4 Essential Trust-Building Practices to Strengthen Relationships & Why You Shouldn't Let External Validation Control Your Life

Have you been wanting to get over your failures? You won’t want to miss this episode. Today we explore the themes of overcoming failures and emerging stronger than ever with myself and Elizabeth Day Join us as we dive into the profound insights on how to navigate the pain of heartbreak and find love once more, the significance of earning trust rather than freely giving it, and the invaluable lessons embedded within our failures, which serve as stepping stones toward personal growth and unparalleled success. This episode is hope for anyone striving to pursue their goals, persevere through adversity, and embrace the fullness of life. Whether you find yourself wanting a fresh start after a breakup, seeking guidance on building meaningful connections, or simply seeking inspiration to transform setbacks into opportunities, this episode holds immeasurable value for you. Together, we unravel the essence of resilience and the power of harnessing failure as a catalyst for growth. Today we learn- The ways to finding love and jay after heartbreak How to foster authentic trust in relationships Embracing failures as invaluable lessons Finding the path to personal and professional success How to find resilience and grow from challenges This one will leave a mark on your journey of self-discovery. Don’t miss this one! With Love and Gratitude,Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:32 Do you feel happy and successful? Is it genuine? 04:32 Do you have one consistent purpose or does it shift everyday? 07:45 The 3-step method to check if what you’re doing is aligned with your purpose 11:49 This is the reason why breakups are painful and why we shouldn’t push it aside 15:00 Why does trust need to be earned and not just easily given away? 21:29 Define love before you say it or feel it. Love means different things for different people. 23:51 What’s your favorite romantic comedy of all time? 27:19 What is your concept of failure? What about the milestones that society has set? 31:51 What is the earliest failure you’ve had? 37:13 Have you ever felt unlovable? How did you cope? 40:31 Why do we always seek validation from other people? 47:11 Is it considered a failure when you end up becoming someone people don’t normally aim to become? 55:16 Sometimes, things that don’t work out may lead to an opening to a better path 57:17 How does one become a good manager and leader? Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/ 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?

  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. 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,

• 0:44Jay 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. This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe. Listing items is a quick and simple process, and once something sells,

• 1:30Jay Shetty?

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• 2:16Jay Shetty?

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

• 2:59Jay Shetty?

  Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be adding a really special offering onto the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily J is a daily series on Calm and it's meant to inspire you while outlining tools and techniques to live a more mindful, stress-free life. We dive into a range of topics and the best part is each episode is only seven minutes long, so you can incorporate it into your schedule, no matter how busy you are. As a dedicated part of the On Purpose community, I wanted to do something special for you

• 3:41Jay Shetty?

  this year, so I'll be playing a handpicked Daily J during each of my Friday podcasts. This week, we're talking about your relationships and how to create the most meaningful connections with the people that matter to you. Of course, if you want to listen to The Daily J every day, you can go subscribe to Calm. So go to calm.com/j for 40% off your membership today.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Jay Shetty, welcome to How To Fail.

• 4:13Jay Shetty?

  Oh, thank you so much for having me and that was a wonderful introduction. Thank you so much.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  It's an honour to be in your presence.

• 4:19Jay Shetty?

  No, I'm so grateful to be in yours. This is so wonderful and I'm really excited to have this conversation.

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Ditto. I wanted to end on that quote because it's so interesting. I feel that we live in a culture which often elides happiness with success. And that can be very confusing when you're growing up in that culture because you think you want one thing and then you might get it and you realise it actually hasn't made you feel content. Do you feel that you've got both yourself today? Do you feel happy and successful?

• 4:46Jay Shetty?

  If I'm honest, I feel at this stage in my life, I can say that I'm genuinely on the path of both. I say on the path because I don't think any of them are ever a place that you arrive or finish or complete. It's not like a level in a game where you say, okay, well, I've made it now and there's nothing else to do. But definitely I've pursued both paths very intentionally and consciously. And I think that's what I was trying to get across when I said that statement originally. Whereas this idea that I think a lot of people by confusing the two lose out on both often. So just as we sometimes think of success as happiness, we also think of just happiness as success.

• 5:32Jay Shetty?

  And both are untrue. And so I feel at this point in my life, I intentionally pursue them, but for different reasons. I think that intentionally pursuing joy and presence and connection creates happiness in my life. And if I wasn't to pursue that, my external pursuits wouldn't give me that. I wouldn't just one day find those things. And similarly, I love the idea of how much I grow and learn by trying to do more things in the external world. The idea of building a podcast or writing a book or building a company and having a team of individuals who I learn from every day and grow from every day, that to me creates a growth in the form of success.

• 6:15Jay Shetty?

  And so I'm fascinated by both those paths and I'm on both those paths even now.

• 6:21Speaker 01

  Do you think you're competitive?

• 6:23Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Yeah, definitely. I'm definitely competitive. I'd say that I constantly focus on how I can do better than myself, rather than how I can do better than others. And so I'm competitive with myself in, am I improving my process? Am I improving my understanding and analysis? Am I improving how I perform? Because I think that the outward form of competition, which is largely based on comparison.

• 6:52Jay Shetty?

  Just makes you a worse version of yourself, or it makes you a worse version of someone else. And that's not the kind of competition I'm interested in. So I'm honestly every day trying to be better than myself. And I think that that creates a really healthy relationship with being competitive, rather than living in a world of comparison-based competitiveness, which I think is really unhealthy and can really hurt you.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yes, and I've fallen into that trap. It's something I strive against every day to try not to be comparatively competitive. And one of the things that I have found very helpful is the idea that being successful is actually about being the fullest, the most version of you, that that's our purpose on this earth. What for you, I know your podcast is called On Purpose, which is such a great name. Does your purpose shift day to day? Or do you have one consistent purpose for your life?

• 7:47Jay Shetty?

  I have one underlying purpose that has been developed over many, many years. So it's not that I one day arrived in it because I was journaling and I was just doing a quiz and I ended up with it. And I always try and loosely help people recognize that purpose isn't this thing that you have to figure out in your head and then you live it. It's something that you collect over time. You collect skills, you collect experiences, you collect feelings, you collect emotions. And then when you curate them together, it creates a purpose. If I look at my purpose today, I collected public speaking and drama school training from age 11 to age 18. I collected business experience during my time at Cass Business School. I collected the years of experience I had as a monk.

• 8:31Jay Shetty?

  I collected years of digital social media experience from Accenture. And then today, when you look at what I live, it's like a beautiful mocktail of all of those things. And so I think purpose is collective, but my underlying purpose is to dedicate my life to helping other people find theirs. And I do that by making wisdom and ideas and habits more accessible, relevant and practical. That's my goal, to make education spread as fast as entertainment. And if we can make enlightening educational ideas in an innovative way, then people will absorb it and consume it like entertainment, and it will actually improve their lives. A lot of entertainment is escape.

• 9:17Jay Shetty?

  But I want to create entertainment that elevates our minds. And I really believe it can be done. And so that's my purpose. So those are the areas of my life that I'm dedicated to and that fuel me and wake me every morning. And that's been how I felt for probably the majority of the last ten years now, or ten years plus. But the way the vehicle changes, so the format changes. So originally, I was doing that through doing events in the city of London when I lived here. And maybe two people would show up, or maybe five people would show up. And I was living my purpose because I was making wisdom accessible, relevant and practical. And I was trying to make it innovative. So I was still living my purpose then.

• 9:58Jay Shetty?

  And then, when I first started creating my videos, that was four-minute videos. Then we launched a podcast, and the podcast was one to two hours. Then I wrote my first book, now my second book. So the medium and the format changes, but the vision and the purpose behind each one was exactly the same. And the purpose satisfied me because the purpose was never attached to a number or scale or to followers or likes or sales, because it started when none of that existed for me. And so the purpose is something that will fuel you. I think Albert Einstein has this beautiful thought where he says, if you want to be happy, don't tie it to a person, tie it to a goal.

