The BIG REASONS You Feel Lost In Life & How To FIND YOURSELF! | Jay Shetty

The one way to know your strengths is to ask yourself, what do you do that you feel the most confidence doing? Have you ever looked at how much content you've put out? No. It's a lot, dude. Like when you search your name, like to go cuz I I normally try to watch like basically everything and I was like, I give up. It's just it's really incredible. Um and going through that stuff, it seems really clear to me that you have massive self-awareness. Mhm. And what would you say like is A, is there a process for people to gain more self-awareness? And then what are from a behavioral um uh you know, just human behavior level, what are things that trip up the average person? The first answer, I mean, I'm a huge fan of the book Thinking Fast and Slow. I don't know how if you've read it. Yeah, it's a great book because for me it's got a really close pattern connection again to what I studied. So, just understanding system one and system two, if anyone watching hasn't read it, I highly recommend it. Just being able to differentiate between system one and system two, as Daniel Kahneman calls it, in the Vedic philosophy we call differentiating between the mind and the intelligence. Knowing how to differentiate of the voices in your head is the first level of self-awareness. So, break down what system one and system two are. Absolutely. So, system one is your initial response to anything that happens. It's it's a stop that I can't really say. So, if you say something I don't like, my system one naturally would be a face that I pull that I'm like, I don't agree with that. That's that's the understanding of what system one is. It's the initial default reaction in the moment. That can be positive often. For example, if someone pulls out a knife, you feel scared and you run. That's system one. That's a good thing. It's it's safe for you. But also system one is someone says something that hurts your ego and you start defending yourself immediately. That's also that's a negative of system one. That we would refer to as the mind. It's built up of conditioning. Those responses are conditioned. Those default elements are all there because of habit and continuous practice. The system two is more like the intelligence, what I would say is more like the parent. If you can consider system one to be more like a child, system two is more like a parent. It looks more at the long term. It looks more at the bigger picture. It processes that default reaction through a set of checking and metrics to decide whether that's true. The child is the the one that wants everything right away, impatient, quickly responding, straight away reacting when it doesn't get what it wants. The intelligent parent, a good one, knows what the child wants and needs and what's better for it in the long term. Just starting there and being able to reflect and observe the different voices inside of us is a great place to start your self-awareness. Because the biggest challenge is that most of us don't know what we're listening to. And we don't Most of us don't even know that there are more than one voice inside of us. Just getting over that line is a huge win. Because now at least you're trying to differentiate between what you're hearing. And that's going to help you make better decisions in the future. So, that was answer one. Does that answer your question? And second one was? What um So, that's awareness. How can What are like typical things that trip people up that So, in your answer just now, it's like, okay, if you want to become more aware, just know that those two things are happening, right? You're going to have an initial response and then one that's more calculated. Now, be aware of these two or three things that are also coming for you. The biggest challenge is that there's just so much noise. It's like, have you ever had someone in your home, maybe it's your wife or maybe it's a friend or whatever, just play a really bad song too often? Right? Just playing a song that you really don't like. heard my wife laugh because she knows how guilty she is. Right, okay, there you go, right? There you go. And you You play a song and you just think, oh, turn that off." And after a while, it's been on for so long that you you become immune to it. Like it's just there and it's still on. It's there in the back of your mind and you didn't manage to turn it off. So, the noise that I describe in life, whether it's your parents' expectations, whether it's society's expectations, whether it's your partner's expectations, all of those are like noise in the background. And that noise drowns out your ability to understand the mind and the intelligence. That's one of the biggest trip-ups. I was looking at I gave a presentation called Build a Life, Not a Resume. It's also one of my popular videos. It's very good video, by the Thank you, man. Thank you so much. And when I did the research, so you don't see this in the video cuz this research didn't make it into the video. But the research that I was doing was around the most common resume lies. The truth is over 40 to 50% of us lie on our resumes. Yeah, if you don't, you're missing an opportunity. I'll just say that. Yeah, there you go, right? So, and and I started to dig deeper and I was looking at, you know, a lot of people lie about their dates of employment. So, instead of 3 days, it's now 3 months, you know, whatever it may be. Now, I dug deeper and I wanted to meet some of these people and speak to people. And so, I spoke to people who lie on their resumes. And we know that at least 40 to 50% tell us they do. And all the thing is no one was proud of that. No one No one was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I'm going to get" Really what it came down to is we're really insecure about our own abilities. Really what it came down to is we're not confident about what we have to offer. What it came down to is the lack of self-awareness. What it came down to is the lack of understanding. What am I good at? What am I passionate about? What am I bringing to the table? That's what people were really worried about. They were worried about the job, but when you dug beneath the surface, the real behavioral trait that was coming out was insecurity and being unconfident about one's potential. That that tells us a lot. That indicates a lot about human behavior and human nature. That the noise from outside makes us want to fit into a container. And that stops us from differentiating between what is my mind saying and what is my intelligence saying, and what happens is that noise becomes your voice. So, that noise becomes what you think is what you're saying. And most people don't realize that until 10, 20, 30 years down the line. How the hell do you like figure out? So, your analogy is great. So, the song's on, you don't even realize it's there anymore, it becomes total white noise, you're oblivious to it. In fact, you'll only notice it if it gets turned off. So, how do they identify that? Like, do you have a process for that? How do you hear the thing that you no longer hear so that you can shut it off? Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest ones, and we say this all the time, but it applies mostly to this, is switching your association. Is switching Association to what? that you hang out with, right? It's like changing your circle. Because if you're only hearing the same thing from that circle, the only way to turn it off without you having to do mass amounts of reflection is changing your circle where you start hearing. We all ultimately find the things we want to hear, right? We know that. All right, right now in real time you and I are going to do some cool [ __ ] you know? Okay, let's do it. Let's do it. All right, so I created like a little um piece of content for Alexa where I was like, okay, what are the the four questions that you can ask to get cuz you and I use different words, but I think we're saying the same thing. So, I call them invisible beliefs. Beautiful. So, everybody has invisible beliefs and they're totally [ __ ] with you. Yeah, I call it noise. Yeah. So, they're they're controlling your life. Mhm. And the only way to get them to stop controlling your life is actually figure out what they are. And so, I gave four questions that two of them I just straight stole from Albert Einstein. What are they? And it's the most important decision every person will make in their life is whether they live in a friendly or a hostile universe. So, just make it a question, right? Do you live in a friendly or a hostile universe? And so, the the point, and I'll go through all four, but the point was that if you ask these four questions and they're just the tip of the iceberg, but if you ask these four questions, you're going to begin to identify your frame of reference. Basically, just trying to get people to frame themselves as either optimistic or pessimistic, which I think is sort of the the big ham-handed like first thing you need to become aware of. So, first, um do you live in a hostile or friendly universe? Another Einstein one. Is everything a miracle or is nothing a miracle, right? Cuz you get to choose. So, neither one of those is objectively real, but you pick and it's really going to color how you see it. I love it. Yeah. Um and then number three, can you do anything you set your mind to without limitation or are there certain things you can't comprehend? Um and then number four, I'm forgetting right now, so I won't waste time cuz you get the Yeah, I get it. I love them. They're brilliant. Brilliant questions. So, what like they're woefully incomplete. So, what could we add to that that would really bring this home for people? So, if that gets them optimistic, pessimistic, what what other at a really high level? What are other things that people could immediately switch or in fact would immediately switch if they change, you know, the people that they're hanging around? But like let's really get real about what some of those things are. So, optimism, pessimism, what else? So, for me, there was two questions that I had to ask myself that that really changed what I do. One of my big questions is what advice would I give to my younger self? It's huge because I think that's the stuff that we regret. That's the stuff that we wish we were doing. That's the stuff that has been lost in the noise. When you ask someone what advice would you give to your younger self, the number one answer is I wish I studied this. I wish I tried this out. I wish I gave this a go. You know, those are the All things that somebody didn't do? Yeah, it's all things that things people didn't do. It's always like something that either should have started or didn't continue. And that's really tapping into someone's voice. Right? That's really tapping into what someone really wants to do. And you're going way beyond just like, "Oh, what do you like? What are you passionate about?" So hard to answer that sometimes, especially if you're drowning. Does that add to your questions or not? That's really interesting, but now I need to know what your answer was. So, I used to be I used to do a lot of spoken word when I grew up. I read the dictionary, I read the thesaurus, I loved language. That's what I was fascinated by. And for some reason, I gave it up. Then I found out about monk life, became a monk, and then almost back 10 years on at 28. I was going I asked myself that question, and my answer was I miss words. I miss expressiveness. I miss sharing a message and stories through incredible language and ideas, potential rhymes, but flow, and all of these things. So, that was the answer to my question. One of the biggest answers was like, "I wish I never stopped writing." When did you ask that question? I was actually 28. So, 2 years ago? 2 years ago? What is that, my friends? I have huge news for you about one of the most exciting and important projects I've