746 Jay Shetty: Small Changes for Lasting Results

WHO ARE YOU TRYING TO IMPRESS? We are constantly trying to be what we’re not. We’re trying to look like someone else, perform like someone else, or spend our time in ways that make other people happy. This is an exhausting way to live. Like Einstein says, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” You are the most powerful when you’re tapped into what makes you unique. On today’s episode of The School of Greatness, I’m sharing a Summit of Greatness presentation from a former monk and master storyteller: Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty is an award-winning host, storyteller and viral content creator. Since launching his video channel in 2016, Jay’s viral wisdom videos have garnered over 1 billion views and gained over 3 million followers globally. He explains the three lies that people tell us and why it’s much more important to listen to your opinions than anyone else’s. If you take the time to write, reflect, and learn about yourself, you can learn to celebrate what makes you great. No one will be able to hold you back once you do. So get ready to learn about passion, pain, and purpose on Episode 746. Some Questions Asked: How do you figure out what “you are?” (7:08) How do you help people with ADD focus? (8:25) What’s your advice for people who are struggling with their past? (13:17) In This Episode You Will Learn: How to look at small incremental changes (8:47) How healing others’ physical pain and help your mental pain (10:00) The power of journaling (14:07) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 746 with the inspiring Jay Shetty.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

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

• 0:32Lewis Howes?

  Norman Vincent Peale said, "Change your thoughts and you change your world." And Buddha said, "Thousands of candles can be lightened from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared." Today, I'm so excited to bring you one of my dear, close friends, Jay Shetty, and share this special Q and A that I did with him at the Summit of Greatness. And he just blew people away. If you don't know who Jay Shetty is, you're probably not online and never watch any videos or anything because he is everywhere right now.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  He's a former monk who is now an award-winning host, storyteller, and viral content creator. Since launching his video channel in 2016, Jay's viral wisdom videos have reached almost 4 billion views and gained over 20 million followers on Facebook, over 2 million on Instagram, and almost 2 million on YouTube. And it just continues to grow like wildfire. This makes him one of the most viewed people on the internet internationally. He's also one of the youngest people to have his name in Forbes Magazine as Forbes 30 Under 30, wins tons of awards, get recognized everywhere all over the world, speaks at the top conferences. He is an inspiration. I'm so glad to call him a good friend of mine

• 1:59Lewis Howes?

  because we've done so many positive things together and we both have the same mission. We want to help people. We want to move the world forward. We want to inspire people to live a better life. And he gave this incredible speech that I'm not going to share here, but the Q and A at the end of the speech was just as powerful, and I wanted to share that with you. We talk about the importance of focusing on service. Most of the unhappy people in this world are not living in service to something. And it's simple, once you focus on service and you make your heart on service, it's hard to be nervous and scared. And that's what we want to focus on, being in service. We talk about why you should make a small change your top priority.

• 2:44Lewis Howes?

  Make small changes your top priority. That's what this is about. The power of making journaling a habit. When we reflect, something happens on the actions and the thoughts we take moving forward. It's a powerful thing that you can do. We also talk about the importance of taking time to heal from past pain. If we don't, if we never heal, man, that pain just keeps coming back and keeps coming back. And that's what this is all about today. I'm super pumped about this. Make sure to share it with your friends, lewishouse.com/746. Tag my man Jay Shetty while you're listening to this on Instagram. Send him some love, let him know that you're listening to this. And make sure to check him out if you're not following yet on all the social media platforms. All right, guys, I'm excited about this again. A big thank you to our sponsors.

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  And without further ado, let's dive into this with the one, the only Jay Shetty.

• 3:39Lewis Howes?

  So say your name, what you're grateful for, and the direct question you have for Jay.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  My name is Terrell Jones. I'm grateful just to be able to impact people as a speaker and a coach in the world. And one of the things that you said, Jay, we spoke a little bit yesterday. One of the things that you said today that was impactful was you can't, you can't be everything, right?

• 4:02Jay Shetty?

  You can't be anything you want. You can be everything you are.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  You can be everything you are, but you can't be anything you want. So my question is, how do you figure out what you are? And how do you know if you trying to be like something else that you're not?

• 4:14Jay Shetty?

  Two processes. One is personal excavation. The more you observe yourself in different situations, the more you observe yourself when you're around certain people, the more you observe yourself when you're experimenting and testing and trying new things out, the more you get a sense for how you feel about it versus how someone feels that you feel about it. And that's our constant disconnect. We're validating or verifying everyone through, or even a small question like, how do I look in this? We're letting someone else's opinion define how we feel about ourselves, even if we feel totally uncomfortable. So we only get to that point when we start observing ourself and testing and experimenting with multiple things so that you can see yourself in different scenarios and different situations.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 5:00Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, man. Thank you so much.

• 5:05Lewis Howes?

  We're here in the middle. Let's stand up. Yep.

• 5:08Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Vivi. I'm grateful for being here, meeting all these amazing people.

• 5:11Lewis Howes?

  And where are you from?

• 5:13Speaker 04

  I'm from Germany, but I live in Las Vegas now.

• 5:15Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 5:18Speaker 04

  I wanted to know, how do you help people with ADD, being in the moment, focused on what they want to do, and just get forward and not getting distracted all the time?

• 5:29Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest challenges with change is too much pressure, especially when someone has other challenges that affect the challenge of distraction. And I would look at small incremental changes. Small changes, but a big priority in their life. The challenge I find is that too many of us are trying to change too many things all at the same time. It's like, we want to wake up early and start going to the gym and eat right, all in the same week.