• 10:38Jay Shetty?

  And I changed that to, or add to it to, by saying, don't tie it to a person, tie it to a purpose. And that purpose is something that can fuel you forever, regardless of the external result.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  You must get an enormous amount of offers that come your way. So do you have a shortcut? Do you have a way of checking in with your instincts and being like, does this align with my purpose? That's an easy no or an easy yes?

• 10:59Jay Shetty?

  Yes, absolutely. So I have a three-step method. It's called ESM, Energy Strategy Money. It's very, very simple, and I do this all the time with any opportunity that comes. The first thing I ask myself is, is this energetically aligned with my purpose? What I mean by that is when I'm in this person's presence, or this brand or company's presence, when I connect with them, I see how they speak about themselves. Is it aligned with improving people's lives? Are they building this product? Are they creating this opportunity because they genuinely believe they want to improve the lives of others? Do they want to make people happier, healthier and more healed? So that's the energy point. Now, if I don't feel that it aligns on that level, we don't go through to the next point. So that's door number one.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  So it's stages?

• 11:43Jay Shetty?

  It's stages. That's door number one. So if you made it through door number one, door number two is strategy. Okay, someone can have really good intentions and really good energy. But do they have the strategy to know how to actually implement this? Do they actually know how to develop this idea further? Because someone can be really wonderfully intentioned, but that doesn't mean that it's going to work. And that doesn't mean that they're going to be able to get there. And obviously, we're talking about this from a professional point of view. This is not about, I don't do this with people. We're talking about professional opportunities. The next is strategy. And then the final one is money. Is the money aligned with what they're saying energetically and strategically? Does it make business and financial sense?

• 12:25Jay Shetty?

  And I think that those three doors have always helped me in any decision making because they allow you to really focus on what's most important to you, which is the energy. But then making sure that the strategy of money is backed up by that as well.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  So interesting because I have a rule of three.

• 12:41Jay Shetty?

  I love it.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Which is passion, pay, prestige.

• 12:43Jay Shetty?

  Oh, very close.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I know.

• 12:44Jay Shetty?

  Very close. I like your words, yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I love an alliteration. Yes, I know you do. You love a good three.

• 12:50Jay Shetty?

  I do, I do. Energy, strategy, money has just always been that way. I guess they all end in Y, but.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  Yes, that's true. Let's get on to your brilliant book, which is Eight Rules of Love. And it is so everything that you have just spoken about. It makes wisdom so accessible and relevant. And I told you before we started recording, I wish that I'd read this in my twenties. It would have saved me a lot of trouble. Having said that, I'm now married for the second time to a wonderful, but thank you, to a wonderful person. But the road to get there was strewn with failure and taught me a lot. And that's why I wish I'd read your book because it's so profoundly wise about so many things I want to ask you about.

• 13:30Jay Shetty?

  I'd love to add that, first of all, thank you for sharing that with your own experience. And second of all, congratulations on believing that love was possible. And you still had the full permission to love again. And you, you were lovable and you could find it, which is incredible. And also I'd add that I'm not ever concerned that someone may have failures in love. Because like you said, and me included, I made a lot of mistakes in love early on in my life, which is what led to this book as well. But it makes you appreciate what you have so much more now. And that gratitude that I have for my wife, I'm sure you feel that way, that gratitude you have. It actually makes this even better. And so if anyone's out there and they've been through a lot of pain or they've been treated really horribly,

• 14:12Jay Shetty?

  or they've had the worst experiences and had their heart broken. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's okay. I'm not saying you deserve that at all. I'm just saying that when you do find it, you will have this deep appreciation and gratitude in a way that you could never have had it if you didn't have those experiences. And so I just want to point out that no one should ever feel discouraged, that if they've failed or lost love too many times, that that's a bad thing.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  I could not agree more. That was so beautifully put. Tell us about breakups, because that is one of the things that really affects listeners to this podcast and massively affected me when I was going through them, because there is no grief quite like heartbreak. It's such a specific and individual thing. And you have some great advice for it. And one of the things that I found most beautiful in this book is that idea that you might be broken up with, but you're not broken. Your soul is unbreakable. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

• 15:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, definitely. So first of all, I want to say that if anyone's had their heart broken or has gone through a breakup that was painful because of what someone said or how they treated you, the truth is that it will always hurt. Because when you look at the science behind heartbreak, it says that we feel the same chemical shift as when someone's trying to detox from cocaine. And so if you think about that, it's like being addicted to a drug that was fueling you and filling you up. That wasn't good for you, but it was still an addiction. And now that it's been removed from your physical or even emotional presence,

• 15:47Jay Shetty?

  you now literally have this feeling of what's craving for another human, just as you crave back for cocaine. And so the fact that it hurts is real and true and is, we should validate that. You shouldn't feel bad that it hurts or that you're a weak person or that you're someone who doesn't have a backbone. Or if anyone says to you like, oh, just get over it. The fact that you can't get over it is a very real emotion. We shouldn't just shun it or push it aside. And then to answer your question, I think what we often find is that we believe that someone's love for us is what makes us lovable.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 16:27Jay Shetty?

  So we believe that if someone values us, then we're valuable. If someone likes us, then we're likeable. And so all of our self-belief, self-value and self-esteem is based on someone else's view towards us. So then, when that person leaves, we feel broken because they just took what we so deeply needed. And I approach this from a very spiritual point of view in the book, which is what you just mentioned now, and I reference often the Bhagavad Gita, which is the book that I deeply studied during my time as a monk. And the book is over 5,000 years old. It's originally in Sanskrit.

• 17:10Jay Shetty?

  There are some English translations, which are beautiful to read and understand. And that book talks about how consciousness, or our first self, as I like to call it, we have so many selves, but our first self is unbreakable. It's insoluble, it's unburnable. And the idea that there's this part of you that existed before this person, during this person, and after this person will always be there. There is a you before every relationship, during every relationship, and there will continue to be one of you after every relationship. And yes, this doesn't solve the heartbreak, but it's something you should know inherently and deeply.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  It's very moving, that, because you can apply it to so many things. You can also apply it to grief, that there will still be a soul. As you're experiencing this horror, you will get through it and you will still exist. I think that's a very meaningful thing.

• 18:07Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  For people to hear. Talk to us about trust and the expectation we have that love should be quote unquote magic. And so we sort of scatter all of our trust tokens immediately.

• 18:19Jay Shetty?

  Yes, I love the language of trust tokens. That's, that's really, that's, that's really great. I love that. Trust fascinates me because I consider myself to be someone who always wants to trust others, who generally has positive feelings towards others. And I want to like others and be liked and do good things with them. And I think that's most of us. Most of us feel like we want to trust others. But I think what I found throughout life was just how trust was something that shouldn't just be given away. It should be something that's earned, both by ourselves and by others. I, I should feel I have to earn my trust with you because we have a new relationship. And the other person should feel they have to earn my trust back.

• 19:02Jay Shetty?

  But what often happens is that the halo effect creates this idea where we just give trust away. So if someone's attractive, we believe they're trustworthy. If someone's smart, we believe they're organized. If someone's well spoken, we believe they're kind. So what we start doing is we start ascribing qualities of trust to qualities we perceive. And that's where it starts to go wrong because that person hasn't shown you that. You just assume that they have that quality because they have another quality. Oh, they went to a good school. They must be really reliable. They must come from a good family. We start giving them all of these trust tokens, as you said, without actually letting them earn it.

• 19:47Jay Shetty?

  So in my first book, Think Like a Monk, I broke down the four levels of trust. The first level is zero trust. When I meet someone new and when you meet someone new, as painful as it sounds, please start at zero trust. Often we think of trust as binary. We often think I either trust you, I don't trust you. I actually have four levels. The first is zero trust. When I meet someone, they're starting there. The second level of trust is transactional trust. This is when I say to you, especially in the dating world, I'll be there at nine P M. Does that person show up at nine P M? I'll call you the first thing in the morning. Did they call first thing in the morning? Now, of course, there may be a couple of times this doesn't happen. That's forgivable. But do we have a level of transactional trust with them or not?

