4 Steps to Build Emotional Maturity & Make Relationships Last (Tom Bilyeu Interviews Jay)

Do you like spending time alone or by yourself? How does alone time help clear your mind and fuel positive thoughts? Today, I am excited to share a conversation I had with Tom Bilyeu in his podcast, Impact Theory, where he interviews me about my profound journey through solitude, relationships, and self-love. We kick things off by shedding light on the wisdom found in ancient texts like the Vedas, which many monks study in solitude. It's a reminder that spending time alone is not a sign of weakness; in fact, it can be a powerful tool for personal growth. I share the incredible benefits of allocating just one hour a week to being alone with your thoughts, a practice that can transform your life. As we venture further into this enlightening conversation, we discuss the importance of dealing with life's challenges, share insights on daily meditation, and the complexities of loneliness and why it's essential to feel seen, heard, and understood in our relationships. With heartfelt anecdotes and wisdom, we explore the concept of love, self-worth, and the hard work required for genuine, lasting relationships. In this interview, you’ll learn: How to be comfortable with being alone How to sit with your inner thoughts How to prepare for love The tips to finding true love How to make relationships last The impotence valuing self-worth How to build lasting trust on others How to maintain a successful marriage Remember, relationships are just one part of our life's journey, and it's up to us to make it a meaningful and fulfilling one. Let’s navigate the complexities of life and relationships with wisdom and love. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 00:35 Jay explains the vedas that most monks study in solitude 03:34 Loneliness is not the enemy while being alone is not a weakness 08:12 The benefits of allocating an hour a week to alone time 14:12 “This bad thing happened, and now what?” 17:31 Daily meditation has varying positive effects on people 18:47 Why do people struggle with being alone with their thoughts? 23:51 Allow yourself to have positive distractions and random thoughts 27:44 Loneliness is when you don’t feel seen, heard, or understood 30:46 How do you prepare for love? 34:01 Jay shares an unrecorded interview with his mom 35:32 “When you’ve experienced your strength, no one can make you feel weak.” 37:35 Why you should not turn to others to validate your self worth 38:59 Can doing hard things make life easier? 43:11 The absence of a good role model and proper tools can lead to making bad choices 45:15 On parenthood: Would you intervene or allow kids to learn about themselves? 49:06 Top 3 things that can help develop a successful relationship 54:38 Why do people select the wrong partner? 57:26 Jay talks about the four levels of trust we have for relationships 01:00:13 The desperation to be loved makes us give away trust so easily 01:02:20 True, genuine love takes hard work 01:05:01 How can you keep your marriage sacred and successful? 01:14:12 How to grow the relationship you’re currently in and in the right way 01:17:05 Jay explains the consciousness of the human soul 01:19:42 A relationship isn’t everything, it is not the be-all and end-all of your journey 01:22:55 Would you live your life in a hypothesis? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:43Jay Shetty?

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

• 1:26Jay Shetty?

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• 2:01Jay Shetty?

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

• 2:45Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and 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 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. When we're left alone to ourselves, we hear things that we may not be comfortable with. "I don't like where my life is going." "I'm not happy with how I look." "Everyone else is doing better than me." "Oh, they just got proposed to and I'm still alone." All those thoughts get space to actually be heard,

• 3:29Jay Shetty?

  whereas when you're scrolling, it's like, "Oh, they got proposed." "Oh, cute bunny." "Oh, like, you're not even listening, you're scrolling away thoughts."

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Tell me, what is the secret that you've learned from monks on how to master yourself?

• 3:49Jay Shetty?

  I think one of the first things that I'd suggest and explain to people is that when I lived as a monk, a lot of the wisdom that we studied and the eastern literatures that we spent time excavating. Those were not aimed at monks, those were just aimed at humanity.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  When they were written.

• 4:06Jay Shetty?

  When they were written, they weren't.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Talking about the Vedas?

• 4:08Jay Shetty?

  Correct.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  What are the Vedas exactly?

• 4:10Jay Shetty?

  So the Vedas are five thousand year old texts that literally talk about everything from Ayurveda, which is the science of health. So Veda means wisdom or science of. And so Ayurveda is the science of life, the science of health. Uh, you have uh, their own version of Vastavada, which is closest to Feng Shui. So like how to design your home, how to set up different things around your home for purposeful aesthetics. Uh, you have the science of warfare in the Vedas.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 4:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so there's a whole text dedicated to that.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  How do you reconcile that?

• 4:46Jay Shetty?

  You reconcile that in the sense of there's knowledge and wisdom on how to properly do each aspect with integrity, with purpose, from a point of protection, recognizing, I think me and you can probably vibe with this. The idea that we all want a world, I think we'd all like a world that has no war. But if we live in a world pretending that there is none of that, and then we're not prepared for it, that sets us up worse. And I think whether you look at that on the macro of war, or you look at on the micro of anxiety or stress or pressure, if we pretend that stress doesn't exist, it doesn't make it go away, it doesn't make it better.

• 5:29Jay Shetty?

  But being prepared for it actually allows us to potentially avoid it, potentially navigate it with more integrity and authenticity. And today I feel like when you don't have codes for difficult things in society, you see people make really bad mistakes. You see people not having a code book or a rule book on leadership. And that's what it leads to, you see people not having a code book or rule book on how to navigate war. And therefore people do what they feel like. And so I find that what the Vedas were trying to do was give you a set of code. And a set of rules and a set of limits. So that you would be more controlled, more greedless, more negative desireless

• 6:14Jay Shetty?

  in those situations, so that you wouldn't be pulled into something by your ego. But you could actually go back to something that would help you get there to get the best result for people and humanity. And I think that's what's so special about the Vedas. That ultimately it's dedicated to uplifting humanity through each of these different things that we experience in life.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  It was really interesting to hear you talk about the part in, I think it was in the Vedas, about the guy who has to prepare for war and you're talking about even good people have to learn how to fight. I found that really interesting, but the book starts with solitude.

• 6:45Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Why solitude? Because that was the part where I was like, okay, here's where the monk part is coming into this. And I think it's pretty important for people to be able to be alone before they try to get into a relationship.

• 6:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I think we've created this feeling in society where loneliness is the enemy. Like being alone is seen as a weakness. So when someone goes to school and throws a birthday party and not many people show up, you're unpopular. Whereas if lots of people showed up, you were really important, you were significant.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  It'd be brutal. I can think of few things that would be more devastating to a kid than no one showing up to your birthday party.

• 7:24Jay Shetty?

  Exactly. And that's how it's framed, that's how it's talked about. And then the next thing is like if you-

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Would you tell your kids if they, if they went to have a birthday party and nobody showed up today, would you really be like, hey, solitude is a good thing? Like, how would you-

• 7:38Jay Shetty?

  Well, I'm not a dad, so I can't say, but what I would say is that I would change it in the invite process. So I would ask them to only invite people that they felt really connected to, or they felt they really vibed with and wanted to celebrate their birthday with. So I think the challenge is when you're a kid, you also hand out way too many invites. So I think that's what ends up happening is that you think a good birthday party is a packed room. And even, I mean, people still feel that till they're fifty, sixty, seventy, like, that doesn't go away.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Until they're dead.

• 8:05Jay Shetty?

  Until they're dead, right? Like, you feel a good birthday party or a good event, even when people say, like, when I die, like, if there's loads of people there, that will be a thing. I think we've just programmed ourselves to believe that if we're not surrounded by people, we can't celebrate and we can't be celebrated. It has to be about scale of how many people are there. And I would say that's one measurement, but the other measurement is the depth of how well they know you. I know tons of people who threw a great birthday party at fifty. Five hundred people showed up and they felt, actually, I went, I actually, I went to a birthday party this year, it was a big birthday party. And I was speaking to the person whose party it was, and they were like, so many people invited people I didn't know to my birthday party, and they felt lonely at their own birthday party.

• 8:51Jay Shetty?

  I don't want, if I have had kids, I wouldn't want them to feel that. And even for myself, I don't want to be in that position. I'd rather have, I saw this thing on Instagram, and it was someone had posted like, it was like a ten, this is in British currency, it was like ten pence, and then one pound. And so ten pence is larger circumference than the pound, but the pound is greater in value. And so the, the caption on Instagram said that my circle has shrunk in size, but has increased in value. And I was thinking that that, to me, resembles the kind of life I would want for myself and for my children if I had them.

• 9:30Jay Shetty?

  But if I could have both, that would be amazing, obviously, but I don't know how real it is to be able to say we can have both. So I think what I'm trying to say with solitude is that if there isn't a sense that I am happy with myself, with my own company, with the thoughts that circle around in my mind, imagine how complex that is when you add another confused individual who's not happy with their thoughts, not happy with who they are, not happy with their mind. And now in a relationship, you're putting two confused people together. Why is there pain? Why is there fallout? Why is there so much disappointment in a relationship? In my opinion, and from the perspective of the eastern studies, is that

• 10:15Jay Shetty?

  because there's an internal dissatisfaction in both people that they're now bringing to each other. And so the strength of solitude is using that time. I've still not found a better solution for self-awareness than solitude. Because in solitude, it's the only place you get to hear your own voice and make sense of other people's opinions. If I'm standing in the middle of a group of a hundred people and they're all yelling their opinions at me, chances are, some of them are gonna rub off, some of them are contagious, some of them I'm gonna reject, and I don't get the space and time to make sense of what's my voice and what's noise.

• 10:57Jay Shetty?

  Whereas when I get time to myself, I get the opportunity to reflect on and introspect and go, "Do I want that thought to be mine? How does that fit into my life? How do I feel about this?" Right? You get to have that dialogue with yourself. And I feel we've lost the art of self-talk and self-talk.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Well, let's go into it. So what is that art? Like, if you put a human being in solitary confinement, you will break them in a deep and fundamental and scary way that I wouldn't have predicted. That seems very weird to me. I know it to be true, not because I've experienced it, but because you just hear it over and over and over and over. Like, if you really want to destroy the human spirit, isolate them. So how is it that we take this thing that will, on a long enough timeline, absolutely decimate you and make it something that becomes the most profound setup for self-awareness? What do you have to do in that solitude?

