spreadsheet, I guess, but it wasn't open. I had an Excel spreadsheet which literally had every media company's exec Twitter handle, email, and their address. And so I would literally send my videos via Twitter and email to all of these every single week. So I was literally on Twitter every week going, hey, check out my latest video. Like, I hope you like it. Just hoping that someone would see it and think that it was worth something and want to do something with it. And thankfully, that was what also caught Ellen's eye at Accenture. And then she showed it to Arianna Huffington. So there was a real like, you know, almost like this, I've always believed in the law of odds, and I really believe in it now, that it's like,

• 39:35Jay Shetty?

  it's all about how many doors you knock on. And it's all about how annoying you're okay with being. And it's all about, you know, just keep. Being diligent, resilient and determined to keep knocking on doors even if you hear a ton of no's and that's really the only skill that I think we all need apart from doing something you love and that you feel you have some skills in. But that's the third part that I think a lot of people miss out on.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  And I think, I mean, part of the success though is that all that door knocking, all that resilience, it wasn't in the service of these like vapid kinds of like pursuits and like, it wasn't in the service of money necessarily, it wasn't in the service of fame. Like when I hear you talk about it, it was really that you had this goal of kind of making this stuff go viral, you know, like not in a way that would kind of make you of fame and fortune, but you just wanted the stuff to get out there.

• 40:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I genuinely didn't believe that more than a couple of thousand people would care. Honestly speaking, I didn't really think that that was meant for me. And I didn't have any plan on how I was going to make money from it or make it a real thing. So my only intention at the time was, how do we just get these messages out there and hopefully a few people will have more meaningful conversations or get some insights based off of these videos? And I'll carry on working at Accenture, I'll do these in the evenings and the weekends and it will make me happy that I'm trying. And I think that's where it came from. It was a really innocent thing of just like, I hope that, you know, I can just have fun and try and make content. And I used to spend five hours a day, five days a week to edit

• 41:04Jay Shetty?

  one five-minute video, which are terrible odds if you're an editor. So if anyone ever tells you, it's going to take them 25 hours to edit your video and they charge $50 an hour, do not pay them. I was editing my own videos and teaching myself because I couldn't afford to pay someone to edit for me. And, and so that's the process that it took in the beginning at least to get going. So I'd come back from work at about 8:00 PM, edit from about 8:30 till about 1:30, go to sleep, do it all again. And then I got better at it when it started taking five hours a week instead of 25 hours a week.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  And so give me a sense of how this changed. So you started, you know, maybe 5,000 people watched this. Now, you know, what is the kind of Jay Shetty media empire looking like?

• 41:44Jay Shetty?

  It's been an amazing, amazing journey with so many ups and downs and so many challenges and mistakes and learning fast. And it's been a crazy, crazy journey. And externally, and I know you don't think this, Laurie, but often I get the thing of like, oh, wow, it's just been a great success story. And it's like, yeah, but you know, for me on the inside, there's just, it's not at all. It's never, it's never felt like, oh yeah, we're there now and everything's great. It's like, it's been a real work in progress. And the first tipping point was Arianna Huffington and the HuffPost. I moved on from the HuffPost in March 2017 and started working for myself. And so I haven't been connected with them professionally ever since. Arianna Huffington continues to be one of my greatest supporters and friends. And she wrote a beautiful testimonial

• 42:29Jay Shetty?

  for my book. And so our relationship's been amazing and her team and I's relationship's been amazing. And so 2017, I went on my own. And that was the hardest year of my life because when I left, I was four months away from being broke enough to pay rent and groceries. I got married six months before that. Me and my wife were living in New York City in a 500 square foot apartment. And I have never felt that much pain in my life. So leaving being a monk was hard. And then this was just a whole new load. And I literally was four months away from being broke and 30 days away from being kicked out of the United States because my visa was attached to the company. And so because I'd left, I had to apply for a new visa.

• 43:10Jay Shetty?

  And my O1 visa that I'm on and was on, cost $15,000 to get a new one. So that was cutting massively into the budget that I had left. And my mentor used to always say to me, one of my mentors in London would often say to me that, you know, when you experience pain, that's when you'll find your potential. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's all that, you know, philosophy, motivation stuff. And he was spot on. I was in such a tough space.