• 20:32Jay Shetty?

  Oh, yeah, I'll make sure I send that email to you. Oh, yeah, definitely. I'll be there at twelve on the dot. These are the moments where we get to see transactional trust. And often, if we like the way someone looks, or we believe that they might be an amazing partner, even if they completely don't follow transactional trust, we'll give them that.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:49Jay Shetty?

  That benefit of the doubt, because there's something else we find attractive and fascinating about them. The third level of trust is what I call reciprocal trust. This means you have had really good experiences of the first two. And now you do nice things for each other without counting. You're not checking every time a transaction's made. You're not having to watch whether it happens or not. You've gained that level of trust where we do nice things for each other, but no one's counting. And the fourth level and the highest level of trust is unconditional trust. And I call that godlike trust or parentlike trust, which you're not necessarily going to have immediately with anyone. And that's something that can take years to develop. And it's a divine level of trust where I trust you with my whole life.

• 21:33Jay Shetty?

  But often what we do is we start there with people. And then we fall back down. And basically, the higher level of trust you give to someone, the more levels you have to fall.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:43Jay Shetty?

  So if you gave someone unconditional trust just after three months, then you're going to end up at zero after three months, which means you just toppled down four levels, and that's what hurts. Whereas when you say, okay, they were at one and I expected one, or I thought they would be at one, but I got zero, then it's not going to hurt as much. And so it's a really tactical, practical way of measuring trust.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Super clever. And I think that there's a misapprehension that people believe that sort of attitude is somehow unromantic.

• 22:12Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. I think everything I'm sharing sounds really unsexy, unromantic, unmagical. But it's all designed to save you from pain. It's all designed to save you and protect you from setting yourself up for a failure. Often we say, oh, that person misled me. And I'm not saying there aren't people that mislead you, but often we mislead ourselves by giving away trust without anyone earning it. I mean, I looked at the, again, I'm looking at research, so I'm not basing this on my opinion. I'm not basing this on my personal experience. I'm basing on research. Studies showed that around sixty to seventy percent of people feel too pressured to say, I love you, or hear the words, I love you in the first month. Now, that's challenging because sure, we all want to fall in love, but I

• 22:57Jay Shetty?

  promise you, there's no one who can truly stand by that statement after one month. Men say, I love you within one month, and women say, I love you within three months. Then studies go on to say that it takes forty hours to consider someone a casual friend, a hundred hours to consider someone a good friend, and two hundred hours to consider someone a great friend. So if you need two hundred hours to consider someone a great friend, you can't have done that in one month. It's just not realistic. If you saw someone once a week, even if you saw someone once a day for two hours, that'll be sixty hours in a month. So we're almost giving away really high levels of love for very low levels of time. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a

• 23:41Jay Shetty?

  business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 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

• 24:23Jay Shetty?

  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. 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.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  So interesting. So I had an expectation when I met my now husband. We met online, we met on Hinge, and I was 39 at the time. And because I had grown up on a diet of 1980s rom-coms.

• 25:17Jay Shetty?

  Me too.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  We're coming on to that, don't you worry. But I just, I was in love with the idea of love as it had been portrayed on screen in fiction. And it took him six months to say that he loved me. And I thought, gosh, it's taking ages, it's taking ages. I refused to say it first because it was like ridiculous parroting. And I always remember when he said it, he said, "I've taken this long because when I say it, it's a commitment." And I felt so safe then that he had said it within those parameters. And it was so beautiful and so romantic, precisely because we'd gone through those stages. And you write in the book about how we mean different things when we say, "I love you." And we have to check in with each other, what that actually quantifies when we say that statement.

• 26:04Jay Shetty?

  Yes, so I have a rule in the book. One of my favorite rules is define love before you say it or feel it. Because so many of us, our definition of love is based on someone else's experience. It could be movies, it could be media, it could be our parents, it could be a family friend that we saw. Love. Is such a interesting word because someone could say, I love you. And it means I want to spend my life with you. And someone else could say, I love you, and it means I want to spend a night with you. And everything in between that spectrum. And so the challenge is when we hear the words, I love you. We hear our own definition when it came out of someone else's mouth.

• 26:49Jay Shetty?

  And obviously, we want to say it back so badly, we don't stop and go, oh, wait a minute, can you explain what that means? Like, what do you mean by that? Like, what is, you would never do that, and I don't recommend anyone should. But before you hear it and before you say it, make sure you've understood what love means to that person. What does a relationship mean to that person? The fact that your now husband said to you, to me, it means a commitment. That's so beautiful that you knew that, which meant when he said it, hopefully, he felt he could live up to that commitment. Now, if someone else to them, love just means, I feel attracted to you, I'm really into you, I really like you. And they say, I love you, you may take it to be, oh, that means they're committed. But that's in your head, that's not what they said. And I think there's so many definitions in between.

• 27:33Jay Shetty?

  So I'm not saying you have to go up to your person you're dating and say, what does love mean to you on your first date? But I think you have to decipher and understand as time goes on, how does this person view relationships? Are they scared of commitment? Do they have a history of that as a challenge? These are all things that we have to discover. Because otherwise, we set ourselves up to believe that everyone wants the same love we want. And they don't, not everyone does, and that's okay, too.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Now, I know you watch Selling Sunsets.

• 28:00Jay Shetty?

  Yes, that's my guilty pleasure.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  I wonder if you've ever watched Love Island?

• 28:05Jay Shetty?

  I have, so my wife's watched Love Island, and I've watched her watching Love Island. But I've, I've watched maybe bits and pieces, but not something I've watched myself, yes.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  I only ask because I watch Love Island, I love reality TV, and they say, I love you very, very quickly. And so that I was interested. But in a way, that sets up a false expectation of love in the same manner as romantic comedies that we love to watch. What's your favorite romantic comedy of all time?

• 28:29Jay Shetty?

  Oh, in a, as a good one that I enjoy. So I really do appreciate He's Just Not That Into You.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  It's so good.

• 28:35Jay Shetty?

  It's really good, it shows a lot of how we perceive things, how we make challenges, like. There, all the characters in that movie are really far more realistic than most rom coms. And I think the scenarios are far more realistic, where you assume someone likes you because they message or. You kind of push someone away because you're talking about the wrong things. I think that movie's probably got the best examples in it.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Before we get on to your failures, I know you've got an issue with The Notebook.

• 29:00Jay Shetty?

  I talked about that recently, only because I had an ex-girlfriend that made me watch The Notebook a million times. But I think I really sat.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Because of it?

• 29:07Jay Shetty?

  No, no, no. I I enjoyed it at the time, but I think I really sat and analyzed it because of that. I mean, you mostly don't watch movies again and again and again, but I must have watched that movie like at least ten times during that relationship. And I sat down to analyze it because I felt it had so much power culturally. Notebook is such a big movie. And by the way, just to point out, I love Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in Actors. They're phenomenal actors. The movie's great. I think it was just the writing of the story. And again, I don't think it was wrong. It's just how people did confess their love. And there are so many scenes in that movie, but one of the scenes is he's like chasing her on the street. And she looks uncomfortable because of it. He's like running around, walking, moving really fast.

• 29:51Jay Shetty?

  And you look at it and go, wow, he's so smooth. He's so into her, you know, because he's a good-looking guy and well-spoken. And he says to her, he says, I'll be anything you want. I can do it. Tell me what you want. I'll be it. That's such an unhealthy misconception to say, I'll be anything you want. Whatever you want, I'll be it. Well, most people, A, can't live up to that, and B, if we want someone to become whatever we want, then do we really love them? Or do we love an idea? The second ones that I really have a struggle with is she's on the Ferris wheel, like the London Eye, I guess, but the old-school ones. And he's hanging off of it, literally like by his arms. And he says, if you don't go on a date with me, I'll let go.