ever worked on in my life. As you guys know, it is my mission to help teach people about how to build a mindset and the skills that they're going to need to live an extraordinary life. And over the last few months, I've been working hard behind the scenes to create a brand new tool that will help you do exactly that. It's called Project Kaizen, and I'm proud to announce that I'll be bringing it to the world later this year. Project Kaizen is a web3 based game-like experience that is a story-based world that's going to allow you to get inside, build an avatar that is aspirational of who you want to become, and then take the path of the warrior seeking continuous improvement inside of a story world and game experience. All right, my friend, I cannot tell you how excited I am about this amazing new project, which I think ushers in a whole new form of entertainment, and I want to meet you inside of Project Kaizen and help you have fun with these ideas of always getting better. All right, click the link and join me in Discord and until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Your content is like the modern version of spoken word. So, I don't know if that's on purpose or an accident, but like accident. watching it, I was like, [ __ ] Like, if he is doing this off the cuff, I have to hate myself a little. Yeah. And if he's writing it down, he performs it so well that it feels off the cuff, but it's The answer is both. It's very impressive. Thank you, man. You're so kind. I'm I'm genuinely touched coming from you. here's the thing. Like, look, and and I love giving compliments when they're real, but more importantly, you compliment the thing that you want to reinforce in somebody. So, you've got a mission. I find it very interesting, which is can we make knowledge my word? I don't remember what word do you use? Wisdom. Wisdom, perfect. So, can we make wisdom spread as far and as fast as entertainment? Mhm. Which is so similar to what I'm trying to change people's beliefs through entertainment. Mhm. So, I recognize the kindred soul right away. And then just watching the content, I'm like, woah. Like, it's I'm not surprised the number of views that you've gotten because it's songs work because they make you feel an emotion, but they also tap into whatever it is about humans, whatever it is that we convey through rhythm. Um so, and and before the cameras were rolling, we were talking about it. So, the one thing that makes me very uncomfortable, I do the same called impact quotes. And impact quotes is the first time where I allowed myself to perform. Where I'm knowingly I would not say it like this if you and I were standing next to each other, right? This is for the camera. I know how it's going to be edited. I know we're going to add music to it, so it is a performance. Mhm. But it's also some of our best performing content. So, it's like what you were saying earlier about Look, I just accept that not everybody geeks out on neuroscience. And so, I have to understand like who my audience is and give them something in in a way that will then resonate and go viral. Absolutely. And so I think acknowledging that's really interesting. So anyway, I I'm responding just to what you were saying about that cuz your life seems to be an echo of that answer. for it. I'm here. I'm here. I'm I'm loving this and if you're loving it that's even better. I'm loving this and if you're loving it that's even better. Yeah, 100%. So there are three questions that you get asked a lot. What are they? Ooh, the big one is how do I find my passion? Okay, and you can tell me the you get I need you to answer each one of them. Yeah. But uh if you want to run through what each of the questions are and then we'll go back or Sure. Yeah, no, I'll just do them as they are. Perfect. So how do I find my passion? My simple model which is the Dharma model. It also Dharma means eternal duty in the Vedic tradition. It's very similar to what Ikigai is being spoken about today which is a Japanese version of reason for being. Why do we live? Where is meaning coming from? And it talks about an intersect of four areas. What am I good at? What do I love? What does the world need and how do I get paid for it? To me those four help you unlock your passion. When you find the intersect across all of those four, you're making your passion your purpose. You'll unlock your passion, you'll find your purpose. This is path one. There's two paths. Path one, I find my skill set and I engage it to help other people and become better at it. So I'm becoming better at what I'm good at and I'm using it to help other people because I'm aware of what I'm quite good at and I know what what knowledge I have, what skills I have. I have some self-awareness. The other path that people often miss is actually I just start serving people. I just start helping people and I start to notice what I enjoy about that and what I'm good at helping people with. So that's Gandhi's path. Gandhi said that you find yourself when you lose yourself in the service of others. So for me those are the two paths of how do I find my passion and finding the intersect between those four areas. I love that. And the second one is Jay, my relationship's falling apart. I get asked that all the time. So, the answer to that is much harder. It's It's harder to summarize it, but I always start with self-actualization that the problem is we have a list for the one that we want. And we don't have a list for what we need to become. And I don't mean become to attract, I mean become to just be, to just get to understand yourself. You don't know what you need in your life until you figure out who you are. And so, I find too many people rush into relationships without really recognizing and being fully aware of what they need from a relationship. So, it all comes back to how aware are you? How much understanding do you have of yourself and what you need and what you want? That's my best advice for a relationship in like a minute. And And then the third question I mostly get asked is, Jay, what do you read? Like, what are your favorite books? Because it seems you read a lot. What are your top three books? They're not groundbreaking in the sense that people may not be like, Oh my god, that's the best book I've ever read. For me, they changed my life. So, that's where I'm coming at a point from. I love Start With Why by Simon Sinek. And not because I applied it to businesses, because I applied it to my life. And even today, I'm constantly refining my why. That's all I do every day. My deepest morning routine and practice is to refine why I do what I do. It's so easy for me to now do it for money. It's so easy for me to now do it for followers. It's so easy for me to now do it for fame. And every day I have to refine that. Because I know, having lived as a monk and what I practiced, that if those become what I want, then I'll forget who I need to be. So, my daily practice and my daily routine is refining my intention, which in modern language is why. So, for me, Simon's book helped me do that. The Bhagavad Gita, which I would love to do for Vedic knowledge what Ryan's done for stoicism. And the Bhagavad Gita, over 5,000 years old, and that book really exemplifies human challenge. Third book, I'd say, this one's going to be hard cuz it's the last one. Let me think. I'm going to try to throw something else in there. So, I've done one like self-development, one more spiritual enlightenment. Let me throw a business book in seeing as I'm sure you have a lot of business viewers. I love the book Exponential Organizations. I don't know if you've read it. It's by Salim Ismail and the Singularity University. And that book for me is an incredible analysis of the success of all the organizations we see ruling our phone today. The way it breaks down their business models and how they were created, to me it's fascinating. So, if anyone really wants to start up a exponential business today, then that's where they have to go. And that's when Peter Diamandis said that if you want to be a billionaire, redefining it is someone who impacts the lives of a billion people. And and that's what that business book is really about is how do you create an exponential organization that positively impacts a billion people. So, those are my three for today. That's pretty good. yeah. So. All right, I've got one more three that I want to hear you talk about cuz you have three E's. Ooh. What are they? Why do they matter? So, for me, my three E's are element, environment, and energy. Everyone has an element that they thrive in. If you take someone out of their element, they won't be the same. A modern-day example would be Michael Jordan. He was incredible at basketball. You took him out of basketball, put him into baseball, no one remembers his career. We're talking about one of the best athletes of all time. Your environment is the environment around you. You can take a fish out of water and give it a beautiful mansion and a Bentley and all the money in the world, but it would die. And that's what we are like our environment. Everyone needs an environment which they thrive, which we have to craft. Your boss, if you're at work, is never going to ask you, "Hey, what what environment do you succeed in?" Right? Like, that never happens. So, we have to create an environment where we thrive. And then finally, it's energy. We Some of us love high-energy environments, high pressure. Some of us succeed in lower-energy environments and low pressure. Figuring out your energy and the frequency on which you operate best will help you thrive as well. So, for me, those are the three E's to really create a thriving environment. Know your element, know your environment, and know your energy. And so, at all times, if I see anything going wrong, I'm going, "Is my element out of alignment? Is my environment out of alignment, or is my energy out of alignment?" And that's a great three-question test you can do to yourself when you don't think things are going right. And all you have to do is bring that back into alignment. For me growing up in the my 20s, a monk was somebody bald in robes that maybe you bumped into at the airport who gave you like a flower and then asked for a donation. Like, that was a monk, right? So, now seeing somebody like you who's integrated into the real world, but you tell the story in the book, which I I real- One, you're super um open, vulnerable maybe has weird connotations, but you were just not worried about whether the story made you look cool or not. You were just like, "This is the thing I struggled with, and I was worried about that and whatever, and this is my sort of recursive Why why do I want this? What am I worried about?" Um and you begin to realize the things that are bothering you. And one thing happened early on when you got there, and you said that you were hurt that you were giving yourself to other people, and you didn't feel like it was being reciprocated. And the the way that the monk came back to recontextualize that for you, I found really important, and this is staying on the theme of the monkey mind, which we're going to come back to here in a second. So, but if you can tell that story, I think it'd be really powerful. Yeah, I think we all get into these scenarios in the world where we think we're trying our best to help and love other people. So, I think majority of people feel like they give more than they get. And I think anyone who's an empath or feels like they care for others will feel, "I give out so much love, but I don't get as much back." And that's how I felt sometimes in the ashram. Now, the interesting thing is that I'd forgotten lesson number one in the ashram. And the first lesson in the ashram was, "This is a hospital. There are doctors and patients. But remember, the doctors are also patients. And sometimes the patients may teach the doctors. But remember that we're all in the same space in this hospital where