• 43:38Jay Shetty?

  That I have never worked that hard in my life and had to figure a way out. And so twenty seventeen was a lot of hard work. Twenty eighteen, I started to become more strategic, started to understand business more, started to become an entrepreneur and understand that if I was to do this on myself, I had to be able to produce good videos where I needed to pay bills, I needed to have a team, I needed to employ people. And, you know, in the past three years of making content, we've had over like eight billion views. You know, there's about thirty eight million people that are connected across social media networks. And it's just, the podcast has been a joy lorry, you've been a phenomenal guest on it, and people loved that episode. And the podcast has been such a beautiful platform to have to meet amazing people and

• 44:22Jay Shetty?

  connect with them. And then now the books just come out a week ago and the love is, and the response has been just incredible. So to me, there's no number that's a goal, there's no number that's ever been a goal. I think if I had a goal, it would have been terrible, it would have been like, oh, five hundred thousand or a million or whatever. And so life is so much more fun when life beats your goals. And so I don't set numerical goals, I set goals to be fully prepared in my creation, and then I let whatever comes, come. So with anything in my life, I just focus in on making sure that I've created the best thing I possibly can, and then I let that do the work. So that's kind of what it looks like now. And we have everything from a certification school now with a thousand students enrolled

• 45:05Jay Shetty?

  to become life coaches, through to the videos and podcasts and the book and all the entertainment entities. And the goal now is to move into gaining IP, to do documentaries and movies and content in a way that we can create really incredible pieces of entertainment content that are made with the heart to educate and support and transform people's lives, not necessarily with me even in it, but to tell the stories of amazing people that I think are missed sometimes.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  And so how, given the kind of speed of this, you know, how have you stayed grounded? Like, what are the top skills you've employed, either from your training as a monk or just, you know, the kind of thing you've learned over the years? And what do you do to kind of stay grounded as this trajectory is kind of skyrocketing?

• 45:45Jay Shetty?

  Get married. That's a great advice, because there's a great story that I love sharing about Robert Downey Jr. He was doing an interview at Cambridge University. And he says, you know, when he comes home, he's like, my family's never like, oh, my God, it's Iron Man. You know, he's like, they're just like, oh, can you take the trash out? Or can you, you know, so my mom and my dad and my sister and my wife are beautiful reminders of, you know, I married my wife and met my wife well before all of this. And so it's always beautiful to have that relationship and she's been an amazing grounding force. I think for me, I meditate still every day for an hour and a half to two hours every single morning.

• 46:25Jay Shetty?

  That does change when I'm traveling and right now with my press cycle, it's kind of like 30 minutes, four times throughout the day, but that has been such a rock. And so in my tradition, I'm not allowed to teach any of what I teach if I stop doing that. And so, so that's like a focus and I've had bad days of meditation and had days where I just got through it and failed at it massively from a monk point of view. But, you know, just turning up has been important. And every year, me and my wife go back to India, to the ashram that I lived at for two to three weeks. And I live with the monks again, and I find that that immersive experience is such a boost. So I come back with all this reinvigoration and energy to apply.

• 47:08Jay Shetty?

  And those have been some of the most important practices, the daily habits, the relationships in my life, the people in my life are all very grounded and not necessarily from the communities and circles that I work in, and that's really important. And also just revisiting the monks who always remind me how long a way I have to go. With my practices is always really special.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Well, we're going to open up for questions, so put some questions in the chat. But you reminded me of the answer I often give when people ask, you know, about me being grounded. It's this idea of having to practice what you preach, right? Like if you're the teacher, you can't totally be screwing up while all these wellness practices, because like somebody's going to notice that and that's going to be really embarrassing.

• 47:49Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and you're always going to make mistakes too and have bad days and days where things don't work out. And there's going to be days where you're not as kind as you want to be or not as compassionate as you want to be. Not as loving as you want to be, but that's humbling and that's still a lesson. Like it remind, that's for me is the greatest humbling thing about sharing wisdom. Is every time you say something, you constantly are reminded of how far you are away from it. And that's the best thing about saying this all day. Because you're constantly going, oh, wow, yeah, I need to do that better. Or I need to get back to that. And so talking about it a lot is very helpful.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that's one of the things that, you know, is also something that I think we forget in the modern age. And we don't do such a great job of when we train students at university is this idea that we're still on a journey. You know, I think there's this in universities, like when I get into school, you know, that's when I'll be happier. When I get my degree, that's when I'll be happier. When I get the perfect job or when I meet the perfect person. But it continues, right? There's constantly room for growth. And I think we're constantly feeling like, you know, we're not really adulting. We're not really there yet, or we're not really expert, even if we're supposed to be. And I think that remembering that it is a journey can be really powerful, too.