• 30:31Jay Shetty?

  And it's like, can you imagine someone threatening to take their own life? Like, that's a really like, quite a toxic, unhealthy idea. To put someone under that pressure. She goes, yes, yes, I will. Just don't let go. And it's like, that's so uncomfortable for her too. She's been put in that. And I think so many movies over time have built this idea of the damsel in distress and the savior and the knight in shining armor. The woman has to wait for her prince. That whole idea naturally has made so many people think, "One day, my prince will come and save me." Even if you don't think about it in those words, and I want you to be very careful, I'm not, I'm not saying you sit there and wait for a prince, but there's a part of you that believes that someone will come and save you. And if you have to be saved, that means you're the one who is saved, which means you're broken, which means you need to be fixed. And so it perpetuates all these ideas of,

• 31:16Jay Shetty?

  "I'm broken, I'm unlovable until I'm loved, I'm unlikable until I'm liked, I'm not valuable until I'm valued."

• 31:24Speaker 01

  You do talk a lot about unlearning, which I think is such a powerful word, because we do, all of us, have that task of unlearning what society has conditioned us to believe, what our families of origin might have conditioned us to believe, and working out who we are and what we are for ourselves. And I see failure very much as part of that, that actually, what is failure? Failure is when life doesn't go according to plan. Whose plan is it? Is it actually yours?

• 31:51Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  And I wonder, I'm going to ask you about your failures now, but just broadly speaking, how do you feel about the concept of failure?

• 31:59Jay Shetty?

  Can I rewind a little? Because I wanted to comment on what you just said, because it sparked a thought for me, something really interesting that I came across. So when we think about these milestones that society places, i.e. studying hard, getting a good degree, getting a good job, getting married, having kids. Often, we go through those without even questioning whether that choice is something we actually want. So it's like, "Oh yeah, of course you have to get married. Of course you have to have kids. That's what happens after marriage. Of course, of course, of course, of course." And I think often people ask or feel, "I'm running out of time. Oh my gosh, I'm so late to getting married. Oh my gosh, I'm so late to having kids." And especially women, of course, have that pressure because of their body clock, etc. So that pressure is even felt more by women.

• 32:43Jay Shetty?

  And when I look at that strongly and deeply, I often encourage people, "Stop asking the question, 'Is this the right time?'" Because timelines are based on society's definition.

• 32:56Jay Shetty?

  Mostly, and instead ask, do I understand how this decision will change my life? And the second question is, do I like how it will change my life? So if you're thinking about getting married, it's not about whether you should get married or not. It's not about whether it's the right time or not. It's, do I understand how getting married to this person is going to change my life? Do I like how that will change my life? That's when you know. And the problem is, we're thinking, well, do I need to get married? It's the wrong question. So anyway, I just wanted to

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great.

• 33:26Jay Shetty?

  interject there and add that. Yeah, I just wanted to help give people a practical tool to to use for decision making. How do I feel about failure?

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:37Jay Shetty?

  I've gone silent because I want to give a very thoughtful, reflected answer because

• 33:44Jay Shetty?

  I don't think there's anyone who could truly say they enjoy failure or they like failure. I think that would be a very bold statement with some fiction attached to it. But I would say that I've just learned that it is unavoidable. So I'm no longer surprised by it. And I'd say that if it happens to me, I no longer see it as a sign of my inadequacy. I see it as an opportunity to grow, an opportunity to pivot, or potentially a chance to say, maybe this isn't my path. And so I no longer see it as a reflection of my worth, my self-esteem.

• 34:28Jay Shetty?

  But I also know it's always going to happen, no matter how hard I try or no matter how perfectly I execute something. It's always a possibility. And I think we live in a world where we think, well, it's not even a possibility or we can avoid it. And now I've learned, and I I remember studying, and this is, this is something I I wish they taught in school. And I really hope that we find a way to teach it more in school. We learn history of a country or a nation, but we don't deeply study the history of human beings, of actual people. And I got really lucky because I got so into autobiographies and biographies when I was in my teens.

• 35:07Jay Shetty?

  So I'd read Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, all the way through to David Beckham and Dwayne The Rock Johnson by the time I was around eighteen years old. And I love the spectrum of those individuals because they've all inspired me in different ways. And you can learn so much from anyone's story. And then many years later, I read Steve Jobs's biography by Walter Isaacson, who I've had the pleasure of interviewing Walter Isaacson. And when I saw Steve Jobs's life and to think that he was kicked out of his own company, only to go and build Pixar in the meantime, to then go back to that same company to lead it again to further glory. When I look at the people I look up to and I'm inspired by, they've all constantly failed and faced rejection.

• 35:49Jay Shetty?

  And that's what convinces me that if I'm failing, it's absolutely normal. But if you never studied those lives and you never studied those stories, all you ever see is, oh yeah, Steve Jobs was really smart. He was really successful. He was worth like a hundred million dollars by the time he was thirty or whatever it is. But it's like, that's really not the story. And so what you're doing with your podcast is, is really beautiful and wonderful because, and I know we are going to talk about failures, as you said, I think that's a really healthy way to think about people's stories. I think we look at what people did right.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:22Jay Shetty?

  But we don't look at where things went wrong.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  Exactly. We look at their CVs. Your first failure

• 36:27Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  is about when you were seven or eight years old. Tell us what happened.

• 36:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so this failure is probably, and I really tried to think, what was the earliest failure I had? Because I think our failures as children often affect us much worse. And we often, obviously at that age, do not have the ability to process and say, this is part of my path. Like, obviously I did not have that perspective. So, yeah, I was around seven or eight years old in primary school in London. And we used to have, something my school did that was beautiful is we would celebrate every culture. And so there would always be a celebration of everyone's religious holidays and all of this kind of stuff in primary school, which I really appreciated. I think it was a great education in that sense. So this one was an assembly where I was going to have to sing something in my mother tongue.

• 37:16Jay Shetty?

  And I was going to have to not only read, but sing in a language that not many people in my school recognized. And I was dressed in traditional Indian clothing. Now, I was overweight as a kid and the clothes didn't quite fit right. I didn't necessarily look good in them. But my mother was hoping that I was representing my culture and it would be a really proud moment. And I went out onto the stage at school, there are around, I don't know, four hundred people in the assembly hall. And everyone pretty much started laughing or giggling or from the moment I walked out because I just didn't look like I fit in that day and I looked different to how I usually looked.

• 37:59Jay Shetty?

  I then started to sing, I've never had a good singing voice, I don't sing till this day, I won't even do karaoke, I have a terrible voice. I then start to sing and everyone just is in stitches, like completely laughing because not only am I singing, I'm singing in a language they don't recognise. All the kids start laughing, even some of the teachers were laughing. And then I forget the words because now I'm distracted by everyone else's laugh and, you know, pointing and whatever else they're doing. That I look down at my piece of paper that I'm holding to try and remember the lines and I can no longer read the lines because my tears have smudged the words. And so now I've forgotten the words and I can't read them and I know I'm crying and now everyone's laughing even more because I'm crying.

• 38:44Jay Shetty?

  And so my teacher now walks on stage to comfort me, she puts her arm around me and walks me off stage and now everyone's laughing even more because I've had to be comforted off stage. This was my first ever experience of public performance or public speaking. I felt like such a failure that day because for the rest of the day, people were pointing, laughing. I felt like I'd let my mum down because I hadn't represented my culture properly. I felt like I'd let my teachers down because they trusted me to go on stage. I felt like I'd let my friends down because obviously I was the laughing stock of the school. I'd forgotten the words and I felt like a failure that day because in all sense of the word, it was a failure.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Jay, I can't, I, I actually, I find stories like that so heartbreaking. The powerlessness of being a child and wanting to make your parents proud and your culture proud.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  The fact that you don't do karaoke to this day, is that because of this?