• 5:54Lewis Howes?

  It's impossible.

• 5:54Jay Shetty?

  Right? It's impossible. Like, no one can do that, right?

• 5:57Lewis Howes?

  I've tried, yeah.

• 5:57Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I've tried too, and it kills you. Like, it breaks you. Like, no one can do that.

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  So what did you say before that?

• 6:02Jay Shetty?

  So I'm saying, small step, big priority. Try and change one small thing, but make it the biggest priority of the week. What we do, we try and make big steps and make them all small priorities. And so we want to shift that, right? Shift it the other way around. So help that person find a small, little baby step that they can take, but help them focus just on that. If you see a child, a child doesn't start learning how to eat proper food and walk at the same time. Like, children have moments in their life where certain things start evolving for them. That's how we're built. That's how we're wired. So allowing that to happen continuously, even when we grow older, makes it easier for that person as well.

• 6:40Lewis Howes?

  Is there something you've tried to change? That you've, that's worked for you in the last year? That you've done this?

• 6:45Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so my, my health was a big thing for me this year because as a monk, you literally go to the edge. Like I've tested my body to every one of its limits. And when I did that, I, I broke parts of my body that needed to be healed. And this year, one of my biggest focuses was my health. So I made that my top priority in my personal life, not in my professional goals, but my personal goals. And that included getting a personal trainer, included getting a healer, included getting people to work with me who are experts. But it became a big priority and a small step. So I wasn't trying to change my eating habits and my health habits. It was just me taking care of my exercise and physical body.

• 7:22Lewis Howes?

  Awesome, awesome.

• 7:23Jay Shetty?

  Thanks for that. Thank you, guys.

• 7:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, one up top, one final one up top. Yes, the lady waving here. Okay, over to the right, here we go. Yep, what's your name?

• 7:38Speaker 05

  My name is Tim Finn, Tim Finn. I'm from Akron, Ohio. I'm grateful for choice. I'm grateful for, we have the free will. We're all here and we can change what we want to change. My question is, and you kind of just hit on it. I'm someone who, I have a lot of stories, but I, my coping mechanism from the past to today was always bury it. Turn around, go the other way, work, deal with it, bury it. You stated that you shared those last, these stories for us particularly. But you also just commented and said that you have a healer. My question is, is I've buried these stories for so long. Lately, they're starting to resurface. I'm starting to remember them and I feel them. I feel the pain that I pushed away. What's your advice or your takeaway for anyone here that's struggling with something of the past that we dealt with maybe as a kid or from 10 years old, 11 years old?

• 8:23Speaker 05

  It's not as easy as changing your story. Yes, we can change our story and aim to change our mindset, but what are some tips or tricks or advice that you have for that?

• 8:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, beautiful. I talk a lot about how after I'd finished being a monk for three years, a lot of my memory prior to that was wiped out.

• 8:39Speaker 05

  Really?

• 8:39Jay Shetty?

  So I actually would sit down with a friend from like 16 years old and they'd be like, Jamie, remember we did this? And I'd be like, Oh yeah, but it would take me a moment.

• 8:46Lewis Howes?

  Why did you do this?

• 8:47Jay Shetty?

  I feel like there's so much cleansing happening. There's so much cleansing and my experience of that cleansing was slight loss of memory. But not legitimately losing memory, just seeing something drift into the past because it's been dealt with. So it goes into the back of your mind. So that healing and cleansing, so I really believe in journaling is a great cleansing process. I think being able to journal, write, just get it out on a piece of paper. Being able to move away from being in our heads and being able to learn to articulate things well. There's a beautiful statement by Einstein where he said, "If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough." And so if you can't explain what you went through simply, you don't understand it well enough. It's a brilliant test to know whether you've healed or cleansed.

• 9:31Jay Shetty?

  So keep articulating yourself to people who care, to a healer, to the page with a pen. Whatever it takes to continue that cleansing process. So that you can get to a point where you can explain how you went through, what you went through. And it's effortless, it's simple, it's easy. So I think healing is what we need, not burying and not broadcasting, but healing. And healing kind of exists between the two. Some people just broadcast their pain and some people bury their pain. And the real challenge is to heal it and that healing comes through journaling, sharing, articulating, explaining, and that takes time. Need patience.

• 10:08Lewis Howes?

  Awesome.

• 10:09Jay Shetty?

  Thank you. Thank you, bro.

• 10:19Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. LewisHowes.com/746. Make sure to tag at Jay Shetty over on Instagram. Let him know that you're listening, let him know that you're a fan. Send him some love your way because he always has positive things to say over there as well. Check him out on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and all the great places. Follow him, he's a friend of the School of Greatness. We're going to make sure you enjoy his content as well. Big thank you to our sponsors for helping us make this show reach far and wide, continue the production value we couldn't do without them. And to bring it back to the beginning, Norman Vincent Peale said, "Change your thoughts and you change your world." What are you thinking about yourself every single day? What are you thinking about other people every single day?

• 11:04Lewis Howes?

  What are you thinking about the world? What you think you create and you cause. So make sure you're guarding your thoughts carefully. Stand porter at the door of thought. Be there, guard your thoughts, and think clearly on how you want to live in the world. And Buddha said, "Thousands of candles can be lightened from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened." Happiness never decreases by being shared. Spread your happiness, spread your light, spread your joy. It'll never be shortened. Continue to live in abundance and live a beautiful life. I love you so very much. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.