• 11:56Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so the first thing I'd say is that it would decimate you if you go and do it 24 hours a day. And that's not what we're recommending here, right? I'm not telling someone to 24 hours be in solitude for a year. Like, that's not my recommendation. My recommendation is, in your week... There has to be at least one hour that you spend by yourself and in that hour, you're not watching a show, you're not reading a book, you're not on your phone scrolling. So you're not distracting yourself with anything or stimulating yourself with anything external. And you're sitting there and just observing your thoughts. Now, one hour is gonna seem like a long time in the beginning, but I'm saying one hour would be great in a week. If you're starting that at ten minutes, that's brilliant, that's enough.

• 12:42Jay Shetty?

  But the goal is enough?

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Like, are you being kind? Are you trying to let people off the hook? Are you worried about people flaming you in the comments? Like, you meditate two hours a day, if I'm not mistaken. So what should people do for real?

• 12:54Jay Shetty?

  I do believe that ten minutes is a good place to start because I do feel that.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  But you shouldn't stay there?

• 12:59Jay Shetty?

  You shouldn't stay at ten minutes, it should grow. I think I look at it as like, when you do a cold plunge, right, for the first time. So the first time I did a cold plunge, I was doing it with a friend and they were, they'd been already doing it for a long time. And I didn't wanna walk out like I couldn't do it. And so I stayed in there.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Jay's in hypothermia.

• 13:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, literally. So I stayed in there for longer than I wanted to the first time I did it. So if I did it myself the first time, I think I would have been there for thirty seconds. The first time I did it for five minutes because I was in there with someone who was in this. We were fully submerged five minutes, it was great. Fully submerged up to here, right? I'm not fully submerged. And so when I look at that and I look at something that I found challenging when I did it, I was like, if someone had told me I had to be in there for ten minutes the first time I did it, I potentially would never have got in, right? And the idea that I could have started with thirty seconds and built myself up to three minutes and then built myself up to five minutes, I really do like that process. And I think you have to, and this is self-awareness again, you have to know whether you're someone who likes to be thrown in the deep end or whether you're someone who likes to build up incrementally.

• 14:01Jay Shetty?

  I'm generally someone who jumps into the deep end. So I was pushed in for five minutes and that works for me. Because for me, I'm the kind of person who needs to be pushed off to break the mental barrier to then go back and build a habit. That's my self-awareness. I became a monk in order to learn these things. I'm an extreme person, that's how I learn and build habits. But someone else goes to me, actually Jay, I like meditating for five minutes a day and it works for me and now I have confidence I can do ten minutes a day, I can do fifteen. And I love that. So I don't think it's an either or, I genuinely don't, that's not a cop-out. I think you have to know who you are. And so if I wanna learn something, I'll schedule the whole weekend. If I wanted to learn archery, I would set up archery classes for eight hours a day all weekend. I wouldn't learn it by doing archery once a week.

• 14:45Jay Shetty?

  Because I wanna figure out whether I'm deeply interested and care about this enough to actually commit to it weekly. But that's my mindset, that's who I am. So I think the first thing I'd say is ten minutes alone every week, where you sit and you just observe your thoughts. And write down every thought that comes up. This is weird.

• 15:07Jay Shetty?

  I hate this, it's boring. Oh, I can't believe Jay and Tom told me to do this, right? Like whatever else is coming up and write it down. And just become comfortable becoming aware of your thoughts. And what you'll find is that the first time you do this, it is just gonna be random noise like that. What shall I eat tonight? What's going on? It's just gonna be that stuff. It might even be, I hate this, I'm uncomfortable. This is not fun, I'm bored. Like, it will just be natural dialogue like that. What you'll find is, the next time you do it, or the next, after a couple of times that you do it, you now might start asking interesting questions. You might now start noticing a pattern of thoughts that repeats itself, like, I've just been thinking for a week about what that person said to me about how I look. Or I've been thinking about what that person said to me about

• 15:52Jay Shetty?

  something I did online, like, and it's just been in my mind and it keeps repeating itself. Now you're gonna start to find what you spend most of your time on. So studies show we have sixty to eighty thousand thoughts per day, and eighty percent of them are negative, and eighty percent of them are repetitive. So if our life is not transforming our thoughts, now if I asked you, what are you thinking about? You're a self-aware person, I'm pretty sure you could tell me on any given moment what you're thinking about. You ask most people what they're thinking about, the reaction will be an emotion, like, I'm just stressed, I've got too much on at the moment, but we can't be really clear. So what this is giving you is a clarity of what are those repeating negative thoughts? And how do we wanna change them?

• 16:33Jay Shetty?

  So that's step one, is A, even becoming aware of the thoughts. So if I ask an average person, when you wake up in the morning, what's the first thought you have? Oh, I'm tired. That's the first thought for most people. You finally made it to coffee. You add your morning coffee and you're thinking, God, I hope this coffee gets through me through the day because I'm so tired. Second time you've had the thought. You get to lunchtime, you're like, God, is it only lunchtime like? And I can't even eat lunch because I'm busy working. God, I'm so tired. You get to six P M. Maybe you've got to work an extra hour because no one finishes work at six anymore. Seven P M. You finish, you go, I'm exhausted. I can't wait to get home. You get home and somehow at eleven thirty seven P M. You get the courage to watch another episode. And you repeat the cycle, right? That's a six thoughts in the same day.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  As people get that awareness, though, what? What do you want them to do with it? Or that's not the right. What is the effective thing to do with it if you're trying to better yourself? In whatever, whether it's love or something else, but if you're trying to make progress and not just document, like, where do you go with that?

• 17:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so we want to disrupt that algorithm, right? That pattern that's been developed.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Just stop thinking negative.

• 17:38Jay Shetty?

  No, so we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is we're going to say, I am tired. We're going to take that thought. We're going to accept it. We're okay with that. We're good with that. And I'm going to sleep early tonight. So it's I'm accepting the thought that I'm feeling. I'm not going to wake up and never feel I'm tired. I mean, I wake up and feel I'm tired sometimes. But I'll literally go, I'm tired. I'm going to cancel my plans for the weekend. I've done that so many times where I've had the busiest week at work. I'm tired. I can feel that I'm stressed. I'm even getting a bit snappy with my wife. Like, I can feel all those things. And I look at my weekend and my weekend is decked with social events. And I go to Rady, I'm like, I'm about to cancel everything this weekend because I don't think I have the resilience to get through. But if I didn't give myself that and all I keep saying all week is I'm tired.

• 18:24Jay Shetty?

  Then it gets to the weekend, my friends are coming in. I'm like, God, I wish they weren't coming today. Then they leave and I'm like, oh, God, I'm so relieved that they left. I wish they would have left earlier, right? It's like all negativity just brewing. And so what I'm saying is, accept the feeling. And what are you gonna do about it?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's the question I always ask myself is, and now what?

• 18:41Jay Shetty?

  And now what?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  This bad thing has happened, and now what?

• 18:44Jay Shetty?

  And if this, then that, like, if I get tired during the week, then I will cancel my plans on the weekend. If I have weekend plans that are really important, I'll sleep early on the weeknight so that I'm ready for it. So like this week, I'm with you, I've got something every night this week. Every night there's an event, so I know that this weekend needs to be restful. I just gave myself permission to do nothing for four days. It was beautiful, because my other days have been so busy. But if I'm not having time to structure and think about these things, you're literally running from one thing to another. So I feel like people are chasing peace. People are chasing peace, not realizing that when they slow and still and make that space, they then learn how to find peace.

• 19:28Jay Shetty?

  So people are looking for peace in the meditation. That's not how it works. The meditation creates the space for you to figure out how to create peace in your life. That's, that's where the peace is.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  That's interesting. So my experience with meditation is that is where I get literal peace. So I started meditating because I was going through a really stressful period in my life, this is years ago. And it was just misery at a physical level. And so I thought, I've got to find some way to de-escalate my stress and anxiety. I've been told a thousand times by people to meditate, let me actually try this. So I try it, and at a physiological level, it just lowered my stress and my anxiety. And I was like, this is amazing. I've since tried to get, like, my wife, for instance, to use it. It doesn't hit her in the same way that it hit me. But the, the peace came for me in breathing from my diaphragm. It was so physiological.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  And it's, the older I get, the more content I create, the more I realize that I'm all tactics. Like, I just know how to translate the airy stuff into, and go do this.

• 20:30Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  And so I'm curious, do you, if you just sat and meditated, you're saying that's not gonna bring you peace. You have to solve this riddle of all these pieces bouncing around in your mind.

• 20:41Jay Shetty?

  I'll, I'll take back the categoric way I said that. So I guess what I was leaning towards is, I'm not saying that meditating itself can't be a peaceful experience, but I feel a lot of people who have stressed out, busy lives are just looking for a break from it. And it can provide that, but sometimes it can't because you're too stressed and busy. And a lot of the times, a healthy way of using meditation is to make sense of stuff so that you can go back to your life and apply it. So for some people, it is peace, and that's fair, and I agree, I do find peace in meditation. But for some people, it's giving them that break and that gap between experience and reaction. It's giving them that gap between stress and struggle

• 21:26Jay Shetty?

  that allows them to reorient themselves and say, this is what I need to switch. This is what I need to move. And I feel maybe you're someone that does that anyway and does that naturally. And then meditation can become just what it is and give you that peace. But I feel that for a lot of people, just sitting there with their thoughts is stressful. Just observing their breath.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Is it because they don't know what to do with it?