• 39:42Jay Shetty?

  No, no, no, I'm just, I have done karaoke, I like, I would never do a solo karaoke, let's say that.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:46Jay Shetty?

  I, I, no, no, I'm just, I'm being honest in the sense that I've never felt I've had a good singing voice. I definitely don't have a good singing voice, I'm very okay with that, I have no, no trauma attached to having a good singing voice. Otherwise I'd be a singer. No, I, I think more so it was at that time, this feeling of just, I don't know if I ever want to go back on stage ever again, you know, that kind of feeling of I don't think I'll ever, ever step back in front of a group of people again. And usually when I tell that story, not between me and you, but if I share it on stage, usually people are laughing in the audience too. And so it's really nice to have your compassion and empathy for a change. It was my, my, my inner child definitely needed that, yeah.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Was there an element of not fitting in that you were fearful of at that time?

• 40:27Jay Shetty?

  Definitely, I think that I was one of the few Indian people in my primary school. And so people already didn't know Indian people. I was already bullied for having smelly food sometimes in school or things like that because.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  And you're thirty five, aren't you?

• 40:40Jay Shetty?

  I'm thirty five now, yeah, I'm thirty five right now. So there was that, there was not, yeah, not being open to, obviously Hindu dress and Indian clothing and, and then of course me being overweight on top of all of that, it didn't, so there was, you know, I can understand it too. I think it's really interesting, you know, kids are fascinating because they're adorable and beautiful and at the same time, so many of us do things as kids that we would never do as adults. And so it's always interesting, but I have a lot of empathy and compassion, even just for all the kids in the room, because it was just new to them. What did they know? They didn't, they weren't educated in it, they didn't understand. As kids, you never get told to encourage others or support others. You may say be friends with that person, but I don't think we, we teach our kids to be encouraging and supportive and accepting.

• 41:20Jay Shetty?

  I don't think you hear about those words as a kid, at least I didn't even, even though my parents loved me, I don't think I heard those words and said, oh, when you see another kid do something difficult, encourage them. I don't think I was ever told that by anyone, by my teachers either. So I also have a lot of compassion and empathy for the fact that you have to train these ideas, we have to teach people these things, they're not, I think we assume that everyone should just be nice to each other, but why would they if they've never heard that?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  I'm not saying that this incident in and of itself had this effect, but do you think you ended up feeling unlovable at a time in your life?

• 41:54Jay Shetty?

  I think that there's another experience that happened a few years after that made me feel not unlovable. I've never felt unlovable because my mum's love has pierced through every pressure layer or whatever else exists. I think my mum has loved me so deeply that I feel so safe in a deep sense, that I don't think I've ever thought myself to be unlovable, but I have thought myself to be unlikable or unwanted or unattractive. And I think those are very different things and I think we often mesh them all into one, but they're not. And so I remember at ten, eleven years old, end of primary school, all of the boys in

• 42:36Jay Shetty?

  school had their first crush around that age and we all had the same first crush at school. There was this one girl at school that everyone had a crush on and no one told her because we were all scared, we didn't want her to know. You know, ten years old, what do you know? And I walked in late to school one day, I think I had a doctor's appointment or I was running late or something like that. And I walked in and everyone was again pointing and laughing at me and I was like, oh gosh, what's going on? And then one of my friends sent me a note and I opened up the note and it said, she knows. And I was like, she knows what? And then I realised that everyone in the school, the girls and the boys have all told this girl that I'm into her and that I'm the only person in the class that has a crush on her. And then for the rest of the day in the playground, all these girls stood behind the goal, I

• 43:21Jay Shetty?

  was only a goalkeeper, I was only allowed to be a goalkeeper because I wasn't very athletic growing up. And all the girls stood behind the goal and they kept shouting out, she's out of your league, I can't believe you thought you could be with her, you're so fat, you know, all these words. And I think that was more that feeling of I'm unlikable or I'm unattractive or. I'm not attractive to the opposite sex, et cetera, and all of that. And I think when, in my teens, when I became more athletic and I played sport and I felt like I became more cool, in my teens, I think that's where I really sought validation from the opposite sex, where I really wanted the women I dated to really believe that I was a good guy and I was amazing and I was attractive. And I think my teens, I spent a lot of time trying to understand, I wanted to be liked and validated. I didn't even want to be loved.

• 44:05Jay Shetty?

  And I think a lot of us accept the currency of validation and attention as love. Will take attention and validation and will even believe that it's love, but it isn't. Attention and validation isn't love. It's a form of liking and attraction. Love is far more deeper. Love is full of care, it's full of character, it's full of commitment, it's full of support. And so I think I, in my teens, was looking more for attention and validation than I was for love, even though it was under the guise of love.

• 44:39Jay Shetty?

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• 45:21Jay Shetty?

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• 45:56Jay Shetty?

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• 46:16Speaker 01

  How do you see fame fitting in with what you've just said there? Because I think the reason that many people seek fame and then the reason why it's harmful for them is because they are yearning that validation and mistaking it for love. And actually, it's pretty hollow, I understand. But you are globally famous. You have celebrity best friends. You are highly successful, extremely handsome. I suppose what I'm asking is, how do you protect yourself against being drawn in by that?

• 46:51Jay Shetty?

  So I think I got really fortunate because the monk experience is a masterclass in detachment. And I'm not saying that I have complete detachment or that I am immune to any of the things you just mentioned. But I believe I have a masterclass training in how to deal with it. So it's not credit to me or who I am. It's credit to this very special experience I had. And so what was really interesting is, when I went to the monastery, initially I sought the validation of the monks.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:21Jay Shetty?

  Because we're always seeking validation, right? We start by seeking validation of our parents, then our teachers, then people we're attracted to. We literally keep just projecting our desire for validation onto different people. So I even went and projected on the monks. The interesting thing was, the monks were the first people not to validate it back or to reject it, right? So when you are attracted to someone and you want them to validate you, they either validate you or they reject you. The monks don't validate you and they don't reject you. They train you on how to deal with that. They teach you on how to validate yourself. And so during my time as a monk, I started to learn that the deepest form of validation was validating myself in becoming the person who I wanted to be. If I was becoming the person I wanted to be,

• 48:03Jay Shetty?

  that was the best validation and the only person who could tell me that was me. And so I really got to a place during my time in the monastery where I was very comfortable with who I'd become. I was very honest about my values. I was okay with those. I was accepting of those. And I didn't need someone else to agree or disagree to make me feel better or worse about them. Not that I finished it or mastered it. I'm saying it felt real. That idea felt tangible to me. And I actually remember around that time, I organized a charity event when I left. And I remember two very distinct experiences where before my time in the monastery, if I was leading a project and people were criticizing me, I took that to heart.

• 48:47Jay Shetty?

  And I remember after the monastery, when I organized this event, I got a lot of people congratulating me. And it was really interesting because the same people that criticized me were the same people that were congratulating me. And I remember having a very deep, profound moment in myself that day and saying to myself, I can't let either dictate the course of my life because people will change their mind at the drop of a hat. And I can't let criticism or celebration dictate my values or the course of my life. Again, this is something that's tested every day. It's not something that I've made peace with and I'm done and I've mastered it. It's something I'm constantly doing. So I'd say that now,

• 49:28Jay Shetty?

  because I've been doing my purpose for so many years, like I feel like I've been living the same purpose without success. I lived doing what I do today for 10 years before it ever became noticed. It's been noticed in the last six to seven years, but I've been doing it for 10 years before that. So this has been like a 17 year journey. Doing something you love for 10 years and not being noticed for it by more than 10, 20, maybe 50 people is a beautiful training ground because you do it for the love of it. And so today I still do it for the love of it because that's all I've ever known. I've done it for so long when I wasn't successful. And then at the same time, when you get tempted by fame and you get tempted by pride and ego, which comes naturally to any one of us who's in a human body and has a human mind.