• 48:58Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. I can't wait for your questions.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  I know, yeah. So jump in with some questions on the chat while you're doing that. So tell us a little bit about the book. You mentioned some of the chapters that are in it, but what do we have to look forward to?

• 49:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so the book is a interweaving of personal stories, scientific studies, courtesy of Laurie and many other amazing friends who are able to share with me studies on monks, brains, meditation, gratitude, all the principles in the book. And then the strategies and steps to how you can make it real in your life. And that's really where I place a lot of emphasis, is it's not an autobiography. It has biographical elements. The book is really a guide and how to life book as to how you can practice the monk mindset in the real world. And I really believe that the monk mindset is not just an option, but it's necessary because we live in a life that is full of noise and full of overwhelming information.

• 49:53Jay Shetty?

  And if you think about it, like if you want to learn about a subject, you go to the people that have mastered it. So if I always say like, if you wanted to learn about tennis, you'd go to Serena Williams, or if you wanted to know how to perform, you'd want to go to Beyonce. And so it's like, if you want to learn how to master your mind, monks have dedicated their life to that. And so it's not even about my experience. The studies I talk about in the book are about monks who've done this for twenty, thirty, forty years. And so it's not even about my monk journey. It's about my fascination with the minds of monks because they've dedicated their life. And you know, all the studies show, and I had an opportunity to interview Matthew Rickard, who's been known to be the world's happiest man because his brain scan had the highest form of gamma waves,

• 50:38Jay Shetty?

  which are linked to obviously happiness, joy and attention. And there's tons of studies like that. So for me, the book is about practical tools and tips to finding your purpose and understanding what that truly means, what it means to create service opportunities in your life, and how to let go of the negativity that we face and the overthinking and procrastination that we come across every day.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  And so that might be a nice way to transition into one of the questions we have, which is from Amanda, one of our awesome Solomon fellows, who asks, how have you learned to embrace or perhaps, you know, cope with the fear that comes with going against the grain and listening to your intuition? Yeah, because it's one thing afterwards to be like, it all worked out, you have billions of, you know, views, like it's all good. But, you know, that fear was probably something you had to contend with a lot in those few years in between.

• 51:22Jay Shetty?

  And I still have that fear today. Like, following your intuition gets harder. Like, when I first moved to LA, I thought that there were certain rules of how things work here, and I had to know agents and I had to know managers because I didn't know any, I don't, no one in my family or in my immediate circle has ever done anything in entertainment. So I have no background in this whole industry. And so I was learning a lot and I didn't trust my intuition. I always thought that people were smarter than me in this space and knew more than me. And I realized that people were smarter than me and did know more than me, but they didn't know my intention. And so I've constantly been reminded to go back to my intuition and intention. So how do you overcome the fear? The first thing that's really important, and I talk about this in the fear chapter of the book, is that you have to really understand what you're actually scared of.

• 52:08Jay Shetty?

  So what I mean by that is, a lot of the time, we think we're scared of something, but actually, when we don't know the root of what we're scared of. And the way you do that is ask yourself, what are you scared of? And then you ask yourself the question, well, why am I scared of that? What am I really scared of? And then your mind will come up with an answer, and you listen to it patiently. And then you ask yourself, well, why am I scared of that? And then your mind will come up with an answer, and you listen to it, and you accept it patiently. And then you ask again, why am I scared of that? And you keep doing that with your fear until you get to a root fear. And I realized that my fear at that time was letting down my parents. Like, that was my root fear. Like, I didn't want to let down my parents, who'd worked so hard to give me an education,

• 52:48Jay Shetty?

  and they were immigrants into London, and they'd worked so hard to give me all these opportunities. And I've realized that, I think, what would really let them down, because then I asked myself, well, what would really let them down? And I realized, what would really let them down is me being disappointed with my life choice and blaming it on them. And, and when I got face to face with that as the real fear, that actually, if I did what they wanted me to do, chances are, I'm gonna be pretty depressed and sad. And then I'm gonna blame it on them, or even if I don't blame it on them, I'm gonna, they're gonna see me be sad. And that's not gonna work. So the way you get the strength to listen to your intuition, first of all, is deeply understanding your fear, not just glossing over it.