• 21:50Jay Shetty?

  I think, I think first of all, there's a big fear around it, right? It's just we're scared.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  I don't understand that at all. What are people scared of?

• 21:58Jay Shetty?

  Well, I mean, it's the same way of saying like, why are people scared of sitting in cold water? Right?

• 22:02Speaker 01

  That I get because it sucks.

• 22:04Jay Shetty?

  It does suck, but, but so what I'm saying is people that I've talked to who struggle with their thoughts make those things equal.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Because they don't know what to do with them? Like, the cold thing, it's ea- so, look, I'm gonna have a massive physiological response.

• 22:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Not fun. I'm doing it for a reason, so I do it. I can stop doing it at any time.

• 22:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 22:22Speaker 01

  But a thought doesn't have to be painful in the way that cold exposure, like even Wim Hof says, I don't like being cold. I do it because it serves a purpose.

• 22:32Jay Shetty?

  But even he says that the loss of love was more painful than any of the cold he's been through. Right? Like, that thought of losing someone you love is far greater than the pain of sitting in cold, which is his words.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Do you think that's like the background thing that's really messing with people?

• 22:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, like, I feel like, I was even talking to, I was even talking to Amar from Yes Theory. I don't know if you've, have you ever had them?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  I know Yes Theory, but I've never.

• 22:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so they do loads of crazy stuff too, right? And they've, they've gone, and so I was talking to Amar, who's one of the Yes Theory guys. They're awesome guys. And he was saying to me that, so this is really fascinating. And I love where we're going with this, by the way, and please keep going there because this, I could only have this conversation with you, so I'm very happy right now. The thing about, what Amar was saying is that, he said, the whole point of Yes Theory was saying yes to crazy stuff that we wouldn't say yes to. And that's how it started. And he goes, we got to a point where saying yes to crazy stuff was not difficult anymore. So now, when we said yes to doing something crazy next year, we actually didn't find that uncomfortable. And yesterday, it was all about seeking discomfort. So he goes, we realized we were just seeking comfort.

• 23:38Jay Shetty?

  Doing something bigger every time was just more and more comfortable. And he goes, actually, what's most uncomfortable for me right now is to sit alone with my thoughts every day for fifteen minutes and meditate. And he said this to me, and I was like, wow, like, it was so profound. So, yes, let's, let's go down.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Boil that down to one, like, I'm, I'm gonna give you my hypothesis.

• 23:54Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  People are afraid that they, people don't respect themselves, or their self-respect is fragile. And being alone with their thoughts is just gonna be intrusive and they're gonna lose more respect. I, I, I guess because that would be, that was the thing that I struggled with in the beginning and have spent my entire life making sure that I can be alone. Because I always tell people, the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So the only thing I can think is when people are alone, they don't feel good about who they are, and so they seek distraction.

• 24:22Jay Shetty?

  That's it. I mean, it's as simple as that. It literally is. Like, I'll, I'll give a study and then I'll, I'll specifically speak to that point, like, men and women were asked to be alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes or give themselves an electric shock. That was the study.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  I know where this is going.

• 24:38Jay Shetty?

  They did this experiment. Thirty percent of women chose an electric shock.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 24:43Jay Shetty?

  And sixty percent of men chose an electric shock.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. I had went backwards. I would have guessed the other way.

• 24:49Jay Shetty?

  And when asked why, they said because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts, because we're scared of our thoughts. Now, your hypothesis is accurate. I would agree with it. I think the biggest thing is that when we're left alone to ourselves, we hear things that we may not be comfortable with. I don't like where my life is going. I'm not happy with how I look. Everyone else is doing better than me. Oh, they just got proposed to and I'm still alone. All those thoughts get space to actually be heard. Whereas when you're scrolling, it's like, oh, they got proposed. Oh, cute bunny. Oh, like you're just, you're not even listening. You're scrolling a thought. That's literally, we're scrolling away thoughts.

• 25:33Jay Shetty?

  And that gives us a sense of comfort that we don't spend longer than three seconds on a thought. But then when you're asked to spend three minutes or more on a thought, that thought gets to like grow and build and become scarier and bigger, almost like a monster. That unknown of it, right? It's like, I, I think that what, what people are most scared of is they've been trained to numb themselves. We live in a society that knows how to numb emotions and numb feelings, right? I don't, I'm so upset about something, I'm going to go and drink alcohol to numb that feeling, to not experience that feeling. I, um, I, I messed up at something, I'm gonna go and gamble away my money to numb the feeling that I felt.

• 26:16Jay Shetty?

  I'm gonna go and watch something on TV because I just wanna numb how I feel right now. Now, I'm not saying that I don't do any of those things to, to numb a feeling when it's really painful, or that we shouldn't ever numb a feeling at all. But our goal is, we just wanna numb things away. And I don't think that, that's why sitting with your thoughts for fifteen minutes is really hard, because there's nothing to numb it. There's nothing that will numb it. And even sitting in the cold, nothing numbs that apart from your own centeredness and breathing. You have to go to that. And I think that's why sitting alone with your thoughts is such a powerful practice. Because what you're saying, if you wanna be happy, being happy about yourself when you're by yourself, that requires you to not numb anything about yourself. Because that's the full acceptance.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  So interesting. So I've been thinking a lot recently about distraction. Why distraction exists? Because I think it actually serves a pretty powerful purpose. If we didn't have the ability, so there's a part of the brain called the basal ganglia, which is known as the gear shift in the brain. And for people that have obsessive thinking, they get stuck and the basal ganglia is not able to let them pass that thought into another thought. Now, I think one of my superpowers is my gearbox is amazing. And to the point where it almost becomes problematic because I can, I'll forget about something that I was obsessed with thinking about, ah, because my gearbox just like goes into the next thing. And so that has shown me that I can very easily get myself out of a loop.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  If I'm, you know, on something that's super negative, I can get out of that. But for somebody who can't, you need that external distraction and doom scrolling. Like, there was one period in my life where I was so, I had so much going on that even the thought of meditating was just like, well, then everything is going to come crashing down. And I was like, but I know better than to not meditate. So I need some sort of primer to soothe me enough to get me into meditation. And it was actually doom scrolling cats. Not just cats, but like things like that where it's like cute, funny, 15 seconds to digest the idea and then you move on to the next. And I trained my YouTube algorithm on shorts to only show me like cute, fun things.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  And I would do that for like seven minutes and then I would go meditating. I was like, wow, that is freakishly effective. So you have to wall things off because if you doom scroll for seven hours, you now never get anywhere. But if you don't understand how powerful distraction can be enough to get you to the point where now you can take advantage of something like meditation, which is going to leave you alone with your thoughts. It's really, really fascinating.

• 28:53Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love what you just said about distraction. I've always allowed myself five minutes an hour to be random. And I often have, I would either do a timer on my phone where at one point I was really into like hour glasses or minute glasses and I would just turn it over.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  What do you do in that time?

• 29:08Jay Shetty?

  So I would allow myself to scroll. I would allow myself to search random stuff on YouTube. I'd allow myself, so it's giving myself the capacity to be random. And what I found in randomness is that you connect really interesting dots.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why I like meditating.

• 29:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly. And so I find like in space where I don't know what I'm gonna type in, or I'd pick up a random book from my shelf, or I would find a random thing that I'm scrolling through. But allowing myself to do that for five minutes every hour, allowed my mind to have that space, to have that gap, to connect dots, but then return back. And but that's us using distraction rather than just letting it be there, right? And I think when distraction controls you and drives you, and everyone knows what it feels like to be on a rabbit hole, where you end up on some random website or some random YouTube channel, everyone's been there. That's not a good feeling. Like, I don't think, I want that feeling where I end up somewhere seven hours later. Whereas seven minutes of randomness is really healthy and beautiful, and can be amazing.

• 30:06Jay Shetty?

  And so why can't seven minutes of stillness? Uh, why can't seven minutes of listening to sounds or ambient noises or nature sounds, right? I think there's also a sense of, I think it's reconnecting with our breath. There's, there's an amazing study I talk about in the book, about how when we spend time with people that we're close to, or caregivers, or people that love us, our breath and even our heartbeat can synchronize with it.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Dude, that is so weird to me.

• 30:33Jay Shetty?

  It's so strange, right?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Dude, humans sync up to each other. The, the one that freaks me out the most is that women will sync their periods, and they all sync to the dominant female. That stuff gets super crazy.

• 30:45Jay Shetty?

  Wow, yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Super crazy.

• 30:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it happens to my wife and her sister all the time. But yeah, I didn't, I don't know which way around it is.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, see, that's the, the next question.

• 30:53Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, but.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  So fascinating.

• 30:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  So walk me through, okay, so we get self-awareness. So we're, I love that you started the book with solitude. So we stop being afraid of our thoughts because we're doing the, and now what?

• 31:04Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  So we have the saying, it's overwhelming, it's freaking us out. We're gonna deal with it, which I love that. And now, in the context of becoming, in fact, here is a thing that either you're gonna be like a hundred percent, or this will be where we debate. Uh, I think if you want to be in a relationship, you must be worthy of a relationship. Now, I'm gonna push it even farther and make Jay Shetty the monk a little uncomfortable, maybe. The ultimate way to think about it is you are asking somebody to have sex with you. And that's crazy. It is the weirdest sort of energetic thing that we do. Like, I think about this a lot.

• 31:40Jay Shetty?

  I love this.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  With Lisa, I went from, hi, my name is Tom, to exposing my genitals and doing what one does. It's like, that's a big chasm to cross. And if you're going to ask somebody to go on that journey in a way where they're as excited as you are, and you don't end up in jail, you have to be somebody that's worthy of that. And that's a big ask.

• 32:01Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  So, one, does that resonate? Or do you think I'm out of my mind? And if it resonates, how do people become worthy?

• 32:09Jay Shetty?