• 50:10Jay Shetty?

  It's really beautiful to be married and be humbled by your wife in in very beautiful ways, not in judgmental or critical ways, but out of love. And I feel that my wife has been an incredibly grounding force because I think as I became more externally successful, I metaphorically held up my achievements to my wife, metaphorically, not not physically. And I said, love me for this. Look what I just achieved. Love me for this. Look how cool I am. Look how amazing I am. Love me for this. Look at my bestseller list. Love me for this. Look how many views I got. Love me for this. Look at how well my podcast is doing. Love me for this. And every time I asked for that from my wife, she didn't love me more for that or less for that. She's only ever loved me for who I am.

• 50:55Jay Shetty?

  And I think that if my wife had loved me for what I achieved, I think I would have started loving myself for my achievements. But because my wife loves me for who I am, I think I'm constantly reminded to love myself for who I am, because that's what she values and that reminds me of what to value in myself. And that's the beauty of a good relationship where what someone values in you can actually be a beautiful thing. I also spend a lot of time, sorry, I know it's a long answer, but there's just so much.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:22Jay Shetty?

  I also spend a lot of time meditating on irrelevance and insignificance. And I recognize the inevitability of everyone's irrelevance and insignificance at some point in their life. There is no one in the world who has held the same level of significance for their entire life and when they finally die and leave the planet. So why would I believe that that would be any different from me? There will be a day when I will be absolutely irrelevant and insignificant, and I have made peace with that now. If I can make peace with that now, then I'll make peace with it then. But if there's a part of me that believes that I have to be significant forever or relevant forever, then I'm going to feel a lot of pain when that day comes. And my monk training is to detach myself before the day comes,

• 52:06Jay Shetty?

  uh, not to wait for the moment when it inevitably will come and then deal with it then. We'd often talk about how, you know, living as a monk, and this is a very popular Zen teaching. It's not not my words, but life is not about learning to live. It's learning how to die because you're preparing for the inevitable. And so I take that to be, well, sure, death is inevitable, but there's lots of other things that are inevitable. And preparing for those early on mentally and emotionally sets you up for success. So I'm making peace with that now. The friends that I have are genuine friends. I don't spend time with them because they're famous, or even if that's the context we met in. I have some really beautiful relationships with people in the same way as I would count my best friends from London that have been my friends for my whole life, who are the people I still speak to the most.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Your videographer.

• 52:52Jay Shetty?

  My videographer. I've known my videographer since I was fourteen, so twenty years nearly. He's been my videographer for seven years, whenever I'm in London. But I think it's a daily practice. I don't think it's something you achieve. I think I have to think about these things every day. And I have to constantly detach and disconnect myself because it's so easy to get swept up. And so I'm very vigilant of that. It's something I'm very cautious of. And I think the day I stop becoming cautious will be the day that I lose it.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  I really appreciate your honesty. Thank you. Let's get on to your second failure, which is that when you left the monastery, you reapplied for jobs in consulting and banking.

• 53:30Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  And what happened?

• 53:31Jay Shetty?

  So leaving the monastery felt like a failure because since I was eighteen years old, that became my dream. And I fought so hard to get there. I had to first get through being eighteen to twenty-one without thinking about settling down or moving into a job. I had to turn down a corporate job offer, had to break up with girlfriends at the time, I had to leave my friends and family behind. So many of my extended family said to me, you're brainwashed, you're wasting your parents' education, you're letting your parents down, you're never going to get married again, you're never going to get a job again. Like, this is what I heard before I became a monk. And it's really interesting to me today because so many people say to me, they're like, Jay, you have such a cool story, and maybe you did it for the story. I even get

• 54:13Jay Shetty?

  some of that criticism sometimes, where it's like, oh, Jay, like, you know, did you just become a monk so that one day you could do all this? And I'm just like, I'm like, I don't think you understand how uncool it was for me to become a monk. It's something, hopefully, that I've made more culturally interesting. But at the time, it's like everyone in my life looked to me as I was weird. Like, why would you do that? Everyone's going to work for a company, and they're in a relationship, they're thinking about having fun, and you're thinking about becoming a monk? And so I left with a lot of negativity surrounding the decision. But I felt really confident in it. And then when I came back, I came back to that noise. So everyone's like, I told you so, I knew you wouldn't make it. Look, no one's going to give you a job now. You're never going to get married again. Look at all your friends. They're promoted. Did you know so and so just got promoted?

• 54:56Jay Shetty?

  Did you know so and so just moved into a new flat? Did you know that so and so is about to get engaged? Did you know so and so is making this much money now? You're twenty six years old without a job and eighteen thousand pounds in debt. It was a really depressive moment, depressive because I'd felt like I failed at being a monk, which was my dream, which really felt like I'd failed at marriage because I felt like I got married to being a monk. And it felt like a divorce, like it really felt like a breakup. And it was the lowest point of my life because I felt that was it. I felt like I'd made it and I felt like I'd found something. Only for me to realise that wasn't my path and that's really hard, like to think something's your path. And then realise it's not, that's so challenging.

• 55:38Jay Shetty?

  And I know a lot of people who tried to become athletes and then they had an injury and then they couldn't pursue it. That stuff really messes with your mind. And then when I came back, I'm coming back to all this stress and pressure and these. And they're right because I'm applying to forty companies. I'm writing individual CVs, resumes, cover letters. I'm a first class honours degree, straight A student. I have nothing lacking on my resume, apart from I've been a monk for three years. And no one will even give me an interview in London. Like I won't even get through, I'll just get the automatic response that says your application's not going further. So now everything everyone's saying is true. Three years ago or four years ago when I became a monk, it wasn't true, now it's true. Now it's real. And that feels like a massive failure because now I'm going, not only did I fail at becoming a monk,

• 56:23Jay Shetty?

  I now can't even reintegrate into society. And now I'm behind, this idea of I've fallen behind and I've got debts to pay. My parents are not well off, my parents have been wonderful in supporting me, let me move in again. But now I feel like a failure in my parents' eyes, even though they didn't make me feel that way. I felt like a failure in my extended family's eyes, who definitely had that rhetoric. I felt like a failure in my friends' eyes because I hadn't followed through and now they were ahead. And I felt like a failure in my career because I couldn't get a job. And so that was definitely one of the lowest moments in my life, not the lowest, it's the one before the lowest, so yeah.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  What's the lowest?

• 57:03Jay Shetty?

  The lowest was, I have this really big high in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen when my videos first get noticed. I moved to New York because Ariana Huffington sees my content and I move over there and she wants me to come there and work as HuffPost. The day I get there, she leaves to start a new company called Thrives. And she's amazing. I love Ariana. I'm still very good friends with her. But it took so long to get my visa that it never quite worked. So I wasn't at Hufpost for very long. And I ended up being in the US in a new city, four months away from being broke. And thirty days left on my visa, otherwise I'd have to move back to London. And that's the most stress and pressure I've ever felt.

• 57:45Jay Shetty?

  I don't count that as a failure because there wasn't really a failure there. It was just a situation, hence why I didn't include it. But it was just a really stressful position to be in where I just got married. We're in a new city. I've got four months away to pay for rent and groceries and then I'm out of money. And I have thirty days to renew my visa, which I can't afford and I don't know how to get a lawyer and I don't understand the process. And so that was the most stress and pressure I ever felt, more than even coming back from being a monk. And it was after that, so it felt even harder, but yeah.

• 58:18Speaker 01

  So just rewinding a little bit, you got rejected from over forty companies, is that right?

• 58:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  Before you even got an interview?

• 58:24Jay Shetty?