• 53:30Jay Shetty?

  The second step is experimenting with the life you think you want. So if I hadn't spent those summers and those vacations living as a monk, I would not have been confident to listen to my intuition. So intuition has to be backed up by action. You can't just feel good about something. You have to try it out and test it, and, and be willing to do that. And the third thing is, you have to know that when you choose to do your intuition, you've got to be ready to go all in, because chances are that more's gonna be demanded of you. So you've almost got to turn on that mode of all in when you decide to fall into your intuition, to really push it upwards. Because sometimes it's easier to do stuff that works in the world, but if you want to make something work, you've got to do that. So I'd say those are the top three ways of overcoming the fear.

• 54:15Jay Shetty?

  And again, you still might be fearful even when you take your first step and that's fine. So you're not trying to get rid of fear and then take your first step. You're just trying to understand your fear and then take your first step. So I'd say I do stuff that scares me all the time. It's just that I understand the level of fear I'm dealing with. In the same way as if someone said, so you're gonna bungee jump, right? Or you're gonna skydive. You'd wanna know that you're on a plane that was safe, you're jumping from a height that was fair and safe and doable, and that other people have survived before. If you've done that research and you have that knowledge of your fear, you can give it a go. But if someone just said, okay, we're gonna go on a plane right now, I'm gonna throw you out, you'd say no. And so some of us, when we're following our intuition,

• 54:59Jay Shetty?

  it's almost like blindly skydiving. And that's not gonna work. That's rarely going to work. It has to be, not necessarily calculated, but it has to be composed and conscious and intentional.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Right. So it's both kind of knowing that your fear is just that, it's fear. It's not like a real warning system being like, hey, you're gonna die if you jump out of this plane. But then kind of being there to bear with it and also read, you know, your chapter on fear, which I think is also gonna be important. And so Zach asks about possession. When you go from being a monk, you like basically have no possessions. And then you come out of that, and I assume, you know, reasonable apartment in LA and, you know, some photos behind you at the very least, you know, some stuff, and you're more than just like the cot, right? And so how do you do transition away from that? Or any tips for finding the sweet spot of owning and possessing and creature comforts generally?

• 55:47Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. So the sweet spot is understanding your quota and what is available to you. And I'll explain what I mean by that. So when I first moved to New York and I was working for HuffPost, I lived in a 500 square foot apartment, very small. It was me and my wife. And then when we moved to LA, when I was, my companies and my entrepreneurial work was a bit more established, we had a slightly larger apartment. We had a two bed apartment. And recently, we moved to a home. And what I've realized at every point is that material possessions were not influencing my actions and my work.

• 56:25Jay Shetty?

  So material possessions are not the reason you're working harder or trying to do something. So it's far more of an internal thing than even an external thing. But a lot of people get stuck and me and my friends were talking about this the other day. You know, there are so many people that will, and I remember work, I used to work at Morrison's, which is the equivalent of Walmart, I believe. When I was around sixteen years old, it was one of my favorite, uh, favorite, it was one of my first jobs, not my favorite. One of my first jobs. And I remember I had colleagues that would save up a month's salary to go and buy a handbag or a pair of shoes. And now I'm, I have nothing against it. That's wonderful if that's what brings you joy. But as we know, material things are not going to bring us joy.

• 57:07Jay Shetty?

  So if you're doing your work simply for acquiring more materially, that's where you go wrong. Whereas if you do your work that you love and you're strategic about it and it creates more financial abundance in your life, that's beautiful, but it's like, it's not, it's not the driver and it's not the motivator. That's where you're really trying to live. And so even now, I'd say my most expensive items, apart from obviously my home, are like my laptop and my devices that I do my work through. And I've tried to maintain a sense of uniform because that was a big part of monk life. So I have this sweatshirt in every color and I have the trousers that I'm wearing in every color. And so I have a lot of similar items in my wardrobe that are basically the same fit and same thing, but they're just different colors.