  Well, that's very monkish of you. I mean, you've put sex on a very sacred, high value.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Facts.

• 32:15Jay Shetty?

  Right, right?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  In fact, when you said earlier about loneliness, I was like, I've actually been, the loneliest I've ever been was in the middle of intercourse.

• 32:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  Which is a crazy thought. Like, I couldn't be anymore with a person, and because there was no emotional connection, I felt so alone.

• 32:30Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 32:31Jay Shetty?

  I'm so glad you brought that up, though, right? Like, that's what we understand about loneliness now, that loneliness isn't about the number of people around you. It isn't about how popular you are. It doesn't matter how many people are surrounded by you. If you don't feel understood, if you don't feel seen, if you don't feel heard, you're lonely, right? Like, that's what it is. And so when you're saying, I'm having sex with someone and I still feel lonely, that's real. But you, from your definition of just how you broke that down, you're placing sex as extremely sacred, as a high value. There could be lots of people listening or watching, or maybe people that we don't even, that aren't in this community, that would actually disagree. And they'd just be like, well, sex is just sex. Like, what's, they don't see it that way, right? The way you see it is probably more aligned with the Vedas than the other perspective, for sure.

• 33:15Jay Shetty?

  The idea that if you're about to do anything intimate with anyone, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, the amount of like, exchange of, we just talked about exchanging heartbeats and breathing. I mean, if you think about how biologically affected you are by a relationship, let alone how emotionally and then spiritually affected you are by a relationship, and how much karma you share from a spiritual level, how much energy and vibration you share on a spiritual level. You're talking about like, completely syncing up or...

• 33:49Jay Shetty?

  Destroying your synergy with someone. And so I would say I agree with you. I don't think you're crazy at all. I think you're spot. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

• 34:34Jay Shetty?

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• 35:18Jay Shetty?

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• 36:02Jay Shetty?

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• 36:29Speaker 01

  So how do you become worthy?

• 36:31Jay Shetty?

  So I think that, I mean, I don't think you have to complete solitude in order to move on. And so in the book, I break down the four things that the Vedas break down, which is preparing for love, which is solitude, practicing love, which is in a relationship. Right? The third is like preserving love because, or protecting love because there's a part of us when we're burnt through love that loses the belief in love or changes. So there's a protection of love that comes at phase three, and phase four is what I call perfecting love. And so if those are the four phases, solitude is the one preparing for love. And you have to do a lot of that becoming worthy in solitude.

• 37:14Jay Shetty?

  Because what, I mean, we're saying something here. I think we're on the same page. The idea that if you walk into a relationship and you don't know who you are, you don't know what you need or what you want and what you're building and what you're creating, you're basically going to hope that the other person is going to answer all those questions for you, or you're going to outsource that inadequacy to them to make you feel worthy. So that's why we walk into a relationship and we accept the currency of attention as love.

• 37:46Jay Shetty?

  We accept the currency of validation as love.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Dude, that's big in a social media culture.

• 37:51Jay Shetty?

  Right? We accept the currency of attention, validation, compliments, comfort, random niceness. We accept all of that as love because we ourselves haven't defined and experienced what love looks like on our own. So how you become worthy of another person is first becoming worthy for yourself. And what does it mean to be worthy for yourself? To me, it's doing hard things alone. When you've done hard things alone and you've grown through them, and when I say alone, I don't mean without your family or without friends. I just mean when you've broken through some of your own barriers, that gives you a healthier sense of self-esteem and self-worth. I think self-worth doesn't come from saying affirmations in a mirror.

• 38:36Jay Shetty?

  It doesn't come from just like pretending to be happy. It doesn't come from being positive. Your greatest self-worth is gonna come from breaking through stuff that you didn't think you could break through.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Do people expect you to say, just look yourself in the mirror and say, I love myself?

• 38:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I think, I think people, I think people sometimes project their own belief of, like, the word self-love, right? So there's, there is a form of self-love, like, I love going to spas, I love getting massages. So I'm into that form of self-love. But I see that as more self-care. I see that as like caring for myself and things like that. Uh, when I think of self-love as just telling myself, I love myself. I've tried all of those things and I've seen how they are not possible when I haven't done some other work.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:21Jay Shetty?

  Right? Like me looking in the mirror and just saying, I'm amazing, I'm wonderful. If I haven't done something amazing that day or done something wonderful that day, I don't believe myself, right? And that's the problem people have. They're like, I, I don't believe it. Now, there's two sides to it. I actually believe a lot of people have done hard things, but they don't give themselves credit for it.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  Very positive.

• 39:43Jay Shetty?

  So there's, there's a big group of people, my mom included. I interviewed my mom recently, not on the podcast, I want to, but I, I did what I, I'm happy I did. I interviewed her at a dinner, just me and her, because I really wanted to get to know her story, but I realized that I didn't feel.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Did you record it? I'm guessing not if it was at dinner?

• 39:57Jay Shetty?

  I didn't because.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  I did that with my father-in-law and recorded it. It was awesome.

• 40:01Jay Shetty?

  Have you shared that?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  No.

• 40:02Jay Shetty?

  No, I would love to, knowing the background of your father-in-law.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Dude, that's interesting. We should ask Lisa because it was dope. Like, that guy's story is crazy.

• 40:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 40:12Jay Shetty?

  And that's what I'm saying, that we don't even know the people closest to us, right? So love, again, anyway, but that's, that's a whole nother thing. But I sat down with my mom, I asked her questions like I would ask on the podcast, and I was talking to her and she was telling me that it's at like fifteen years old, I think, fifteen, sixteen years old, she, she was born and raised in Yemen.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 40:32Jay Shetty?

  And so, yeah, so she's living in Yemen. Yemen are trying, and it was called Aden at the time. They're trying to, the Brits who have colonized the country are fighting against the Yemeni soldiers, and she's studying for exams while there's gunmen on her rooftop.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 40:48Jay Shetty?

  Like, that's her, her story. And I'm like, Mom, like, you've never told me how bad this was. You just told me you left Yemen because of the war and moved to England. Like, that's the story I know. And all of a sudden, I'm discovering that you are actually studying for an exam while there's people with guns on your roof defending, and you're in the middle of all of that. And you're fifteen years old. And she never told me that. And I was thinking, she's done hard things. Like, and she doesn't, she doesn't even see it that way, because to her, it's normal.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Interesting. Do you think she thinks it's normal? Or, or do people confuse enduring, which is extraordinary,

• 41:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  with, oh, but I didn't actively choose it and therefore I completely discount it?

• 41:28Jay Shetty?

  Totally, totally. Well, I, I mean, at least for my mom, I can say that she just sees it as her life. She doesn't see it as like hard or easy, or that, that's her kind of way she, she sees stuff. Uh, it's kind of how I feel sometimes. When I talk about my monk experience, it's very normal to me. Like, there's a part, and I chose to do it. There's a part of me that's just like, it's normal. And people are like, that's crazy. Like, why would you ever become a monk after school? It's so bizarre. But to me, it's not that bizarre. And so it takes me a minute to be like, oh, wait a minute, it is pretty crazy, right? Like, not many people do that. But I don't, I don't sit in that thought that often. And so I think there's, I think what I'm saying is that this becoming worthy. Is breaking through some of your own barriers and limits, whatever they may be, which is what you discover in the solitude.

• 42:13Jay Shetty?

  And the more you break through those, the more you feel worthy for anything and everything. Because you go, wow, I've done some really tough stuff on my own. I've like really pushed myself in this way. I've really tried something new. And now you're not looking for that person to fill your worthiness. You're not looking for that person to say, you're amazing and you're the best and you're incredible. Because you've experienced your strength, right? When you've experienced your strength, no one can make you feel weak. The right person will only make you feel stronger, right? And that's the key. When you've already done hard things, the people around you will only make you feel stronger. That's why you know they're great to be in your life. Because they're not making you feel strong, they're making you feel stronger. Whereas what we often find is that.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You went, they're not making you feel strong, they're making you feel stronger.

• 43:01Jay Shetty?

  Correct. So I'm saying like, when I, so even, even in a positive relationship with us, like when I'm around you, right? And we have a healthy relationship, we know each other a fair bit. It's like, I'm, I consider myself to be self-aware and self-confident and, and have a high degree of self-worth. Totally open about it, I have no issues, no issues.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  No reasonable person will push back on that?

• 43:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, no issues with it whatsoever. And, um, and I feel that the people I like to be in my life are not people who I'm looking to support that or, or do that, but they're able to help me discover more about myself. So there's a sign of strength. So I had a client I was working, that I was coaching with last year. And he did this for me and it was really powerful. And I was like, I, I only like working with clients who also I learn from. So I have a, I have a selfish motive there, but it's, it's special. He said, I've never met someone who ties up spirituality, business and practicality in one person like you do. And I'm not saying that to self-promote, I'm saying that because he gave me permission to be all three. And that made me.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  I'll second that.

• 44:03Jay Shetty?

  And it was just really powerful. I felt so like. Freed by that statement to be all three because it made me stronger. I know I am in those things, but that person made me stronger. That's what I'm saying that you gravitate towards when you already have a sense of self-worth. Whereas when you don't have a sense of self-worth, you look for the person who's saying, oh, you're really good at that. Oh, like, maybe you should work on that. You're looking for someone to like, make you feel better about yourself from zero. Whereas you're already at a 10 and someone's like, finding new ways of showing you more of yourself. That's, there's something beautiful about that.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 44:38Jay Shetty?