  Before I got an interview, yeah, that's right. So all the normal, all the financial companies, consulting companies, like just any professional services company in London that I was applying to jobs for that were not out of my education, but because of my age, yeah, were saying no.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Finally, you do get a job at Accenture.

• 58:41Jay Shetty?

  So grateful. We'll never be more grateful. When I got that call back to the, when I got the call for the first interview, I was like, I'm gonna be the best interviewee of all time. And then when I got called back, because it's like a three or four stage interview, it's not like a one and done. Got through to the first part. When I got through to the second part, I was like, okay, this could be real. Got through to the third part and I think, yeah, three or four, something like that. Yes.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  And while you were there, you started making these videos which were helping employees with their mental health, is that right?

• 59:08Jay Shetty?

  So I didn't make videos, but you know, when you join a new company, at least I loved how Accenture did it. They had a great onboarding practice and, you know, really, really good culture and how they set us up for success. One of the questions was, what's an interesting fact about yourself? My interesting fact was I used to be a monk and I can teach meditation. And so my colleagues would come up to me and be like, that's weird, or that's really interesting, like people who have different views. And so I started teaching meditation and mindfulness classes at Accenture in my lunch breaks, after work, at a client office. And literally two people would turn up or three people would turn up and I loved it because I was getting to do what I loved. And there were people who wanted to learn. And I started to do this and I set up meditation Mondays and people at the company would meditate at the start of a meeting.

• 59:52Jay Shetty?

  And one of the managing directors took a real liking to that work that I was doing because they were really prioritizing mental health. This is end of 2013 in London, really prioritizing mental health at the company, which was incredible to see. And she said to me, she said, Jay, I'd love for you to teach a session like this to your colleagues at the summer event, the annual event, and there'll be a thousand of your colleagues there. You'll be speaking on stage at Twickenham Rugby Stadium and would you want to do this? And I was just like, this is unbelievable. Like, what an amazing opportunity. And then Gillie Bryant, grateful to her till this day for giving me that opportunity. And so I went there that day and gave this presentation and I was so stressed out because

• 1:00:34Jay Shetty?

  I was in between the CEO of the company and Will Greenwood, who won the Rugby World Cup, and he was invited as a guest speaker. I'm just an employee at this point.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you have the memories of the Diwali performance.

• 1:00:45Jay Shetty?

  Totally. And I've done a lot of speaking in between, but not to that size. I've done a ton of talks and presentations in between, but not to that scale. But I'm sitting there the whole time going, God, I'm not Will Greenwood, I'm not Ollie Benzakri, who was our CEO at the time. I was like, I'm not those people. Like, what do I do? What do I do? What do I do? And then I said to myself, I remember, I've just got to be myself, like, you know, I've just got to be myself authentically and everything will be okay. And then after that presentation, Gillie came up to me and she said, I've never seen a group of millennials be that present with anyone else on stage or be that silent. It was pin drop and you could, she was like, you couldn't hear a thing. And that day I started, from that day, I started teaching meditation across the whole company. And so that was like a real moment of just.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  Incredible.

• 1:01:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  It's so.

• 1:01:30Jay Shetty?

  Relief.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  I also want to ask you, I want to take you back to New York and those four months where you're, four months from going broke. And what happened next? Because it feels to me that your purpose was calling to you. It was almost dragging you through.

• 1:01:43Jay Shetty?

  Yep.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  It was just this fateful light.

• 1:01:47Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  That was guiding you.

• 1:01:48Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yeah. It felt like another thing that had gone wrong, but it actually was an opening. I think if that moment never came, maybe I would have just continued making videos on the side or it would have been a nice hobby. And by the way, I would have been really happy with that because at that time I didn't know what was possible. So I would have happily had a hobby of giving talks on the evenings and making videos on the weekends. I wouldn't have any issue with that. One of my mentors, Thomas Power, who lives in London, who was part of training us at Accenture on social media, he doesn't work at Accenture, but Accenture had brought him in. And he often would say to me, he said, Jay, you realize your potential when you're in pain. He said, that's when you'll realize your potential. He said, you will never realize your potential when things are going well.

• 1:02:30Jay Shetty?

  And I used to always be like, I'm proactive. Like, when you're proactive, you always know your potential. And those four months of being broke, like being away from being broke and having nothing and being married newly, that made me realize how much my, how much potential I had because I'd never been under that much pain. And so I got the most disciplined I'd ever got. I got the most focused I'd ever got. I sent probably like a thousand emails in that first week, letting people know what I could do for them. I would edit videos if they needed it. I could make training videos for their company if they needed it. I would. I was doing anything just to survive, just to live. But it brought this energy out in me that I didn't even know I had, which was this relentless, resilient consistency and pursuit of excellence that

• 1:03:11Jay Shetty?

  until that point was not really realized. And now I live off that energy. Like, I think it's been the same energy that's fueled so many of the last few years, which is really beautiful. It's almost like you discover a gear you didn't know you had. And now I know which gear I can get to. And that's a really special, special thing that I got from that experience.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Your final failure goes back to when you were eighteen and you were leading a team and someone gave you some advice.

• 1:03:38Jay Shetty?

  Oh, gosh, yeah. I was leading a community youth group that organized retreats and events. And we'd taken a group of students to Italy. And I was new to this and I was new to management and new to leadership. But I was getting a lot of criticism from the senior leaders in the youth group. It wasn't the most encouraging atmosphere. And a lot of people were saying to me like, oh, you're not a good manager. You're not a good leader. I'm eighteen years old. I have no idea what management and leadership even mean. And I'm getting a lot of criticism. And to me, they're the ones who did this before, so they must know. Again, this idea that they're an authority, they, they must know more than me. So I'm listening very carefully. And one of them said to me, they said, you know, Jay, you're not very assertive.

• 1:04:22Jay Shetty?

  You're like not a very assertive person. That's why you'll never be a good manager, you'll never be a good leader. And really what they were saying is Jay, you're not tough enough. And then they went on to say that they say you're not tough enough. You're not, you're not like, you don't know how to delegate and tell people what to do. And so people will never listen to you. And I've never been that way because I think I've always been loved by my mom in such a sweet, compassionate, caring way that I I consider my leadership style today to be that way. I can be assertive for sure. I've had to learn to be assertive, but I think at that time I didn't know the balance between affectionate and assertive. And I think I was very out of character with someone. For someone who would have thought that Jay's quite a gentle person, he's, you know,

• 1:05:05Jay Shetty?

  even if he's saying something that's hard to swallow, it would be very thoughtfully shared. And I think I was very out of character with one of my team members. And not only did I hurt him so much that he didn't talk to me for the rest of the retreat. He never has till this day has never talked to me ever again. I called him, I left messages, I asked people to talk to him. I tried anything possible to get through to him after we came back from the retreat, realising I'd made a horrible mistake. And he never got back to me, never replied, never messaged back. And it was a really tough experience because I, it was really upsetting because that wasn't me.

• 1:05:46Jay Shetty?

  And and I knew that it probably hurt him more because it wasn't me. It was so out of character. And it was just, you know, I would have said to him something along the lines of like, oh, you've you've been really unorganised. You haven't been thinking about it. We need your help. You're not working hard enough. Like, it was something to those, that extent. It wasn't, I didn't swear at him or I wasn't rude. It would, you know, it was it was along the lines of just being quite forceful when that wasn't who I was. And that's always been a reminder to me of don't act out of character for anyone. And don't just trust someone knows better than you, especially when it comes to people. Lead with your heart, lead with what you know best. And yeah, that failure is a tough one because it's hard when you can't turn it around. I think when most people tell their failure stories, it's conveniently stuff that also works out.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yes, it can be a humble brag.

• 1:06:32Jay Shetty?

  It can be a humble brag, but that one's like, there's no brag.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  This is a loss.

• 1:06:35Jay Shetty?