• 57:52Jay Shetty?

  So it looks like I tried, but I really didn't. And I have the same thing in shoes. So I have a lot more of everything, but I tried to keep some uniform. But the real intentional part of it is not using material things as the numbing of dissatisfaction. Because really what we're trying to do when we look for material things or possessions is we're numbing the fact that we don't like our jobs. We're numbing the fact that we don't like what we have in our lives. But hey, if you, what you love every day and you're really abundant and you make a lot of money and you wanna have a nice home or a nice car or whatever you do, go for it. There's nothing wrong, but don't make that the goal or the motivator or the driver, because that's where we go wrong, because then we almost postpone or place our happiness into that thing.

• 58:36Jay Shetty?

  And we all know through countless studies and research that that thing will never make us happy. But having that thing is not bad if you can afford it and it's within your quota and within your range. And it wasn't the reason you did it in the first place. I hope that answers your question, Zach. It's a fairly internalizing of the concept.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Hungy asks, what do you think about different kinds of happiness? You mentioned it's important to be happy, but is there also value in unhappiness? You know, how do you parse through the different kinds of things? This is something that I think the monks had a lot to say about.

• 59:05Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. So as monks, we barely use the word happiness. And it's funny because, and even in the book, I don't really talk about happiness. I talk about it more in conversations like this because I think the word is more relevant to people's connotations of joy. The three most used words as monks were meaning, purpose, and service. So those are the most commonly used words. And so the reason why I like meaning is because that's where unhappiness becomes useful. So if you look for happiness in tough times, or happiness in struggle, or happiness in challenging times, it's probably impossible. But you can always find meaning in difficult times. And so the search for meaning is far more of an important pursuit than the pursuit of happiness.

• 59:50Jay Shetty?

  Because meaning is something you'll find in any situation. The monks also had a lot to say about dealing with unhappiness or negative thoughts, and found them to be actually useful when explored. So same way as we understood fear, it's important to understand our negative thoughts and what their roots are. And so often what happened in the world we live in today is we have circumstantial solutions for circumstantial issues, or situational solutions for temporary issues. But the problem is we also try and apply situational fixes to existential issues. So it's like, I don't know what my purpose is. Let me go to Coachella for the weekend and hopefully that'll be fine.

• 1:00:33Jay Shetty?

  And then you come back on Monday and you still don't know what your purpose is. Or I hate my job and I don't think I'm going in the right direction. Let me just take a great vacation and I'll forget all about it. Again, nothing wrong with those two examples, but you can't use a situational fix for an existential question. And so as monks, we would always be looking for existential solutions to existential questions. And instead of trying to find just situational fixes, you'd look for meaning, purpose, and service. And even, I'll give an example during COVID, during the lockdown and the pandemic, service was available to everyone. And we saw that so many people in the world chose to serve, whether people were singing on their balconies or playing

• 1:01:17Jay Shetty?

  instruments, or whether they were doing workouts on their rooftops, or whether the frontline workers were delivering our food, or groceries, or making sure that people were trying to recover or be healed. Everyone was serving. And that was what was so inspiring about this time is that you saw everyone extend themselves for their neighbors, their communities, and people beyond. And so, yeah, I think that meaning, service, and purpose are far greater pursuits than happiness, because you can't always find happiness, but you'll always find meaning, you'll always find purpose, and you'll always find service.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  And your point is also that when you see people who are engaging in those, they tend to be people who seem pretty happy.

• 1:01:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly. And whether they knew it or not, there was a video that was, I can't remember who found it, but there was a viral video of like a FedEx delivery person who would like spray all the boxes before he placed them outside everyone's home. And he didn't know, like, there was, no one knew that he was being filmed, or he didn't do it for a TV show, or, and he was just doing that out of kindness of his heart. And I just think, wow, what a beautiful thing, like, when people don't even know the camera's on, and they're doing so many wonderful things. And it inspires me. Humanity's, humanity's got so much good in it that we don't even get to see.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  And so very quickly, for our last question, we'll go to Wei, who asks, letting go and changing the wiring of our mindset is such a difficult thing to do. What are some concrete ways of working towards living a more purposeful life without being a monk? So maybe your top two or three, like, you know, concrete tips that we can kind of jump in?