  I don't even know if I'm articulating clearly, but.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Very clearly from my perspective. So I think that there is a biological imperative, hardwired into the brain, that you must do hard things in order to feel good about yourself. And when I think about it from an evolutionary standpoint, and this is why I think rich kids implode. You just never had to do hard things. From an evolutionary perspective, I think it was just so hard to stay alive, like for millions of years. It really was red in tooth and clot. Like to stay alive, you were kill or be killed. You were hunting, gathering, fighting other tribes. I'm just crazy. And the people that were gonna survive were gonna be the ones that, that got an emotional, a self-applied emotional reward for doing something hard.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  And when you do something hard and you recognize it, it needs to feel good. And if it does, then you will keep doing hard things and you're the far more likely to survive than the person who's like, that sucked, there was no redeeming qualities. And so it's just like, when I think about that, because if I were to create a recipe for fulfillment, it's very simple. It's working really hard, doing hard things, to gain a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself, but others. That's it. Like, that's the whole recipe. But it, it really has to be that you had to do something hard. If it came easily to you, it won't give you the sense of respect that you want. Like the stuff that I've gotten more easily in my life, I don't take a lot of pride in.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  It's always the stuff that I grind out, like through pain and suffering and I endure. In fact, I want to read you a quote. This is one of my all-time favorite quotes. "To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering." Desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities. I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self contempt. The torture of self mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished. I have no pity for them because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not, that one endures.

• 46:44Jay Shetty?

  Ah.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  I thought that was Nietzsche.

• 46:46Jay Shetty?

  Dude, that is so cruel. I definitely, I'm not, I'm not gonna.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  So good.

• 46:51Jay Shetty?

  Like and subscribe.

• 46:54Jay Shetty?

  I think I get the sentiment. I would not wish it on anyone.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  That's amazing. So push back as hard as you can because I, I love this. So if you agree.

• 47:04Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  In fact, where, where does it break down? Because this is why I don't have kids. That is what people need, in my opinion.

• 47:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  And I, I can't, I can't do it.

• 47:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. I can't, well, that's, well, that's where we, where we disagree, right? Like as in like in, I get the intention and the spirit of it.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  But do you think they'll be a better person if they avoid it?

• 47:23Jay Shetty?

  I don't think you have to. I feel like for most people, for most people, life is already hard in some area. I don't think there's many people I know, at least where I grew up as well.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  But does it make them better or worse?

• 47:38Jay Shetty?

  Well, I don't think they have the tools, which is why we've dedicated what we're doing to that. Right? Like, I don't think that when I look at the people I grew up around or the areas I grew up in, and it wasn't the worst of the worst, it wasn't the best of the best.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  I've been to Wood Green.

• 47:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  It's not lovely.

• 47:49Jay Shetty?

  It's not lovely, right? It's not, yeah, you've been there, of course. Yeah, it's not nice. And people made bad choices because they didn't have good role models, right? Like people made bad choices because they didn't have good tools. They didn't make bad choices because of just where they were. It's because they didn't have access. Today we have access and that's what we're trying to do, I feel with our work. Because I look at myself and I could clearly, if I, what's that called? Sliding doors? If I envisioned like where my life could have been if I didn't take a few steps, I could easily have been today.

• 48:24Jay Shetty?

  Addicted to some drug, getting involved in things that were highly violent, and finding my self-validation through gang culture. Like, I could have so ended up there. Like, I literally could pinpoint three decisions that could have totally took my life in that direction and no one would know who I am today, and I'd be a very different person. Not because I'm a bad person, or because I'm attracted to any of those things, just because I didn't have access. I got lucky, and I see that. The access that I got to the monks at an early age just transformed the trajectory of my life. But most people don't meet someone random. We follow the same people on Instagram, we follow the same people on YouTube, we all watch the same stuff, we listen to the same stuff. How many people in their last seven days could be honest and say they heard from a

• 49:09Jay Shetty?

  random voice that was unexpected? Or they saw a random person that they didn't know that sparked a new journey in their life? That's how random it was for me to meet a monk. I didn't grow up religious, I wasn't around monks, I didn't go religiously to meet monks. Like, I met someone who completely sparked a different thought. When you're sitting down with trauma experts, when I'm sitting down with neuroscientists, like, I didn't grow up with neuroscientists, like, who was speaking to those people? So I feel, I, yeah, I just feel like, with that, oh, but going back to that statement, I wouldn't wish pain on anyone because I feel that life is already hard. I would just wish that people opened up their hearts and minds to the tools that would

• 49:53Jay Shetty?

  help them deal with that hardship better, and not try and rely on what they currently have in their toolkit. That would be my wish. If you ask me what my wish is for people...

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Right. The only way I can like and subscribe to that statement is if we modify slightly and say, "I wish that people could develop a profound sense of self-worth."

• 50:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  And avoid all of that, but I don't think they can.

• 50:16Jay Shetty?

  I don't think they can avoid it.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  And so this may be a cruel twist of evolution. Like, I want to be very clear. I'm not saying I'm glad it is this way. I'm just saying, I think it is this way. Now, my beef with the, the idea of, I wish that, you know, these horrible things upon people is that it breaks most of the people that it touches.

• 50:35Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  But I don't think people can become a version of themselves that they'll be proud of unless they go through that stuff.

• 50:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  So it's-

• 50:44Jay Shetty?

  And I think the compassionate monk in me can't wish that on someone in that way. And, and you could argue that real compassion is letting the right thing happen to someone that they need to go through. I just don't think, and, and that is what real compassion is.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Ooh, that's interesting. So here, here was my catch with the, one of the reasons I didn't have kids. I knew I would intervene if something bad was happening. Now, as I get older, I feel like I might be more capable of letting it happen. But at the time, when I was sort of peak, like, should we, should we not? I was like, I know I will intervene. Would you intervene?

• 51:17Jay Shetty?

  It's, it's always hard-

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Are you gonna have kids?

• 51:19Jay Shetty?

  I don't know, is, is the answer here. We don't know. We've been, we've talked about it. We're very like, we're probably at that stage you were actually years ago. And so we've been very open about it. We're like, we don't know. And partly it's these kind of things, partly it's how it affects service and impact. How it, there's so many, there's so many things, right? There's so many facets to that question of-

• 51:40Speaker 01

  So let's say Dar, who has two children, your co-host on your show, Dar and Jay, for those that aren't liking and subscribing yet.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Would you want them to intervene?

• 51:53Jay Shetty?

  When I saw, so I saw a couple of parents that I was friends with a few years back. And I remember that their two-year-old was like putting her hands through a candle, like on the other side of the room. So we were all hanging out here. Their two-year-old's running around, and their two-year-old's on the other side of the candle, and they're doing that. And, and my natural instinct at the time, this is probably like, maybe like- Eight years ago, my natural instinct was to go and be like, help that kid. And I'm always mindful of other people's kids too, because I just feel like something, you know, and I was about to jump up and help her and they were like, no, no, leave it. She's fine. She'll, if it hurts her, she'll know next time not to touch that and let her learn by herself. And I was like, wow, that's really impressive. Like, I'm scared your kid's gonna burn their hand and you're really,

• 52:35Jay Shetty?

  now, I'm not recommending either or. My friends are great parents and they're very loving and, and that's the challenge today, right? Like, a lot of people will be like, oh, my god, they don't care about their kids, like, I think they do care about their kids. I think they're really great parents, but them allowing them, their child to do this. I would then see pictures of them, they, they moved into the countryside and stuff and their kid would just be like out like, swinging on trees, like climbing stuff and falling over and, and they were so comfortable with that because they had that mindset that there should be an openness. Now, I think there's that openness, but then there's intervening when it gets really painful. Like, what if your child gets involved in drugs? Are you not gonna intervene? Like, are you not gonna educate? Are you not gonna? And obviously, in all the right ways you'd hope, would be the healthy ways of intervening.

• 53:19Jay Shetty?

  I don't think ever walking in and telling a kid to stop or don't do that is ever gonna work. But to me, intervening is important at certain points where you think it's like really going off the edge of the cliff versus when you feel like it's healthy experimentation and you don't. But I'm saying this obviously in theory, because I don't have to, but when I look at it with my, the closest person I can compare it to is my sister. So my sister's five years younger than me. When she was born, I held her in my hands and I felt like I've parented her in many ways. She's, I call her Kid, like, that's my nickname for my younger sister. And if I look at my sister, I made mistakes by intervening too much sometimes.

• 54:01Jay Shetty?

  So I didn't really want her to have a job growing up, because I worked a job growing up when I was fourteen and I didn't really think that that was healthy for her. And now I look back and I was like, realize that was a mistake. Like, I should have let her work. And I, I don't think that that was a good decision. And so that's me going, okay, well, that was a bad intervention. And then there's other things where like, we have a really open relationship. She tells me all her challenges. We're really good friends. She's not scared to tell me something. Like, that's the healthy part of it. And so I look at like how parenting is so tough, because you look back and you're like, ah, I'm wiser now. Then you look back and go, oh, I got that right. So.

• 54:39Jay Shetty?

  I I think whether it's kids or not, I guess my point is I wouldn't wish pain on someone because I think they're going through some sort of pain anyway. That's my point. I can't wish pain on someone.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I hear it.

• 54:49Jay Shetty?

  That's against my beliefs.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  I hear it.

• 54:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  What is the formula? Like, if you wanna be in a healthy relationship, what what's the number one things? The number one thing people get wrong?

• 55:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  And what is the fix?

• 55:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so I'm gonna give you three. I I break them each down in this book. So the three are, and the first one's simple and basic, and then it and then it gets more complex and interesting. So the first one is you have to like their personality, you have to like their company. You enjoy being around them, you enjoy being around them for longer periods of time, which is an important experiment. Like, I read a study that showed to make someone a casual connection, you have to spend forty hours with them. For a casual connection.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Whoa.

• 55:32Jay Shetty?

  If you want someone to be considered a friend, it's one hundred hours of time with that person. And if you consider someone a good friend, if you consider someone a good friend, a great friend, it's two hundred hours plus. If you can't like someone's company for two hundred hours of undistracted time, chances are you don't really like their personality. We both know people that we would love to spend a weekend with, but we wouldn't wanna see them every weekend. That's okay. Those can be great casual friendships. We both know people that we wish we could spend more time with, but we don't prioritize. They're good friends, but they're not gonna be the best friends.