  There's no brag because I don't now have a relationship with him. It's not like, oh no, we're best friends and we just went out for drinks yesterday. It's like, I still hasn't talked to him. I've obviously stopped pursuing an apology after probably maybe six months. I think it was six months of time that I let go by where I was really pursuing him and trying to get through to him through different people. And then I just said, okay, you know what? I was wrong. I'll take it as a moment of, you know, there's that famous quote that says that the best apology is changed behaviour. I don't know who said it, but it's a beautiful thought and I really liked that statement. And I thought, well, that's the only way I can forgive myself and that's the only way that I can improve for the future is is change behaviour. And my main change behaviour is don't listen to anyone else just because you think they know a bit more than you and do something out of character.

• 1:07:19Speaker 01

  And act in alignment with your soul values.

• 1:07:22Jay Shetty?

  Yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like even till this day, I just, I wouldn't talk to anyone like that. It's just not how I've been raised. It's not how I've been trained by my mum. I've not, you know, that's not who I am and I don't want to act out of alignment again.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  I'd love that person to be listening to this podcast.

• 1:07:37Jay Shetty?

  I mean, that would be incredible and that would be a beautiful story. But I've also just let go of the idea that that even has to happen for closure. And I think I'd like people to think of breakups that way. I'd like people to think of endings that way, that not all endings have to have a fairy tale and not all endings have to have a magic moment. Some of them just teach us something special for the future and benefit other people. And you can't let one person's experience define the rest of your life. You just can't. And that doesn't mean I don't feel sorry. It doesn't mean I don't feel bad about it still. I mean, even talking to you about it, there's parts of me that feel guilty. But at the same time, we have to understand that difference between guilt and growth. And guilt can keep you blocked forever from growth.

• 1:08:20Jay Shetty?

  And growth is far more the healer of guilt.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so good. Understanding the difference between guilt and growth.

• 1:08:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and I and I'm more focused on growth. I'd rather become better and be better and choose better moving forward. Then make myself feel bad and criticize myself and judge myself to feel guilty. And I think often we stay in that place of like. I'm gonna criticize myself, I'm gonna judge myself, I'm gonna make myself feel guilty because somehow that makes me feel better that I feel bad about it.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:08:48Jay Shetty?

  But actually, growth is me really saying that I feel bad about it because I'm choosing to become better now for the future.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Jay Shetty, I could talk to you for hours.

• 1:08:57Jay Shetty?

  I can talk to you.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  I really good. This has been an education in enlightenment. I'm so grateful to you for how you are in the world. For the books that you write, for taking the time to talk to me and for ensuring that I'll never watch The Notebook in the same way again.

• 1:09:12Jay Shetty?

  Well, I want to thank you because I I really, and I and I don't just say this, I say this when I feel it and. There's an energy that you create in this room. There's a space, there's a tone of your voice, there's a presence in your questioning. And I really love observing all these like very micro moments and sometimes I feel that way and I feel. I've gone inward to answer a question versus going outward. And I felt like that today in this in your presence and. In your space and the wonderful atmosphere you've created. I just wanted to acknowledge that because. Yeah, if anything's been good in this conversation, it's because you can be in a room sometimes and you can feel that there's so much space and there's so much. Pace and this room feels so slow right now and it feels so present and it feels so.

• 1:09:53Jay Shetty?

  There's just like a beauty in this room that, you know, and that's your energy. So you're energetically great, strategically great and. I'm not getting paid for this.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  Thank you. I'll buy your book.

• 1:10:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I really, I really appreciate you. Thank you.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

• 1:10:10Jay Shetty?

  Thank you.

• 1:10:20Jay Shetty?

  When you go into a dance studio, at least one wall is usually lined with mirrors. That's because it can be really helpful to see ourselves. So we can notice our missteps, yes, but just as important, so we can also see what we're doing well. And mirroring the positive is also something we can do for one another. I'll explain. The next seven minutes are about your relationships and how a little reflection can help spread the light. I'm Jay Shetty, welcome to the Daily Jay. Now, as per usual, let's pause to get centered with three deep breaths.

• 1:11:04Jay Shetty?

  Inhaling and exhaling. Arriving and settling. Connecting with this moment. And dropping in. It was a typical afternoon on a typical day. My friend was standing in line at a regular neighborhood grocery store, waiting to check out. As usual, she stepped up to the cashier and smiled, and the cashier smiled back. Then, something surprising happened. You know, the cashier said to my friend,

• 1:11:49Jay Shetty?

  "I'm always so happy to see you in my line." "Really?" my friend said. "Why is that?" "Well," the cashier replied, "it's just that you're always so friendly and it really brightens my day." My friend was taken aback. She had no idea. But my friend isn't the focus of this story. It's the cashier. Because she did something that's so simple, but actually pretty rare. She reflected my friend's light back to her.

• 1:12:25Jay Shetty?

  Writer Edith Wharton once said, "There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it." Most of the time, we try to be the candle. We do whatever we can to spread our own light. Yet, there's an easy and powerful way we can do even more: we can also be the mirror. When my friend had that exchange with the cashier, it shifted something inside her. Suddenly, she saw herself as a person who could improve someone else's day just by being herself. This is how mirroring magnifies. It encourages people to lean into the good they're doing

• 1:13:09Jay Shetty?

  and amplify their positive traits. The truth is, everyone has a light inside them. But when you see it, how often do you acknowledge it? Maybe your mother always helps you feel better when you're stressed. Maybe there's a colleague whose consistent compassion makes your experience at work that much better. Maybe you think back to how a certain teacher's mentorship made a huge impact on your life. But have you ever told them? Have you ever held up that mirror and helped them see that about themselves? We often underestimate the impact we have on other people. But your appreciative words and actions

• 1:13:54Jay Shetty?

  have the power to make someone's day, even to change their life. And it causes their light to spread. It doesn't take much, plus it feels really good to do it. And so your light amps up too. Now, I'm not suggesting that you be insincere or over the top, but the next time you catch a glimpse of someone else's brightness, consider reflecting it back to them. Because if each of us could help others shine a little bit more, ultimately, we might be able to light up the whole world. On that note, let's do a short meditation

• 1:14:36Jay Shetty?

  and then reflect on how you can spread the light. So first, get comfortable wherever you are. Maybe stretching your neck or shaking out some tension.

• 1:14:52Jay Shetty?

  Closing your eyes, if that feels good, and giving your mind permission to embrace a sense of calm.

• 1:15:04Jay Shetty?

  Beginning to notice your breath here, your natural breath, as it flows in and out.

• 1:15:17Jay Shetty?

  No force,

• 1:15:20Jay Shetty?

  no fight, simply observing your body, doing the simplest of acts. Being and breathing.

• 1:15:35Jay Shetty?

  Gently resting your attention there.

• 1:15:42Jay Shetty?

  If your mind ever starts to wonder, well, that's to be expected, considering you're human and all. Just see if you can catch it before it drifts too far away

• 1:16:00Jay Shetty?

  and bring your awareness back to your breath.

• 1:16:10Jay Shetty?

  In and out.

• 1:16:15Jay Shetty?

  Rise and fall.

• 1:16:21Jay Shetty?

  In your own time,

• 1:16:24Jay Shetty?

  at your own pace.

• 1:16:31Jay Shetty?

  Keep breathing

• 1:16:34Jay Shetty?

  and keep tuning in.

• 1:16:43Jay Shetty?

  And now, let's open it up. Think about someone in your life who inspires, comforts, or supports you.

• 1:16:56Jay Shetty?

  What about them do you find motivating or uplifting?

• 1:17:05Jay Shetty?

  How can you mirror their light?

• 1:17:11Jay Shetty?

  Can you commit to getting in touch with them today?

• 1:17:18Jay Shetty?

  Now, if you're looking for another way to spread the light, you can go ahead and share this message with a friend. I'm so grateful for your energy and focus here. I'll see you tomorrow.

• 1:17:33Speaker 02

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