• 1:02:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. So it all comes down to habits and it all comes down to habits being changed through two key qualities. If you want to change a habit, you can only choose one habit at a time. Very important point. Do not try and change your whole life in one week or a day. Choose one habit. So if it's waking up earlier, eating healthier, exercising, all the wonderful things that Laurie teaches about and all the practices, choose one, right? Just choose one. And choose one per month, if that's what it takes, until you solve it. So choose one and then make it a big priority and take a small step towards it. So make it the number one priority. So if you say my number one priority this month is to wake up earlier, it has to be your top priority above everything else.

• 1:03:33Jay Shetty?

  And then you need a small step, which is I'm going to wake up fifteen minutes earlier every week. Right? And so when you take that really practical step, that's rewiring your brain every single day with a really small action as a big priority and a singular focus. Practices that I think are useful to do that in that way, I come with the acronym in the book called T I M E. So T is thankfulness. And thankfulness isn't just a feeling and gratitude isn't just like, oh, I feel grateful. It's actually saying it to someone. So choosing one person a day that you express gratitude to, and here's the key, all the science shows that the gratitude has to be personalized, specific and detailed. So you can't go ahead and just be like, oh, thank you. I appreciate it. The more detail you go into, the more they feel joy and the more you feel joy.

• 1:04:19Jay Shetty?

  The second one is inspiration or insight. The reason why we feel stuck in life or we feel like we can't let go is because we have no new ideas in our life. You'll find that as soon as you open your life up to new ideas, new knowledge, you'll easily let go of the old stuff because you have something to replace it with. The M is the third one, T I M. M stands for meditation. And the simplest form of meditation that I love, that rewires your brain, especially for presence, because meditation in its simplest form is just being present. And there's a beautiful technique we learned as monks, but that also applies that psychologists and therapists use today. It's called the five, four, three, two, one technique. And so every time you walk into a room or when you wake up, what are the five things that you see? The four things that you can touch?

• 1:05:04Jay Shetty?

  The three things that you can hear? The two things that you can smell? And the one thing that you can taste? It will bring you into complete presence. And so that activity is beautiful for just experiencing presence. And E is for exercise. And for me, exercise isn't the gym or a treadmill. It can be a dance party. It can be your favorite sport. It can be your 10,000 steps. But if you practice T I M E, thankfulness, inspiration, meditation, exercise on a daily basis, it's likely, and I'd like to add one more, which is S, sleep. I'm a big proponent of sleep. I didn't sleep a lot as a monk and meditation made up for it. But hey, I love my eight and a half hours. And Laurie will tell you more, but all the studies show that

• 1:05:45Jay Shetty?

  sleeping before midnight, the human growth hormone, the HGH, is in such a better place. So I'm a big proponent of sleeping by 10:00 PM latest. And I know that that's hard for a lot of people, but I really believe it's life changing for so many of our emotions as well, because so much cleaning and emotional healing is happening in sleep. And, and so for a lot of us who struggle with anxiety or procrastination, sleep can actually be the best medicine.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you'd add the extra S on your times.

• 1:06:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I didn't make the book because I thought of it afterwards. So, but yeah.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  Well, everyone should check out the book now. It is out and available in stores. Um, we're going to have some copies here in Solomon and in a Good Life Center. So you can check them out there. But to just express my gratitude to Jay and to kind of follow his advice. You know, when we met in Montana, we were in this big group of kind of scientists and policymakers and, and folks who are there to inspire us. And Jay, in his talk, when he explained just how much impact you can have when you're doing things that are entertaining, that are fun for people, that aren't like a chore to learn. You know, that's how you make a real impact and that's how you reach lots of people. And that is something that really has stayed with me as I've tried to kind of make more of an impact with what I've learned. So thank you for being inspiration. Thank you, Jay, so much, especially during this really busy time for taking time out for my Yellies. I deeply appreciate it. Thank you so much.

• 1:07:04Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, everyone. It's such a pleasure meeting you and I look forward to meeting you in person. And Laurie, thank you for always supporting my work and becoming such a friend and. Encourage you of everything I do. So, thank you so much. And such a pleasure meeting you. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side.

• 1:07:29Speaker 08

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• 1:07:44Speaker 09

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