• 56:14Jay Shetty?

  And then we know people like our wives, who we spend a considerable amount of time with, disproportionately more with them than we do with any other human on the planet. And, you know, hopefully we make good decisions, and we're happy about those decisions. So when I look at it, that liking, that's what I mean by liking that person's company and personality. Give it some tangibility of what that means. The second thing you need, and this is where I wanna be really clear about my language, because this word gets thrown a lot in relationship talk, but I don't mean it in the same way. So the thing is, you have to respect their values. And what I mean by this is ninety-nine percent of us in relationships are trying to make our partner respect our values.

• 56:56Jay Shetty?

  We want them to like what we like. We want them to love what we love. If I'm going to watch football on the weekend, I'd love for you to come with me. If I think that going towards this is really important, you should be there. So we demand that our partner respects our value rather than respecting theirs. And I'll, I'll give a tangible example. So, for example, Radhi's number one, and I ask a lot of couples to do this exercise if I'm working with someone. I'll ask couples to rank their top three priorities, including themselves, in order. And most of the time, one partner will say, you, are you the partner? So you would say Lisa, if you had the kids, you'd say the kids. And then third, they'd put themselves.

• 57:42Jay Shetty?

  That's, that's a general order that people will put. Now, sometimes you'll get a curve ball where someone goes, me, you, the kids. And every time someone writes that, their partner goes, how, how, how could you put the kids third? How can the kids be third? Like, how does that make any sense? And how can you be first? And it's like, well, no, because I, I know that I don't want to give you my leftovers. I want to give you the best in me. So when you look at respecting someone's value, when I look at Radhi's values, Radhi's number one value is family. Her family. My number one value is my purpose and my service to the world. Those are not the same values. A lot of people say you have to have the same values in a marriage. I, I don't subscribe to that. I don't think you have to have the same values.

• 58:24Jay Shetty?

  I think you have to, I think if you're looking for someone with exactly the same values, you're going to take a lot longer to find that person. I don't know anyone in the world that I know that's happily married, and I'd love to break it down with anyone, who genuinely could say we have the same exact values. So I respect Radhi's value is family, which means when family becomes a priority in decision making, when family becomes a priority during the holiday season, when family becomes a topic of conversation, I'm zoned in. That's something she deeply values and cares about. If she's going to choose family over anything, I'm going to be okay with that. Because she's made it very clear that's her number one value. Same back at me, if I choose purpose over anything, she knows that's going to happen. It's not a surprise.

• 59:07Jay Shetty?

  I know so many people who are trying to get their partners to change their value. And I just don't see that happening. Or that person compromises their value and now feels less versions of themselves, like a, a less adequate version of themselves. And now you're dating the second best version of the person you love. And so that's respecting values. And the third thing is, and this is what differentiates it.

• 59:34Jay Shetty?

  Is you are committed to helping them get to their goals. You're committed. I may like your goals, Tom, but we're not in love and we're not in a relationship where I'm committed to achieving your goals. I love you. I deeply appreciate you in the world. I think you have an amazing impact, but if someone asked me, Jay, you could feel this way about a friend. I'm not committed. I'm not actively doing something. I may support, I collaborate, I help, but I'm not committed. Whereas with my wife, I'm committed on a daily basis going, what do you want in your life? Where are you going? What do you need? What support do you need? What can I do for you to help you get there? It's not about her helping me get to my goals. She's thinking about that. But I'm thinking about how is that? So those are my things for a happy relationship. Those are three key things.

• 1:00:19Jay Shetty?

  I mean, there's so many more things I could go into, but I have to give the overview formula. It's those three things.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  So what trips people up? Are they, I'm assuming selection, if that's such a big part, they just select the wrong person.

• 1:00:30Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:00:31Jay Shetty?

  I think people select the wrong person because they are looking for, first of all, we select the wrong person because we make so many snap judgments off of a few basic inputs. So one of the things that the Vedas talk about is something called the six opulences. And we've talked about this before. We talked about them in a different context. But the six opulences are fame, wealth, power, beauty, knowledge, and renunciation. Those are the six opulences. These are six things people pursue, people value, people admire. Right? We can all agree with that.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  I love that renunciation made the list. Like, that talk about self-awareness.

• 1:01:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's a huge one. And so those six are the six opulences. And what we do in relationships, which is really interesting, is when we find someone has one opulence, we ascribe them other qualities. So if someone is wealthy, we assume that they must be organized and that they'll be organized in the home. If someone is attractive, we assume that they'll be able to articulate themselves effectively. If someone is powerful at work, we assume that they're really good at organizing date night, right? Like, there's these qualities we start ascribing people. And so often what happens is one opulence does this halo effect. Into making you believe that this person has a lot more gifts and skills and qualities,

• 1:01:59Jay Shetty?

  rather than through research and learning and experience, you're just giving them away to that person. And we do this in interviews, right? We all know how the halo effect works in interviews. If you're interviewing a more attractive candidate, you're more likely to hire them. More attractive hostesses and waiters and waitresses get bigger tips. Like, this is just how human psychology works. But it's very risky when you choose a life partner based on how attractive someone was for thirty seconds. And so I find that selection goes wrong because of that, because we ascribe qualities because of one opulence rather than actually seeing those qualities. It's like me saying to you, when did Lisa realize she could trust you? I'm hoping it's not day one,

• 1:02:44Jay Shetty?

  because trust is something that has to be proven time and time and time again. Trust is something that she has to see time and time again. He said he was gonna be there at this time, he turned up. He said he was going to show up for this moment, he showed up. That's trust. Trust is not built because someone was really nice to you. And so trust is something we throw away. And I can dive into the levels of trust too, but, you know.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if those are the top-notch sayings, let's get into it.

• 1:03:11Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so I talk about four levels of trust. This is actually in Think Like a Monk, but it fully connects to this book. Um, there are four levels of trust. My belief is that whenever you meet anyone, someone new, your relationship with them should start at zero trust. Now, what we do in life is we believe that there's only two things in everything. We think everything's binary, right? Black and white, left and right. Trust, don't trust.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Now, is zero trust sitting at the zero point between trust and distrust?

• 1:03:43Jay Shetty?

  Zero is sitting at no trust beginning, yes.

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  Because you don't have an active, like, you're not looking at them suspiciously.

• 1:03:50Jay Shetty?

  Correct. So I'm gonna get, yeah, so I'm gonna give you the levels. So the, so the first point being that. We see trust as too binary. I have people I trust and there's people I don't trust. To me, that's too limited and it doesn't help. Because what that means is if I like someone, I automatically trust them, which is massively unhealthy. And so, what I'm saying is that zero trust is correct between distrust at the bottom and then trust higher, but there's three levels in between. So when I meet someone, especially if you're dating them, you have zero trust in them. The next step is transactional trust. Transactional trust is, I know when this person says they're gonna do something, they do it. I know there's an equal exchange in the transaction.

• 1:04:34Jay Shetty?

  I like, if I say, I'm gonna do this work and you're gonna pay me this amount, I know you're gonna pay me at that time. That's transactional trust. It's what you have with your employees, it's what you have with your teams, it's what you have with colleagues. We don't want this because it's not sexy. It's not, it doesn't feel like love, it feels too professional, it feels too corporate. But really, every single person has to go through these levels with you. The next stage is reciprocal trust. Where you know someone loves you and appreciates you and will do good for you, but you're not counting, you're not checking. You know it reciprocates naturally, it cycles around. This is a healthy level of trust after some time, where the transaction's been proven over and over again, now you don't need the contract. Right? Now you don't, now you don't always need to sign it.

• 1:05:16Jay Shetty?

  And then the fourth stage, which I believe is practically impossible, is unconditional trust, which is that godlike trust that we all want in the person we end up with. The problem is, we give unconditional trust away early and then we fall down those levels to zero trust. And why we feel so let down by people? Because it just felt like we fell down four flights of stairs. That's why breaking trust feels so deep. Because you gave someone level four trust when you should have started at zero and worked their way up. So let people earn your trust. When you talked about being worthy, like let someone earn your trust, let someone be worthy of your trust. Don't just give it because they're nice and kind and they bought you a gift. Right?

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  So why do you think we have that instinct? Is it just the halo effect of you are kind to me and I'm letting that spill over into other areas?

• 1:06:07Jay Shetty?

  I think we just wanna be loved so desperately. We're so desperate for it because it's been put on this pedestal that this is the defining factor of success in life. Is could you find someone to love you? Because then you'd be lovable. Then you'd be worthy, then you'd have what it takes. If you were able to convince someone to spend their life with you, then you're worthy. And we're so desperate for that, that we will happily speed through those. Instead of 200 hours, we'll tell someone we love them in two months. Because we'd rather have it and think we lost it than to have never found it at all. Because never having found it means we were never worthy. Whereas if we found it and lost it, and even if it wasn't perfect,

• 1:06:52Jay Shetty?

  at least there was some part of us that was lovable. And that's why we'll stay in toxic relationships. That's why we'll settle for people who are not worthy for us. Because we'd rather feel like we're in love than actually build it. And I think that's the challenge is that we live in such a feeling world as opposed to a building, creating world, which is a doing world, which is an action world. I start the book with this beautiful statement of this conversation between a student and a teacher, often attributed to the Buddha. And so a student goes up to the Buddha and says, what is the difference between I like you and I love you? And the Buddha replies, when you like a flower, you simply pluck it and throw it away. But when you love a flower, you water it daily.

• 1:07:37Jay Shetty?