everyone is going through a process of purification." So, that was very clear. The ashram was not meant to be heaven. It wasn't meant to be this idyllic place where everyone was perfectly zen and calm. It was a place where you had to learn to develop that even amongst the challenges that were there, just like in reality. So, I'd forgotten that, and I was going, "Well, I'm giving out lots of love, and no one's giving me any love." And it was really emotional for me because I just felt like I was investing in people and helping people and supporting people. And and I'll never forget that conversation. And even till this day, it's become one of those conversations that stays with me and I remind myself of regularly, hence I put it in the book. The monk said to me, he said, "Just as there are people that you love and don't love you back, there are people in your life that are investing in you and loving you that you've forgotten about." And it was one of those like stop moments of just, "Is that true?" And I would encourage everyone who's listening and watching right now to really think about that. Think about that person you've been chasing, whether it's a friend, a potential boyfriend or girlfriend, a potential husband or wife, or whatever it may be, or a job. And then ask yourself, has someone ever chased you in life, or has someone ever pursued you in life, or has someone ever tried to love you in life, and you didn't even give them a time of day? The answer is true. I can agree with it. I can completely agree with that. There are people in my life who've done more for me than I could even begin to try and do. And that isn't just parents and family members. I'm talking about people professionally that I just can't repay. And so, he spoke about it as a theme called the circle of love, that you will always get the love you give out, you will always get it back, or whatever you give out, you will always get it back. You just won't get it back from the same people you give it to. And that was really fascinating to me, because I also realized that I may have caused hurt to people, and they may not have hurt me back. But, I've received hurt from people that I never hurt. And so, it works both ways, both with hurt and love. And when you see it on both ends, and that's ultimately karma in a in a tiny nutshell, it's completely grounding in saying, yeah, let me take a real look at my life and and where those blind spots are, about who I'm not being grateful to, who I'm missing, who I'm not expressing thanks to. I want to pull some of these threads together now. Yeah. Okay. So, I love it. you've got the what I'm short handing to the monkey mind, which is beliefs that don't serve you, the nature of the mind to want, to covet, to compare, like all these things that are um going to take you down. We're probably going to need to get into values, up values, down values. Um but, putting that in the monkey mind category, the things that drive you nuts, that worry you, that wake you up in the middle of the night. Um and then, you've got this idea of beginning to unlearn. Like, so much of what is the the lessons that you do in the book and that you've been saying here today are often not so much as as giving you something but taking something away and saying you're you're thinking about it in a way that's not helpful, that feeds the monkey mind instead of feeding peace. To get back to your earlier the pursuit that we're after is peace. Um tell me the Zen story, the pouring of the tea, which is so illustrative of I think exactly a large portion of what your book is meant to convey. So, the Zen story about the tea, and I love Zen stories in the book full of them as as you know. Uh the Zen story is where a student approaches a Zen master and a teacher and is complaining about all the challenges in their life and everything they've got going on and feels like they also have a sense of ego of they know everything that's happening. And the Zen master sees a cup that's full there and starts pouring tea into this cup. And the cup just starts overflowing and the student's looking at it going like, "What are you doing? Like, how does this make any sense?" And and the Zen master says, "Well, you're just like this cup. Right? I can't put any more in. You can't take any more in because you're already full. Like, you think you're full. You think you're done." And and that's the point that you have to always go back to that student mindset. You have to always go back to that emptiness. And I think one of the reasons why we struggle with that is we think that when we're full, we're safe. Our ego makes us believe that when you're full, when you think you know it all, that's when you're safe. The craziest thing is that's when you're at your weakest. And I think that's what we all miss, that when you think if you think of any company that's ever thought that they had figured it out, that is when they were at their most weakest point. If there's a fighter in a boxing match that thinks that they have perfected this game, that's when they're their weakest. When you're in a relationship and you think, "Oh, my life is perfect and everything's going great." That's when you're at your weakest. But, we find safety in certainty, when actually that's what makes us complacent and lose the plot. So, that story illustrates the need to always reconnect. Not that we're empty, that we have nothing, but that there is so much more to gain. There is so much more to learn. Yeah, that that idea of if you if you already think you have all this figured out, then I'm not going to be able to help you. So, if somebody is watching this right now with sort of a cynical eye to, "Yeah, I've heard this before, been there, done that, tried that. You know, I'm suffering from anxiety, depression, uh but Jay doesn't know my circumstances." Um one of the things you talk about is is how people can begin to slide into a victim mentality. Mhm. Um how how do you help people around that? Why some people really do have it bad. So, why do you advise them still to not adopt the victim mentality? Yeah, so there's a study that I talk about in the book that looks at people who have a victim mindset. And by the way, that is a condition that's adopted. You are not a victim person. Like, you're not a negative person. You just have adopted a negative sense of thoughts and habits and beliefs. And the study looked at people that had those beliefs and looked at people who didn't. And they were asked to think of a time when they felt they were the victim. And the other people were just asked to think of a time when they were bored. After that, these two sets of people were asked if they'd like to take part in an activity of just helping the team that had created the experiment. And I think the people that were the victim mindset were 25% less likely to offer to help and be a part of this change. And to the degree that sometimes they left trash behind and even took the pens that they were given by the experimenters to the point that you get so lost in that mentality that you don't even think about helping and getting out of it. So, the reason why the victim mindset it is real in the sense that there are definitely people in the world that have a harder situation than others. That's fact. There's no debating that point that there are people who have it a harder than other people. There are people that have had it harder than me. But, there are also people that have it easier than me. So, I've had it harder than some and same with you. And in our small bubbles, our hardship feels like the worst thing that could ever happen. And that's the craziest thing about pain is that you only think pain is bad when you're really going through it. And we compare our pain with other people's pain. We say, "Oh, that person's pain can't be that bad. That person's pain uh is probably a bit less than mine." You know, we because we've never experienced it. So, the reason why I encourage people to get out of that mindset is because that's just a one-way ticket to a lifelong commitment to sadness, disappointment, lethargy, complacency, and feeling stuck and lost. There's nothing gained out of feeling sorry for yourself. I don't think there's anyone that I've ever heard say, and I'm open to it, but I've never heard anyone say to me that feeling like a victim my whole life actually helped me find a victory in life. Like, I don't think I've ever heard that. I've never read that in a book. I've never heard in a documentary. I've never seen it anywhere. So, if it's out there, I'm open to it. But, when you look at that and you go, "Is this the life I want to keep living? Do I still want to feel this way?" You look at someone like Sindhutai. You look at all of these incredible people that have broken barriers. You look at people who were told they would uh Wilma Rudolph was told she would never walk again properly or run at age nine and went to went on to be a multiple Olympic gold medalist. When you hear that, you're like, "What? Really?" But, that's what's possible. And so, no one in the victim mindset has ever seen growth from that mindset. But, everyone who has traded that victim mindset for a mindset of acceptance, a mindset of healing, and a mindset of perspective has found their way out. And the mistake we make is we tell tell people what it's almost like toxic mindset advice, or it's like, "Oh, stop stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just go out there and do the work." That doesn't work either, because that person needs to accept that they've been through something painful for themselves. So, you can't belittle or devalue someone's pain. And often people try and belittle and devalue their own pain to get out of it, but that actually just slows down the process, and then they're back to square one again. So, you've got to accept the pain you went through. You've got to accept that you want to heal it. One of the best ways to explain this is how what we search for in our partners or in life is what we did or didn't get from our parents. That's interesting. Like, literally what we search for and I've I've analyzed this in my life a ton and in others. If you look for what you look for in your partner or for what you look for in life through your bosses, any authorities, anyone who has a position of power in your life is what you didn't or did get from your parents. And so, you're creating a life based on your past trauma or your past challenge. That doesn't lead to a positive relationship. I found myself projecting the patterns, the negative patterns that my parents had into my relationship with my wife. That doesn't create a positive experience. And by the way, I'm not blaming any parents in the world. Everyone's figuring it out, so I'm not even blaming my own. But, we need to have the awareness of developing the emotional skills that our parents didn't have. So, again, reminding ourselves of being aware that we're literally creating lives that will continue in the same direction unless our minds are changes. All right. So, if we know that people are struggling with the monkey mind, they um they're telling they're filling their cup up with a lot of things that are self-destructive maybe too big of a word, but it's directionally correct that things that aren't leading them to joy, to peace. Um How do we bring the ashram to them? How do we go about, you know, beginning the process of healing? I know um a big part of your journey was questions, questions, questions, questions, questions. What are the right questions? Um do we have to meditate? Is that optional? Do we have to give up sex? Like, where where do we fall? When you got to that part in the book, I had to laugh out loud. So, what how do we bring the ashram to people? How do we help them like now start doing things specifically to empty their cup to refill it with something that's going to lead to to peace and to joy and all that. Yeah. The first thing