  And to me, that is the difference because we're so desperate. Yeah, we're so desperate to just smell that flower, observe its beauty for a few moments, toss it away. But that person who turns up every day and waters that flower and gives it the sun and gives it the soil, no one wants to be that person, but that's love. Then you have a beautiful garden, then you have this beautiful view every day of all these flowers that you grew. And so to me, it's the desperation of the feeling of being loved is, is making us settle for less than.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  It's really interesting. Now, you say that nobody wants to be that person because of the effort and energy. Like, this is something that Lisa and I say a lot, and I'll be curious to see if you agree with this. I think you will, that love.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  Love really isn't enough, just to be super cliché for a second, that really a relationship isn't just about love, that's one of the components, but it's gonna take a lot of work.

• 1:08:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  But work of the kind that you described, watering it, making sure it has enough sun, you know, wiping the leaves down, make sure there's no bugs on it, it's an attentiveness.

• 1:08:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Investment, maybe.

• 1:08:38Jay Shetty?

  And it's unsexy, right? I keep using that word too, because it's not what's been portrayed, it's not what it's meant to feel like, it doesn't look like that Pinterest board, it doesn't feel like the wedding day every day, right? Like, the challenges that I think, I mean, I was looking at the studies, the amount of money that gets spent on weddings, it says the more you spend on your wedding, the more likely you're to divorce earlier.

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:09:00Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's the trend, like, you have a shorter wedding the more you spend on your, you have a shorter marriage the more you spend on your wedding, is what the studies show. And so when I saw that, I was just like, wow, like, I didn't spend that much on my wedding, thankfully, now, looking at the studies, but I was looking at that, and again, I'm not, again, I'm not saying don't have a big wedding, have a big wedding, I love big weddings, I love attending. I'm just saying that it's interesting how much, if you think about it, when you're planning a wedding, you organize a priest. The priest is there to remind you of your commitments. When you get married, who's your priest? Who's reminding you of your commitments every day? We never think about that.

• 1:09:44Jay Shetty?

  When you get married, you have a guest list. The guest list is made up of people who love you and support your marriage. When you're married, how deeply do you think about the people you're surrounded by and how much they build the community of helping you flourish in your marriage? At your wedding day, you think about what you wear, what you say to that person from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, you're conscious of each and every one of your words, maybe, hopefully, trying to be at least, in your marriage that goes out the window, so you think about the amount of, forget the money, the amount of effort that goes into planning one day. Imagine if you took all that effort. And used it to plan a marriage.

• 1:10:29Jay Shetty?

  How successful would every marriage be, right? It's a shift of energy. And it's a shift of mindset in saying, we spend so much time, money, energy, resources, attentiveness, your word, to plan a wedding. But there's no attentiveness to plan a marriage or a long term relationship if you don't want to be married.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Why do you think it is that if you're spending a lot of money on the wedding, that that's inversely correlated to the length of time that you stay married? Is it just messed up priorities? What is that?

• 1:11:01Jay Shetty?

  I mean, I think it's hard to, I'd have to look deeply into it. I mean, it's hard to stereotype because I guess there's so many of both, right? I'm sure there's other things that buck the trend. I think there's a part of it that you could say that the bigger the wedding or any gesture, not even wedding, any gesture, you're trying to overcompensate for trying to make this feel like it's special and important. I think sometimes people can throw their partner's amazing birthday parties in order to make up for the whole year.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  What do you think about now? It seems like the trend, and I don't have the data, but I'm almost certain this is accurate, that people are getting married less and less and less and less.

• 1:11:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  They're having less sex, less kids, like it's a trend that freaks me out. Are you at all concerned?

• 1:11:45Jay Shetty?

  That's a great question. I'm not concerned about people not getting officially married if they're in committed, long term relationships that are healthy.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  I think it's a catastrophic error.

• 1:11:59Jay Shetty?

  Interesting. Why? Why do you think the certificate and the commitment is so important?

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Abstract it from the certificate. You need to do something. There is a lack of ritual in our lives now. So I read The Power of Myth when I was, I think maybe even before I met Lisa, but certainly before we got married. And the book was talking about how, hey, the big problem with society today is there's no coming of age ritual. Part of the reason the divorce rate is so high, he speculated, was because there was no like real ceremony that meant something that reminded people you're a different person on the other side of this. And so for me, I read that and was like, okay, when I get married, that's going to be it, one and done, never again, barring death. And, or, I mean, look, you make this point in the book several times. If you're an abusive relationship, get out.

• 1:12:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  I a hundred percent agree with that, assuming I'm not. That I wanted something that would really remind me that I was a different person. So I wanted it to be painful and I wanted it to be permanent.

• 1:12:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  And so I, as an act of a ritualistic scarification, I got a tattoo. And got married and had the priests and the waving of the smoke and all that. And even though it was all in, not only Greek, which I didn't speak at the time. It was in ancient Greek, so whatever few words I did know, I really couldn't hang on to. But there was something about the, the sense of ritual and importance of people in fancy dress and like all of that, that it really did allow me, because I was willing, to say, this is a big moment, I'm never gonna be the same again. And then reinforce that by getting the tattoo. And the whole time I was getting the tattoo, I was focusing on the pain and saying, this is forever, this is a way of permanently altering my body

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  so that I never forget that I've made a commitment. And I think people, if you're not even willing to go through a typical marriage ceremony, like, brah, your chances of going through... Dude, look, first of all, I've been married for 20 years. I know what I'm talking about. And this went from, I was gonna be the breadwinner, wife stay at home, take care of the kids, to not having kids and my wife becoming an entrepreneur. If you don't think that was like some radical change. And through all of that, I just knew divorce isn't an option. So since I'm completely unwilling to be in a loveless marriage, how do we grow together?

• 1:14:27Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  And because it was like, well, I'm not gonna be in an unhappy marriage and I'm not exiting the marriage, that only leaves making the marriage awesome. And so all of a sudden, it's like, okay, well clarity of thought. I need to focus on making this awesome.

• 1:14:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  And when people don't have that, there's just an attitude of like disposability from sex to marriage. And look, I am not opposed to casual sex. I've had my share, it was mostly fun. There were a couple of times, we talked about one earlier, where it was like, okay, well, even if it's a one night stand, I need to be interested in the person. That's my own personal realization.

• 1:15:04Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  So... I think people need to take that not more seriously, like terrifyingly seriously.

• 1:15:12Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Because that person is going to shape you in ways you can't imagine.

• 1:15:16Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:17Speaker 01

  And if you go into that like, nah, whatever. Like, you're living your life by the law of accident. And I see that echoed through society.

• 1:15:23Jay Shetty?

  So I love the idea of what you said about ritual. Like, I think rituals are powerful, they're important. I mean, they're totally part of Vedic culture. Like, rituals, everything. Like, rituals are those.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  You know, Indian weddings are like days.

• 1:15:36Jay Shetty?

  Seven days.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  Jesus.

• 1:15:38Jay Shetty?

  To make you realize how important this commitment is. Like, you get married to someone over seven days, and you meet all their family and they meet all of yours. Like, there's, there's an imprint, right? And that's what, the word is samskara. Like, samskara means impression or imprint. These rituals leave imprints or impressions that are powerful to help you become new or to become more. And so, I agree with that. And the only thing that I think I'm open to is that people take a little bit longer to decide before they commit. And that if you are in a marriage that, I think there are just so many people today that are married

• 1:16:22Jay Shetty?

  that aren't using your mindset of, I don't want to be in a loveless marriage. What do we do? Like, I literally will, and, and by the way, I see you and Lisa as just like, I, talking to you about this stuff is so exciting for me because I love how you and Lisa love each other. I love how you talk about your rules. I love how you talk about your principles. I love how you talk about the lessons. And I agree with them. Like, I, I think we're very aligned. And I'm very much earlier. This book isn't about my relationship. This book isn't about, look at how successful my marriage is. I've not been married for that long. This book is about studies and the Vedas and science and the research and the tools. But the one thing I will say is that I check in with Radhi regularly. And I'll often do an alternative and I'll say,

• 1:17:06Jay Shetty?

  is this relationship going in the direction you want? And I'll check in with them, I'll say, is this relationship actually going in the direction you want? If it is, great, what are we doing right? And if it isn't, what direction do you wanna go in? And what does that require of you? And what does that require of me? And I'll be ready to commit to that. And that has been one of the healthiest questions for me to ask, because I'm like you, I don't wanna live longer than a couple of hours in a, in a loveless relationships when it's something within my control. Like, I don't want something within my control to be painful for longer than it needs to be. I don't wanna be in a relationship where I don't talk to you for a week.

• 1:17:51Jay Shetty?

  I don't wanna be in a relationship where we argue for a month about the same thing. I didn't subscribe to that, like, that's not what I committed to, like, I didn't set my life up in a way to live with pain for years and years and years. And I saw that in my family, and I was like, no way do I wanna create that in my life, so I'm gonna do everything possible. But what I find is that a lot of people are in relationships where there isn't a collaborative approach. I, Lisa and you are collaborators in this, me and Radha are growing into collaborators in this, it's like, if, if you're not with someone who's collaborative, it's really tough. I meet a lot of people who are like, I'm ready to do the work, I wanna do the work. But then their partner doesn't reciprocate with any energy or any enthusiasm because they think, we already did it.

• 1:18:36Jay Shetty?

  We got married, we had the kids, we both have a job, we have a house, what are you worried about? Right? Like, that's the response people hear. And I'm speaking to that person and saying, well, if you need to slow down getting married, it's okay. And if you are married and it's not going in the right direction, that's okay, but, because I don't wanna put, I don't wanna put pressure on people to think that marriage is the achievement, and I know you're not doing that either, but I think a lot of people see marriage as the end and the achievement, as opposed to the beginning.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  It's the container.

• 1:19:06Jay Shetty?

  It's the container, but it's not seen that way.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. So Lisa and I got married, at the time, it, it's, it did feel like we were young, but by today's standards, we were infants. It's really crazy. But when I think about how much, if, if you can construct the right container... It will improve your life vastly. The reason I'm so celebratory of marriage is that nothing, and I mean nothing, not business, ambition, self-improvement, nothing has given me as much as my marriage. Now, because I treat it like the flower that I water and keep the bugs off and make sure it gets sunlight and all that stuff. I mean, it's a massive amount of time and attention. But when I think about what the human animal is wired for,

• 1:19:50Speaker 01

  it actually isn't necessarily just a monogamous marriage. But you can go in different paths. Actually, something I wasn't sure would come up today. I think that there is a buffet of offerings that are available to work with human wiring. And depending on the circumstance into which you are born, you will either be in polyamorous, polyandrous, where there's multiple males, which is to one female, which is very unusual, and then monogamous. And it's utterly, I'm so aware that those are real, that I make sure that I take more time and attention to grow the one that I'm in, in the right way,

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  if that makes sense. So, but knowing that I do have the wiring to thrive within this, but I have to be very thoughtful about how we mix that cocktail. In the book, you talk about defining love and making sure that you understand each other's fighting styles. And all of that gets really wonderfully practical. You've got the fighting quiz, where people can go figure out, like, what's my fighting style? Do you put the same kind of attention on understanding whether the words you use are masculine energy or feminine energy?

• 1:21:07Jay Shetty?

  I didn't spend a lot of time in the book on masculine and feminine energy, only because I think that it's not in our current vocabulary and it's not really how... The Vedas ultimately treat everyone as a soul. And so that's already beyond gender. And beyond energy in the sense that we are all equal energies. The Vedas come at it from a standpoint of you and me are made of the same stuff. Consciousness wise, there is no difference in the consciousness that you are and that I am, or anyone in this room, or anyone in the world. And therefore, I am not superior, inferior to any other individual. Hence, we can only ever be a team.

• 1:21:49Jay Shetty?

  So when you're really going to the core of the teachings that I kind of live my life by, I can't start to see better or worse, or bigger or not. So I don't just look at Radhi as a team member on the fact that she's my wife. I see her as a team member because I see her as consciousness and divine energy, which is the same as the energy that's within me. Because I'm not this body, right? Like, I genuinely believe that the core of my being is that I'm not a physical body. And so it's very hard for me to get lost in conversations around physical body and gender based or masculine feminine energy. Because at the core of it, that's not how I'm structuring my life.

• 1:22:26Speaker 01

  How does that influence the way that you think about it? Because I'm the exact opposite. I am of this body, nothing else. When I die, it's a light switch, I'm gone. If you take a needle and jab a part of my brain, it's going to impact how I'm able to process the world.

• 1:22:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  So it's very direct how I, which is probably a big part of the reason I'm so tactical. I just view the world through that lens. It is my temperament.

• 1:22:51Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  So if you don't have that, would you call yourself a dualist? Like where spirit and body are completely separate?

• 1:22:59Jay Shetty?

  No, so it's like, well, so yeah, in our philosophy, it's called simultaneous one indifference. So it's both. It's like you have the, I'm, I'm living in this body, but I am not this body.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Can you be separated from, like, do you believe in an immortal soul that will outlive your body?

• 1:23:17Jay Shetty?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  And sorry to be so grounded in the physical. Does that continue to exist in a physical place? Or there is another realm that we don't have access to when we're in this body?

• 1:23:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so the philosophical understanding that I have is that...

• 1:23:34Jay Shetty?

  The consciousness continues to seek physical form, to experience physical pleasure and physical experiences, until the point that it is materially exhausted and is able to truly live in its full consciousness, not needing a physical form to exercise physical needs and desires.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  And how does that consciousness manifest itself once it's transcended the pursuit of physical pleasure?

• 1:23:58Jay Shetty?

  It's described in quality, not in... Obviously, I've not experienced that.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 1:24:03Jay Shetty?

  My only experience of it is through meditation and practice.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  Is it an intuitive understanding that you would be hard-pressed to put into language?

• 1:24:12Jay Shetty?

  No, it's a state... Well, the state is described as full of knowledge, eternal and full of bliss. That's the state in which we're living. And so, what I'm explaining is that through what we call purification of consciousness, once the material body is no longer useful, you're then living in that full spiritual consciousness, would be a spiritual form, a form that is not... doesn't bleed when you cut it. It doesn't get damaged, it doesn't get hurt. It is an eternal form that doesn't have those needs or fallibilities, I guess is the right word.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  So if in the Christian tradition, there is this place called heaven, which at least is sort of like a physical place that the spirit goes and lives out its days and you will be reunited.

• 1:24:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Admittedly, I'm not a Christian theologian, so I'm sure I'm getting some of this wrong. But there's at least in popular culture, there's the idea of you transcend into heaven. It's a place, there are people that you know and love, you're reunited. So there's a sense of recreating still the physical world, just in a non-physical form. It's what, at least in design circles, you call skeuomorphic. So you're taking what you know, and even though you're trying to imagine something completely different, you tend to cram it in to the same thing, right? So we imagine in clouds and stuff like that.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  What's that version in the Vedic tradition?

• 1:25:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so the Vedic tradition is there is a eternal divine relationship with the Supreme Being. And that in this space, everyone has that unique experience and unique relationship with each other and divinity.

• 1:25:47Speaker 01

  So would you meet Ravi again in that space?

• 1:25:51Jay Shetty?

  Hopefully, if we both make it back.

• 1:25:56Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, Ravi's definitely good back. Yeah, I take that back. Yeah, Ravi's good. But not necessarily as my partner, not as the way I see her here. As a completely different version to what I see here. Because this is just simply one lifetime on a notch of lifetimes.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  And does that at all inform your marriage?

• 1:26:19Jay Shetty?

  That informs our marriage in the beautiful sense of the detachment with the love. In the sense of there's a feeling of, I love this person. So glad I found them in this lifetime to do this life with, to serve in this way, to have this impact. To choose to want a better humanity, to leave it a better, happier, healthier place, to leave it a more healed place. That unites us in a profound way that I couldn't have with anyone else who didn't feel that way about it. And at the same time, it detaches me from recognizing, you know, this isn't everything either. And that's okay. Like, it's, you know, let's not make this the be all and end all of everything either.

• 1:27:03Jay Shetty?

  Like, this is just one experience. It's one aspect. And so I think there's this beautiful connection, but then healthy detachment that comes from both. And the ultimate understanding that she's not my property. She does not belong to me. I don't own her. And that she's on her own journey too. And that that journey is the most important journey that I'm supporting her on. And this journey is the most important journey she's supporting me on. Beyond all the other stuff that we're doing together. Like, that's the journey we've committed to. So I think it has a profound impact on how we conduct our lives.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  It stops you from snipping the flower.

• 1:27:39Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. And even though me and you have very different overall, and that's why I've always found fascinating, sit down with you. Even though me and you have very different systems of overall belief or philosophy of like what our container is of how we view life, we approach life far more similarly than than many people I know. Like, I consider myself to be highly, and as you say in the book, we have fight styles, we have the relationship roles, like, there's so much tactical, practical stuff in the book. Because that's how I view life too. I view life as highly strategic, uh, but with a spiritual lens. And and I think that it's, I find that really interesting how we both try and approach life through strategy,

• 1:28:21Jay Shetty?

  through systems, through processes, despite having, you know, me having a much more of a philosophical and, I guess, intangible view of reality.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  Do you know Donald Hoffman?

• 1:28:33Jay Shetty?

  I don't. As in from the Hoffman Process? No.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I don't know what that is. So, uh, this may be why, although you probably push back on this. So as somebody who's agnostic, meaning I I literally just don't know, I have no idea what the the truth is.

• 1:28:48Jay Shetty?

  Well, I don't think anyone does. And and I I kind of live with that. Like, I, people always ask me, like, where do you see us? And I'm like, I don't know either. But I'm, having read the theology and spirituality and the modern day, new age, everything that I have, I'm betting on this. And so it's simply a hypothesis, and I'm very open about that. I'm very cool with that, because I just think life is a hypothesis. Pretty much everything I do every day is a hypothesis. There's no genuine truth that I can say that I know for a fact that this is what happens when this happens. Including doing this interview, including whatever, writing this book, like, what comes from it is so different and so diverse than you could expect. So I live my life in a hypothesis. So,

• 1:29:33Jay Shetty?

  I've studied plenty of books and researched and spoken to people and sat with teachers and sat with masters. And I've come up with what I believe is my hypothesis, based on that experience. And I think everyone's entitled to their hypothesis. And I, that's why I don't consider myself, with you, I always end up talking about some of my own beliefs or values or philosophies that I identify with, but why I don't preach them or why I don't impart them on others is because that's not my goal. Right, like my goal is to help people navigate reality in what we can see, feel and hear. And then I have my own set of beliefs and values that guide my moral compass. But those are not the ones I'm imparting. Those are not what people are being exposed to because I see them as two separate things.

• 1:30:16Jay Shetty?

  My compass on a deeper level is different to the work I'm doing in the world to help people navigate this. This is all based on fact and truth and experience and, you know, reality. The book is based on that. Think Like a Monk is based on that. But the beliefs that I have are a hypothesis. Those are not the ones I'm sharing.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:30:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Where can people follow you as you explore your hypothesis?

• 1:30:37Jay Shetty?

  The best place right now is eightrulesoflove.com. That is the place to find my new book, Eight Rules of Love, which will guide you through everything from finding love, keeping love, dealing with heartbreak, and then finding love again. That would be the best place to find me right now.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 1:30:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I do.

• 1:31:04Speaker 02

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

• 1:31:14Speaker 03

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

• 1:31:21Speaker 02

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

• 1:31:25Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:31:28Speaker 02

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:31:30Speaker 03

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