I'd say is I think everyone needs the feeling that they can just come up for some air. Life can often feel like someone's literally drowning you and you feel like you're drowning and floundering, especially if you're in an extreme case of anxiety or stress or depression. And I feel like you just need to feel like you can just come up for a tiny bit of air. So, for that in the book, I talk about the three S model, which is your sights, scents, and sounds. What we see, what we hear, and what we smell has a profound impact on our mental state, and we actually underestimate our sense. And I'll give you an example. All of us have been walking around with masks, and someone said this to me the other day, and it hit me. They were saying to me that now that we all wear masks and do this the whole time, I think my mask is over there. They're doing this all the time. They realized they couldn't hear people properly. Mhm. And the reason they couldn't hear people properly is they realized they don't use their ears, they use their eyes to see people's lips. And so actually, they're not even using their ears that much, they're using their eyes to follow the lips and know what someone's saying. Mhm. So actually, we depend so much on our eyes in every interaction. How many times have you been looking at someone attractive and you forgot what they were talking about? Right? You're just so engaged with your eyes that you completely even forgot to listen. Right? Or you're so lost in in the vision of something again and you're in a daze, you can't smell anything. You can't taste anything. So, we've got to learn to reactivate our senses. So, I'll give an example of what I mean. As monks, our life was sight designed, sound designed, and scent designed. What's the first thing you see when you wake up in the morning? For 80% of people, the first thing they see in the morning is their phone and the last thing they see at night is their phone. That is poor sight design because you don't even choose what the first message of the day your mind receives. That actually made my stomach drop. That's That's a gnarly thought. It's true. Yeah. Right? Imagine the last thing someone sees is not their partner or their spouse, the person they sleep with, they see their phone. And the first thing in the morning they look at is their phone. And guess what? It's not a good sight because you're looking at a message that you didn't design for your mind. You're looking at a picture or an image that maybe came through on your Instagram feed that you didn't choose for your mind. So, now you've started your day with envy, jealousy, comparison, competition, collab like all of the all of the monkey mind stuff and the monkey mind's excited, the monkey mind's on, the monkey mind's like, "Yeah, we're ready to go." And now you've started the day with the monkey mind. So, my advice is start your day with a quote that you love. Start your day with a picture of someone that you love or your family. Start your day with a work of art that inspires you. Mhm. Start your day with seeing the first thing that you see, make it so closely connected to your soul and your goal and your purpose that your monk mind naturally comes alive. So, as monks, the first thing that we saw was sometimes a teaching that we'd keep next to us. It might be a spiritual text where I just ripped it out of a book and stuck it there next to my bed so I woke up to that. Just wake up to something that you actually want to see when you wake up and make it intentional, make it focused. It could even be a reminder on a sticky note. I remember for a long time I had one when I was a monk that said, "I am not this body." Just to disconnect from the fact that I was more than this body. And because we didn't have mirrors in the ashram, it was very easy to forget I was this body. Or I've had other ones where that say to me, "I'm exactly where I need to be." And I've read that in the morning. And that just reminds me because so often I wake up feeling anxious that I'm behind on my day or I'm late and then I actually make up a mess where as if I read, "I'm exactly where I need to be." and I remind myself, I can start my day then. So, that's sight. The And that's simple, easy for anyone to do. You don't have to change your mind, you don't have to meditate, you don't have to do anything. The second one is let's talk about scent design. Now, one of the things I've been missing during quarantine is going to a spa or going to like a resort because I love massages and I love spas and like me and my wife love getting away. And if you think about it, whenever you go into a spa or a massage space or whatever they're called or resort, you can always feel relaxed from the moment you walk in just with the power of scent. It could be the most basic room in the world, but a scent can literally illuminate a whole room. So, scents like eucalyptus, lavender, sandalwood, if you've got a diffuser or a candle and you can make this a part of your routine before you start your work day, just have a candle that you breathe in for 4 seconds and breathe out for 4 seconds. Have a diffuser in your room that just makes you feel calm because as soon as you walk in. One thing I've been doing is putting eucalyptus drops into my showers and turning into a natural steam and I just feel like completely relieving all my sinuses and and feeling calm. These are just really practical things you can do to just ease yourself into it. And the third one, sound. This one's so powerful. Sound is underestimated because now we just have music playing all the time in the background and the music may not even be intentional and the lyrics are all over the place and you've got instruments that are not being played well or in harmony and you get a pump or like a a boost out of it. And I I learned about sound in the ashram and we had sound design. We would wake up to nature sounds. And nature's so aligned with your body and mind. If you look at nature, if you breathe in with the ocean, your breath will just be exactly where it needs to be. If you allow yourself to just be present with the wind, you'll feel your body just slow right down and be calm. Nature just has this amazing way of teaching so many lessons. And so when I lived in New York City, I often found myself getting exhausted and I started looking into it and I was thinking, what is it? I work out, I do all this stuff. And I realized that especially in New York, we deal with a lot of insignificant sound. You know, something called cognitive load where your brain is processing irrelevant insignificant sound of trucks, horns, construction work and drilling. And so when your ears are trying to make sense of insignificant sound, you're losing energy in an irrelevant way. And so sound design means every room in your home have a song that plays or music that plays in that room that gives you the feeling you want it to have. Another easy way to do that is before you start work or while you're working, have a song or a playlist that really gets you into the mode that you want to be in when you're doing that. Sound is a beautiful accomplice to any activity you want. So, those are three simple ways that anyone starting today can bring the ashram to their home by sight, scent, and sound design because that's how our lives were designed. Mhm. Now, what about things like the taking a chore, washing dishes, um servicing the animals. Like, should people build something into their day where it's like, I'm going to do this thing that I don't necessarily like, but I'm going to imbue it with something to remind myself that even in a task as mundane as washing dishes, I can be fully present. I can, um you know, find the joy in doing it well and I think you talk about watching it go, you know, from grease-covered to, you know, just sparkling clean. And just sort of recontextualizing. Is that a powerful thing that that people should work in? Like, I want to create that like perfect day. Like, we're, you know, like, how do we How do we make full monk use of our quarantine time? it. I love it. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think I'm trying to think of things that everyone does. I think washing your dishes is something everyone does every day or it's a common thing that people do. And you've got to realize that what you're doing is not washing the dish. Like, in terms of that's not actually what you're doing. What you're doing is training your mind for presence. Mhm. And the reason why that's so powerful is because most of us when we're washing the dishes, I got I need to watch that Netflix show. I've got 30 minutes before, you know, like, I'm going to sleep late if I don't see it. So, now you're already trying to figure out what you're doing next. And that bleeds into the rest of your life. So, now when you're finally on that Guess what? This is it. Everyone's going through quarantine and lockdown going, I need to travel. I need to travel. I need to get out. And when you live like that, when you're traveling, you'll be thinking, I need to do work. I need to get back to work. I need to get my career back on track. And then when you're at work, you're going to be like, I need to get away again. And that's literally the repetitive cycle that we're all living in. So when you're just washing your dish in a present way, you're not washing a dish, you're training your mind to be where you physically are. And the best way to do that is give it meaning like you said, or do something that makes you more present at the time. You could, if you really wanted to, wash the dish and listen to your favorite song. You could wash the dish and listen to this podcast. You could wash the dish and do something that is good for your mind that helps you be more present and conscious at the time. So you may say, "Yeah, I don't have enough time to wash the dishes for 10 minutes. Like one dish for 10 minutes." And I'm not asking you to do that. What I'm saying is don't constantly be in a rush to get onto something you want to do because then when you're doing what you want to do, you'll be in a rush to get onto the thing you have to do, and that cycle never stops. And and I think that's the never-ending cycle that we're in, that we always feel we're ahead or behind. We always feel we're never where we're meant to be. And that's the root of all of our suffering in life is that I don't feel I am where I actually am meant to be. What is up, my friends? Tom Bilyeu here, and I have a big question to ask you. How would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of 1 to 10? If your answer is anything less than a 10, I've got something cool for you. And let me tell you right now, discipline, by its very nature, means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful, boring, which is what kills most people, possibly scary, or even painful. Now, here is the thing. Achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging, stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring, and it will get boring. Building your levels of personal discipline is not easy, but let me tell you it pays off. In fact, I will tell you, you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline. All right, I've just released a class from Impact Theory University called How to Build Ironclad Discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you. All right, click the link on the screen, register for this class right now, and let's get to work. I will see you inside this workshop from Impact Theory University. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Peace out. So, one thing I want to talk about, obviously, having lived in London, um knowing a little bit about what it's like to grow up as an Indian kid in England. Uh how on Earth did you buck the trend of You once said, uh growing up in in an Indian household, you're either a doctor, a lawyer, or a failure. Yes, that's right. Yeah, that's right. So, uh how like how did you not fall prey to that? Yeah, those were my three options, right? That was it. There was no fourth option, so according to my parents, family, or the community I grew up in, I'm a failure. That's crazy. And how did I buck the trend? I was really, really fortunate that very early on I started to experiment with what mattered to me. Sometimes it got me in a lot of trouble. What people don't know about me is that I was suspended from school three times for trying out all sorts of things, like things that people would never imagine of someone who goes on to be a monk. I was experimenting with all the drugs in the world. I had multiple relationships. I was really trying to search for some sort of meaning, fulfillment, and as far as long as I've known, I've been chasing thrill. Mhm. I really value thrill and feeling like my life see that coming. Yeah, no. Not many people do. It's It's very different. From 14 to 20, I was like this kid who just wanted to try new things out. And my parents' rhetoric would always be, "Well, make sure you get good grades." And I used to think, "Well, if I can be bad and get good grades, then it all works, right? Everyone's happy." So, that's that's kind of what I did. And at 18, I was really fortunate when I met a monk. And this monk was invited to speak. And I kind of just went because one of my friends forced me to. At that time I was listening to CEOs and entrepreneurs and business people and marketers who who I thought that's what I was aspiring to be like. And then I hear this monk. And he captivated me like no one had ever captivated me before. It was like staring at the most beautiful woman on the planet. You know, I was completely fixated on him and his message. And that is the beginning with without me going into too much detail before we probe. That was the beginning of what changed me. Because I went from being someone who did only want all those things to become successful and trying to, but I started hearing my own inner voice much more in all that noise that I had around me. I remember one of my my parents had a maths tutor for me because they wanted me amazing at maths. And I was I was pretty good at numbers and I'd have this tutor and he'd tell me that he goes, "The reason that you're struggling with the next question is because you're always worried about what your parents think." And and that really stayed in my head. I was just like, "Wow, so as long as I'm trapped by what my parents think, I can actually never find the answers to the real questions of life." And there were all these little things happening. I lost two great friends when I was 16. One girl died in a car accident, one guy died because he was involved in drugs and violence. That That made me rethink everything. I just thought to myself, "Wait a minute, these were beautiful people people that I loved people that in my opinion were good people and I just lost them in a moment." And it was kind of like this collation of little things that just made me think, "Wait a minute, having money, having fame, this that just doesn't seem to add up." And then and then meeting the monk kind of made that shift possible. And as I said, he was completely captivating. And then I found out that he'd given up jobs in Google and Microsoft to to a monk. And I thought to myself, who does that? You know, he's given up everything that I'm chasing and that all my friends are chasing, but he seems happier than anyone I've ever met before. And he spoke about this incredible principle where he said that we should plant trees under whose shade we do not plan to sit. And he was speaking about this principle of selfless sacrifice. And that kind of just penetrated me right there. When he said the words selfless sacrifice, for the first time in my life I felt a thrill about something that I'd never felt before. I thought, wow, giving up everything you have for the service of others sounds like the best thing you could possibly do. And I don't know why I had that thought because I wasn't a spiritual kid growing up. I wasn't a religious kid growing up. I wasn't even a good kid growing up. I was just a rebel, a misfit, trying things out, an experimenter, which I still consider myself. And so what I started to do is I was interning at companies and firms and corporates thinking I was getting a grad job afterwards, and then I'd spend the rest of my summer holidays interning in India living with him as a monk. So I'd use all my summer and Christmas holidays to just be out there with the monks. And he introduced me to another 200 to 500 monks that were just like him, just as smart, just as bright, giving up everything they had and using all their skills to make the world a better place. I want to go back. So So why that resonated with you, which is really surprising. So and maybe you're just, you know, so far ahead of where I was at the time, but that would have sounded absurd to me at that time. Yeah. Um, did you already have a sense of unease that like I'm a rebel without a cause or like what was it about that moment? And you you you seem very aware of yourself. So I'm hoping that some of that awareness is present then. Like what was that moment? I believe the moment was I was I've always had friends who are older than me. And I could see a lot of them in the most successful careers, successful jobs, beautiful partners, whatever it was, but I saw a sense of lack of fulfillment, meaning, and purpose in their lives. And I've always been an observer, and I would see these people who were like 5 years older than me, 7 years older than me, maybe 10 years older than me. And I'd be watching them and go, "Is that the life I want?" And often the advice I give to people today is fast forward where you are, look at yourself in 10, 15, 20 years time, and ask yourself the question, "Is that where I want to be?" If you're in a company, look at the person who's 20 years ahead of you and ask yourself, "Is that where I want to be?" If you're in a startup, look at where other startups have got to in similar roles and go, "Is that where I want to be?" And if the answer is no, then you need to find a new path. And for me, the answer at that time from observing was no. The path that my parents or society or the university I went to or the community I had that was carving out for me, it didn't feel like the path for me. So, I was almost seeking an alternative or a new path. I was just so fortunate that it happened to be an uplifting, powerful path as opposed to something that could have actually taken me down the wrong road. Because that could have been possible, too. So, walk me through the first time you step off the plane in India, it's summer. And so, I'm I'm living there, I'm waking up. I'm almost doing all the practices just as if you were shadowing a CEO. I'm just shadowing a monk. And so, I'm just shadowing his lifestyle. So, we wake up. He's He's like one of the most elite monks. So, we're waking up at like 2:00 a.m. every day after sleeping at like 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. And then we study these ancient Vedas, which are 5,000-plus years old, together. And we spend 2 hours, and I'm studying with the best of the best here. So, he can like analyze and assimilate, and I'm learning fast, taking notes. Then 4:00 a.m. we go to collective meditation. We do those practices with the other monks as well. 6:00 a.m. we have personal meditation. So, I'm literally going through the life of a monk and falling in love with it step by step going, "Wow, I've never had this experience before." And I just threw myself in and I was practicing it to the T. Right? It wasn't like, "Oh, no, my back hurts when I sit on the floor. I can't stay here for too long." Or, you know, today when people are like, "Oh, I can't meditate for longer than 2 minutes." I was like, "No, I'm going to do it for 2 hours. If that's what they're doing, I'm going to give it a go." Because I can only test the hypothesis will only be true if the experiment is carried out to the degree that they are. So, if the hypothesis is if you live like this, you'll be happy, more fulfilled, then I want to do that. All right. So, let's explore this then through the lens of creating one's own perfect life. Yes. Which is pretty interesting, especially because interesting because I think this is so accurate to the way that most people are. It's not like, "Oh, there's some grand missing thing in my life." But, you took that first action. So, codify this for me or or for anybody that wants They don't know what their They just know that they're not living it yet. So, uh step number one is take it seriously. To find out if the hypothesis is true or not, you have to take the um the the experiment. You have to do it sincerely. Um what comes after that? think even one step before that is is opening yourself up to new role models and new experiences. See, we live in echo chambers. We're just surrounded by the same thinking. How often do you bump into a monk? You know, it just doesn't happen. You don't have No one has a dinner party and goes, "Oh, yeah, we should just invite the monk." You know, from town, like the local monk. Like, no one ever does that. And so, we meet people who are just like us most of the time. And we talk about this in business all the time. If you want to be a billionaire, spend time with billionaires. If you want to be a millionaire, spend time with millionaires. If you want to be a tech startup, spend time with, you know, that's that's the common rhetoric that we hear all the time. But, what if you want to find purpose and master the mind? There's no one better than a monk who's mastered the mind. So, so for me the first step is just opening yourself up to new experiences and new role models. Because most of us can't see ourselves in people, so then we try and fit ourselves into the boxes that we do see. And and I mean there's this beautiful quote that I I've been saying it everywhere and I wish I wrote it, but I didn't. So, it's by a philosopher and writer named Cooley. And he said that today I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. All right, just let that blow your mind for a moment. It's uh it's so powerful. I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. So, we live in this perception of a perception of ourselves. Hence, my identity is made by what my parents think I should be. My identity is made up by what my college or university thinks I should achieve. While you're living in that bubble in that echo chamber, getting to what you really want to do is impossible. Because maybe that just doesn't fit and I think so many people feel that way today. That they don't fit into the current education system. They don't fit with the three or four or five careers that you're taught exist. So, that process of self-excavation and actualization first requires being exposed. You can't be what you can't see. If I never saw a monk, I would never have wanted to be a monk. If I never meet a billionaire, I wouldn't want to be one because I wouldn't know what that feels like. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what it takes. And and I think that's the biggest challenge of our society that we're not exposed. So, that's the first step. Being exposed to unique experiences and role models. Second step is finding that experience or role model that you're passionate about and exactly like you said, taking it seriously. Shadow them, network with them, spend time with them, observe them even from afar. It takes that observation, being addicted to observing that person's lifestyle. And then the third step is going yes or no. Does that work for me? Not everyone who's going to go off and become a monk is going to feel like the way I did, and that's cool. But not everyone is going to go and follow and shadow a billionaire and go, "That's exactly the lifestyle I want." They may want the result, but do they want the hard work that goes with it? And so for me, that's the third step. It's observing, focusing, shadowing, getting as close to the process of that individual, and then going yes or no. Do I want that process? Not do I want the result. Everyone wants to be that monk who's fully enlightened, you know, can walk through, has an incredible aura that people just gravitate towards. But when you realize he has to wake up at 2:00 a.m. every day and sleeps about 4:00 to 6 hours, you're like, "Ah, you know, I don't want to do that." That That doesn't sound like me. All right, so a couple things. One, you said he's as powerful as he is. Yeah. Define power for me. Power being So, from a monk's perspective, perspective, the greatest power is to be self-controlled. To be able to train the mind and energy, to focus it exactly where you want it and when you want it to be. You are completely detached and undeterred from external ups and downs. You're able to navigate anything that seems tough, challenging, fun, excitement, with the same amount of being equapoised and balanced and equanimity without being too excited in pleasure or being too depressed in pain. But knowing how to navigate every situation, to me that's great strength and great power. Um I heard in one of your talks you were saying that if you look at um a a literal lifeline, a heartbeat for instance, you know, it's it's up and it's down, and people have this sense that something like enlightenment would be that um the equanimity forever. and just an even keel and you said but what what does that resemble it resembles a flatline when you die. Correct. So what is it like what I love about you is you sort of went into the wilderness of being a monk but you've brought it back to the real world. Cuz when you talk about a monk you talk about them being detached and that to me seems like the only real way to have that sort of super even keel existence which is not appealing to me personally. So if you're bringing back that notion of power of having control over yourself not letting your emotions take you everywhere but knowing that life is is the series of ups and downs. What does that power look like when it's brought back? Absolutely and actually that's the whole aim of monk training. It's it's more like a training system than it is a lifelong commitment. It is bringing that mindset into the real world where you get to test it. Now I got to do that for real when I left being a monk around 5 years ago. And when I left it was like oh my god I'm in the real world now again. Real world. I have to think about how to apply all this. I'm going to test for real all this stuff that I've learned and I was scared. Like I was nervous, I was anxious and all those things that I've been trained not to be rushed back because for the first time in my life I had to really put it into practice. And I love that feeling. I'm so glad that I had to do that. So for me actually the mindset is completely trainable to bring into the real world. That's that's what I'm trying to do. And and what it allows you to do is it allows you to gain clarity and perspective when you need it because you know when you can just take a bird's eye view from something. You know when you need to get close into something. You know when you need to pull back from something. There's a beautiful verse in the Bhagavad Gita that says that detachment is not that you own nothing. Detachment is that nothing owns you. And and I love it because to me that summarizes detachment in a way that it's not usually explained. Usually people see detachment as being away from everything. Actually, the greatest detachment is being close to everything and not letting it consume and own you. And that's real power. That's real strength. How many people do we know that have had fame and then that fame has ruined them? So for me, that definition of detachment is possible to practice even in the real world rather than saying, "Oh, I'm just going to have a really simple life. I'm just going to have nothing in life." What was the best part about being a monk? The best part about being a monk is that your morning routine and practices are so powerful that you can actually aspire for more incredible values in life. Because your mind is clear. Because your mind is clear. And you have that ability to have more clarity so you can seek that what is which is higher. So I'll give an example of what I mean. Define Is that what you're about to define what is higher? Yes, exactly. So for me, being able to overcome ego, being able to overcome envy, being able to overcome jealousy, being able able to overcome the negative of competitive state. There's a positive competitive state and there's a negative competitive state. Today, when people are looking on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube, all you're looking at is, "Oh, she got that many likes." Or he got that many likes. She got engaged or he got married. Or oh my god, look at her body or look at that. And it's like that stuff's destroying us inside. Envy, jealousy, ego, greed. To be able to have enough clarity to purify yourself of those things is going to alleviate the biggest anxieties and depressions of our time and mental health problems. And and we know that. We know that because all the mental health research today suggests that things like isolation, overexposure. We now can have more pain consumption in one day because of what we're exposed to than the pain we would have had in a lifetime. That's huge. Like that's that's ridiculous to think that in one day, because of the media news and social media, we consume more negative than we did in a lifetime. For me, being able to have time, energy, and clarity to focus on self-purification, that is the best thing about being a monk. Because you have that time, reflection, and a process, and an environment that only allows you to become more purified of those things. So, if I was the interviewer that I wanted to be, I would have asked you this question when we were on the topic, but I'm going to go back just because it's important enough. Um you gave us the three ways that you can really construct your ideal life, but define an ideal life for me. Mhm. So, an an ideal life for me is a life, and this applies to a company, an organization, an institution for me, is an ideal life is when we all have a head, a heart, and a hand. All three elements together working in alignment. Without one or the other, we start to lose something. If you only have a head and a heart, you'll find that life is stable. And define each of those. sure. Sure. Sure. Sure. So, a head is the clarity of vision. What you want. What you want. Knowing what you want, the way you picture life, and being able to navigate and make the decisions to get there. That's a good head. A good heart is being able to understand what your intuition and heart wants. Being able to connect and tap into that. Understanding deeper and beyond the vision you may have painted for yourself. So, I often say to people that you'll get to where you want in life, just not in the way you imagined. And that's because the path that's paved up and down is far different to the path we pave. So, you can have a great head and a great vision and a great mission and know where you want to go, but if your heart's not able to have that resilience and be able to adapt, and and have compassion and care and all of that, then then you're not going to be able to make the toughest decisions without your heart. But, to be able to realize that we need to care and be sustainable and long-lasting requires a heart. And a hand is that service, wanting to pass that on that which you have, wanting to give it forward, pay it forward. The idea of serving with what you have, I often say to people your passion is for you, your purpose is for others. Your passion makes you happy, but when you use your passion to make a difference in someone else's life, that's a service, that's a purpose, and that's the hand. So, those are my three elements of an ideal life. I want to know how close to encapsulating the notion of thinking like a monk can you get? Like how Like if you were to give somebody just a nutshell notion of what that means, what would you say? I'd say it means to live a life in alignment. And what that means is that you live a life where what you think, what you say, and what you do are aligned with your truest self. And what I mean by your truest self is the self that was not given to you by your parents, or by your education, or by media movies, or not the self that you've created to function in the world. So, I think if you strip away all of those expectations, obligations, and opinions, what you're left with, if you live in alignment with that, then you're thinking like a monk. All right. So, that is the very thing I want to get to. So, Dharma, which is a word that I knew only from Jack Kerouac and the whole title of Dharma Bums, which I have not read, but that notion was always very interesting to me. So, one of the questions I get asked a lot, probably the thing I get asked more than anything, is how to find your passion. And to me, hearing you talk about Dharma and identifying your essence, it really aligns with that idea. Um can you explain like what is the definition of Dharma? Is it different than finding your passion? Is it like what is one's true essence when those things are stripped away? Like how do you begin to to approach that as a a person or a monk, quite frankly? So, yeah, the word Dharma means a lot of things, and it's always hard to translate ancient Sanskrit words into modern-day English, but the closest two definitions are your true nature and your eternal purpose. So, it's almost like this is something that's already existing. It's already almost part of your DNA and part of your makeup, and it's allowing that to be completely unleashed. But I break it down in the book to make it really simple, because just like you, the amount of people that say to me, "Jay, what's my passion? What's my purpose?" So, I use Dharma to be described as the word purpose. And then I create this formula or this mathematical equation for how to unlock purpose. And to make it simple, and obviously people can dive into the book and do the questions and everything else that's in there, it's passion plus strengths plus compassion equals purpose. And I'm going to say that again, because I love to break it down, because I'm going to break each of these down for you, as well, that passion plus strengths plus compassion equals purpose or Dharma. And this is also similar with the concept of ikigai in the Japanese terminology, which is reason for being. So, you find these in a lot of ancient traditions, but now let's focus on the the passion. How do you know what your passion is? So, to break it down, I've been thinking that purpose is like an adult, passion is like a teenager, interest is like a child, and curiosity is the womb. So, the birthplace of passion is actually curiosity and interest. And I think we waste so much time trying to be like, "What am I really passionate about? What do I really believe in?" That's going to take years to figure out, and I've heard you say this, too. That's going to take experimenting, it's going to take testing. But, the thing you can start with right now is the simplest form of what am I curious about? What am I interested in? Let me take a course on that, or let me take a seminar on that, or let me go and try that, or let me shadow someone who's done that. And that experimenting process is the only way to unlock your passion. So, to me, that's step one. The other way of approaching your passion is through compassion. So, actually, a lot of people find their passion through pain. They find it through pain that they went through, pain of someone that they loved and lost, pain of someone who went through a physical ailment in their life, or something that they went through, and then that becomes their passion. That they've seen the worst horrific type of pain, and they never want to see it again, and that becomes what illuminates their passion to them. And so, compassion is another way, and actually, sometimes a simpler way, because we all know what pain we don't want to feel again, and we all know what pain we don't want someone else to feel again. Why do you think so many people struggle with this, and why do they struggle so much to find the answer for themselves? To answer in that order, I think we care so much because deep inside of us, we know that meaningful work has a reward. And I think we know that because we know that meaningless work has no reward. And I think everyone at some point in their life has done some form of meaningless work. Whether that was you tapping away on the buttons in a corporate company, whether that was you doing paperwork and filing and admin for that office job you did one summer, or whether you were flipping burgers and doing, you know, frying fries, or whatever it was. Like, everyone's done something that didn't satisfy them. And by the way, all of those things I've just said could be really satisfying to someone else. Mhm. And that's the crazy thing about passion that it's not linked to a particular activity for everyone. It could be completely different. There's a great study from the Yale School of Management that I talk about in the book. And Amy Wrzesniewski and her team tried to find work that they thought would be considered challenging. And they found that they looked at hospital cleaners and hospital workers because they thought that might be some of the challenging and sometimes the the filthy work that people may have to do. Can you imagine like cleaning up after people pass away or cleaning up after they just like urinate or whatever it may be. They're cleaning bedsheets, they're cleaning toilets. And so, they asked some of the people that worked in these hospitals to define their job. Most of them, as expected, said meaningless, insignificant, low-skilled. And basically, they read their personnel manual. The interesting thing is they asked the same question to people different people doing the same job. But this time, the answer was different. These different people doing the same job said that they did highly skilled work, it was highly fulfilling, and they saw themselves as healers, they saw themselves as carers, and they saw themselves as transformative in the healing process of their patients because they saw themselves in connection to someone actually recovering and being better. The the whole notion of Dharma to me hit home really hard in that story in the book and you talk about one of the people in particular who was changing like the photographs out for people so that they had something new to see and somebody asked her like, "Is that part of your job?" And what was her response? I thought this this summed up Dharma for me in a really visceral way. Yeah, it was it's not part of my job. It's how I see my job, right? It's how I perceive what I do and the term is job crafting. Where you have assigned meaning to the task, you've assigned meaning to the experience that you're now fueling that work rather than letting the job description be your only definition of it. Yeah, when she was stepping into that and saying like, "Okay, I knowing who I am and knowing how I feel and what it means to me to take care of this person and to look small detail like that and to imbue this thing which somebody else might think of as, you know, sort of a gross job or whatever, but to bring the beauty that I want to bring to it, um it it's me recognizing she didn't use the words Dharma, but it's me recognizing my purpose. It's me like not asking what's the definition of the job, but instead how do I bring my truest purpose, the unique way that I would do this job and bring that to this situation. Now, this is where your book got really interesting for me is this interesting interplay between there's a uh a sense of your essence, who you are and then there is bringing that into the things that you do. And so, you could take something you talk about like cleaning the um the monastery like in the tiny tiny little ways, but how what you would do is you would think about cleaning this, I imagine myself cleaning my my own heart. And so, now it becomes not actually polishing a monastery, it becomes like this spiritual pursuit of recognizing one that even as you get to the end of cleaning, it's dirty again. And so, it it's this continual thing. But, that was that that being able to begin to tease those things out that some things will seem really boring and dull, but you can imbue them with meaning. And then there's this thing inside of you that when you align to the things that you like and that you enjoy is like the the sort of raw responses there, but you can also create a response. Yeah. And how do you help people like bring those together? You talked a little bit about it with job crafting. But, how do you get people out of a woe is me mentality into, you know, finding ways to to make their life beautiful? I really believe that you have to seek the love and the beauty that you want in what you have now. Because that way you're training yourself to extract meaning right now, which means in the short term, if you can, like those hospital workers were doing, if you can fill that role with meaning and your true passion and what's coming from you, then that's going to lead you to discovering the power of it. And I saw that in my own life when I came back from being a monk and I worked in the corporate world. I was teaching meditation and mindfulness and the things that I talked today in the corporate world. And I remember in 2014, I was invited by one of our executives to teach mindfulness to a thousand of my peers at Twickenham Rugby Stadium. And I was speaking in between the CEO and Will Greenwood who won the Rugby World Cup with England. And and I'm sitting in the audience as a complete nobody and completely around people who are my same age, we all make the same money, no one knows who I am. And there I'm sitting there going, "How am I going to share mindfulness?" But, after doing that experience, I realized that even though my job was digital strategy and social media innovation, and I was a consultant, I was bringing my passion to the workplace, which actually gave me confidence that I could do this outside of the workplace. And that's how the two ideas connect, that when you find how you can apply it to your small world, you then get the confidence and the courage to take it out and make something real of it. Whereas, I think a lot of us are waiting for that break to get into doing it in reality, but we actually haven't even tested it or experimented on it in in a small space where we can develop our our own confidence and courage around it. So, I think there's there's two things that um are going to be important for people to understand if they're your book reads like a how-to manual, which to me is is the ultimate power in a book. And there's two things you touch on that play into this, and one of them is the monkey mind, and then the other is what you just talked about with strengths. Now, the reason I see those two things is is coming together is a lot of times people they they don't know what their strengths are, or maybe they haven't even spent time developing their strengths. And the monkey mind is either saying it's unfair that things are so hard for you that you have to develop them. It's unfair that, you know, at the ashram I was cuz I know that you had health trouble at the ashram, which sort of began this process of maybe I'm not meant to be here forever. And so, some people are going to be it's unfair that that happened for me in that I find myself, you know, now at Accenture, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid. And and or it's the thought of speaking between the CEO and this famous rugby player spins them off into um imposter syndrome, and I'm never going to be able to do this, and the anxiety takes flight, and then they they just aren't able to do it. So, how do you help people develop their strengths and recognize what their strengths are in the first place, and calm that monkey mind so that they can see clearly. This is This is why I love Tom. You're just amazing I mean, Tom, you're literally explaining my book for me. I'm just like, this is like the biggest master class of the book. It's great. Uh no, and and you're spot on that the monkey mind is what we all experience every day. So, the monkey mind is jumping from branch to branch. It doesn't want to focus on the root of the issue. It wants to find the next banana. It wants to find the next excuse. It wants to find the next instant gratification, right? That's the monkey mind. And so, the monkey mind is never going to help you focus on your strengths. And the reason, going back to one of the earlier questions you asked, the reason why we struggle to find our passion is because the world has constantly pushed us away from our strengths. We've constantly told to focus on your weaknesses. Oh, you've got three A's and a D, you should be working on that D. Let's get that up to an A, right? I remember in my school, they had this excruciating exercise where you'd be ranked 1 to 180 on every subject every year. Wow. And they'd send the list home to your parents. So, there were 180 students in my year group, and every subject, art, math, English, science, geography, history, you name it, you were ranked 1 to 180 in every subject based on your test results and scores. And that was like painful when my parents received that. And the crazy thing was, I would always outperform, always, in art, design, philosophy, and economics. I was and English, I was always in the top half, if not in the top quarter, if not in the top five, right? Of my whole year group. And the stuff like science and geography and and math, I was kind of like in the middle. And and towards the bottom end of my year. Now, granted I went to a competitive school, so I was still okay at those things. But the interesting thing was that my parents and my friends' parents would never look at what you came one or two or three in. They'd be looking at the things you came 90, 100, and 110 in. And so we've all been programmed to say, "Oh, your strengths are they're fine. They're they're good the way they are, but why are you not performing at this?" And so the one way to know your strengths is to ask yourself, "What do you do that you feel the most confidence doing?" And it could be something as simple as I'm great at organizing birthday parties. It could be. Like that may be your skill, right? That may be your strength. Or it may be something like I'm really good at putting on makeup. Or it could be that I have a great sense of fashion. It could be any of those things. And if you don't know it yet, you can also do an exercise where you sit down with a colleague, a family member, or a friend because you need people from all areas of your life. And you ask them, "What do you think I do that I excel in, that I stand out in? Or if you could trust me to do one thing in your life for you, what would that one thing be?" And when you ask that to people in a reflective way, really asking for that presence, you might be surprised by what they say. And that's such a powerful question to ask because someone may actually say something like to you, like Jay, I think your greatest strength is just knowing what to say to me when I most need it. And you may think, "Well, that's not a strength you can do anything with." But it is. It is a strength that you can do a lot with if you are okay with accepting that. Of course I want someone to say to me, "Oh Jay, you're you're you're an athlete like Cristiano Ronaldo and you could play football and get the Ballon d'Or and win all these tro- But that's not my reality. And so I feel that that's the place that I would start with strengths. And there was a great study done on the healthy, wealthy, and wisest people in the world. And they were asked, if you could invest in what you're good at, you're average at, or what you're bad at, where would you put your money? And so if you take 100% how would you divide that as a ratio? And if you ask this, I want everyone who's listening and watching at home right now to do this exercise. And you may write down 33 33 33, you may write down 40 40 20, you may write down 10 10 80. Whatever you write down, the most healthy, wealthy, wisest, successful people on the planet will say theirs is 100 0 0 or 80 10 10. They go all in on their strengths because they know that if they go all in on their strengths, they can become exceptional at it. Now, here's the caveat. When it comes to your hard skills, focus on your strengths. But when it comes to your soft skills, focus on your weaknesses. Now you got to tell me which is which. Yeah, so hard skills are things like Excel, math, uh product design, using a video camera, uh script writing, speaking. These are all hard skills in the sense that they're uh very clearly defined, very tangible, uh you can really measure them. It's almost like I'm a skill that's measurable. Your soft skills are like emotional intelligence, listening, compassion, empathy. These are all soft skills or considered soft skills. And those are where you focus on your weaknesses because they can actually end up tripping you up while you're trying to become the best at doing the hard skill. So you may be the best videographer in the world, but if you don't know how to listen to your community and your team, then no one's going to want to work with you. And so to me that's the missing link that we're we're actually the other way around. We put all our emphasis on getting better at our weaknesses in our hard skills. And we think that because we're empathetic and good people that that will be enough. And it doesn't work that way. That's one of the things that I loved about your book is there's a real So, you spend 3 years in an ashram removed from everything, but end up coming back and obviously had spent your entire youth thinking that you were going to go on the same path that most people growing up in London or any other industrialized nation is going to end up not taking that path, think it's forever, end up coming back. And so, there's this real understanding of the duality of you have a spiritual life, but then you also have to pay bills and keep the lights on and So, that um the way that you handled the collision of those two elements I found really, really interesting. No, for sure. And and I mean it, dude. The book is usable. Like if people put it to use in their life, their lives really will be better. And part of what I like is the way that you're walking people through This is how you identify your strengths, right? So, asking your friend, your colleague, your I forget the third one. Family, thank you. Um and beginning to You're You're giving people things to do in order to get to the things that they're going to need in order to move towards fulfillment. Now, I'm putting that word in your mouth. I actually don't You don't harp on fulfillment a lot in the book. So, if you had to say what the punchline is, like why are people working this hard? What are they working towards exactly? I think the two things that we're all working towards is a sense of peace and a sense of purpose. Peace is for yourself and purpose is for the world. And I think we all exist in both places. And I think where we go wrong is that we try to live life in a either/or. And this is one of the most beautiful lessons that I learned as a monk that life was about self and about service. There was no either/or. It wasn't disconnected or divided. You couldn't live a life of complete selfishness and expect to be happy. That wouldn't work. Even if you look at like uh hedonism, if you look at it as a philosophy of life or hedonism, however it's pronounced here, but if you look at that as a philosophy of life, which is let's just accumulate, let's just hoard, and let's just celebrate on my own, we know people and stories about people who will not be satisfied that way. To just have. You're one of them. You and Lisa, and I can and I can say this honestly, and I said this to Lisa the other day, are two of the most generous, loving people and humble people that I know, despite all your success and incredible achievement. And that's what endears people to you. It's not what you have that endears people or that may endear some people to you, but what keeps the right people around is that you both have these human qualities. Because you want to serve, you want to help, you want to support and collaborate. And so for me, I feel like we either live and then we live the opposite. The other opposite life is, "Oh, life is just about giving. It's just about service. It's just about helping." That's not sustainable either. And so to me, I've discovered through real monk wisdom that life is actually embracing polarities. It's actually about doing a dance and knowing which way to go at the right time. So, I believe as much in strategy as I do in sincerity. And I believe in much as generosity as I do in generating value for myself. And I believe as much in giving as I do in growing. And I think as soon as you start to say no, it's either or, you have to choose, I think that's where we start to lose a part of ourselves. And that's why I add that compassion to passion. Because I know a lot of people who do what they are passionate about, but actually lack meaning and purpose in their life because they haven't turned it into a service. Tell me some of the stories about the way that monks tap into purpose and service. It's something Service is something that comes up in the book a lot. What is the power of service and how can we, without going to an ashram, how can we take our strengths and really give them purpose and meaning? Yeah, so one of the biggest things with service in the ashram is service is a part of your daily routine. So there is no choice about whether you serve or not. So that's a really great way to live because you're almost exposed to lots of different types of service. So some of that would be cooking for the homeless or underprivileged children who don't have access to warm meals. Some of it would be building sustainable villages inside which people can live and villages can find a home and an economy. So you're always connected to doing something for others. And if I was going to ask a monk, why are we doing this? What would they say? They would say because I believe that you have to see how you can be useful to others. So the Dalai Lama probably puts it best that really we're born to help others and if we can't help them, at least don't hurt them. And to me that really sums it up. That we're born to help others. We're born with different gifts, with different geniuses, with different talents to improve the lives of others. And the question I always get from someone in the audience who wants to ask me an awkward question will be and there's always one, right? And so the person will say, "Well Jay, how does someone who has nothing in India or Africa do this? Like someone in in like a really slum situation or a village situation?" And they'll always they'll always pick on India and Africa. I'm not saying those. And I'll be like, "No, but this isn't for them. I'm speaking to an audience that has an education, that has resources, that has network." Like I'm speaking to people who can make a difference. So anyone who's in that area of society has a responsibility. So, anything that you're given in life, you're seen as a caretaker of. And the way you take the best care of it is that you use it in the service of others. And that purifies you from becoming attached to it and it feeling like it actually eats you alive and feeds your ego as opposed to you now being purified and cleansed of wealth, success, fame, status, or time, or whatever you have, and energy, and you're now using it for the highest cause. So, that's what they would say. They would say it's the highest cause of using what I've been given in the service of others, whatever you've been given. There's a couple things in there. Let's see if I can get to them both. So, one in the book you do talk about um somebody mother or something. She was a woman. She was married at 12. She ends up having multiple children at She's abused. At one point she's pregnant. He puts her in a cow barn. She gives birth in the cow barn. She cuts the umbilical cord with a rock. And then ends up going and living on the street. Now, this is somebody who has nothing, nothing, nothing. But yet ends up finding joy in being able and she starts begging for other people because she can see just how hard other people have it. So, when you were telling that story that, you know, people are trying to sort of pin you down of like, you know, what can the the lowest of the low really do? Even there because there's something so ingrained in the human condition that neurologically you are going to be rewarded for helping somebody in whatever way, even if all you can offer them is a smile. There really is like just a neurological feedback loop, which is super powerful. Yeah, her name's Sindhutai Sapkal. And uh her story is just heart-wrenching. Like that story should be a movie. Maybe we need to make that into a documentary movie because that story of like literally as you described it, like she's pregnant, she's kicked out of her home, her husband abuses her while she's pregnant, she then gives birth on the street, like you said, cuts her her umbilical cord with a rock, and then goes on to build an orphanage, and allows her husband, who ends up being broken on the streets, into her orphanage as one of the orphans, not as her husband. Mhm. I mean, it's it's a mind-blowing story, and it's real. And she's just this sweet old lady. And she's not done that as a personal brand or to like, you know, she doesn't That's not her video. She like That's who she is. And And to me, it's like that is such a beautiful reminder to us all that even feel even when you feel like you have nothing to give, you still have something to give. And I think that's one of our challenges that we're not exposed to enough stories. We're not experiencing enough of these amazing stories of incredible human feats. And that's why the book is full of other people's stories, not just mine, of people that inspire me. Every time I go through pain, I think of Sindhutai. Right? Like that pushes me through. Mhm. Yeah, that that to me is it was a perfect example of something you say explicitly in the book, which is the answer is always service. Mhm. You're like, "Whatever You don't have to tell me the problem. The answer is service." Like, if you're having a bad day, service, you know, if you're winning, service. It's like, whatever's going on, service is the thing that's going to make you I don't know if you said feel better, but I That was how I interpreted it. When I think about one of the things you talk a little bit about joy explicitly, but I would say an undercurrent through the whole book for me was, "Hey, everybody reading this, you have a monkey mind, and that monkey mind really makes [ __ ] hard. You can be winning, you can have everything, and you're comparing yourself to somebody else, and that's dragging you down, or you could be doing it for the wrong reasons." So, it just feels sort of dark and icky. And it's like, uh You're like, "I'm not even passing judgment on on I'm just saying I know the way the human mind works, and so I know where people are going to struggle because I have struggled and continue to struggle and it's some of this is just a recognition of the human condition and coming at it from a place of I can just predict that wherever you're at, if you lean into service, then it's going to change things. But what I like is that angle of leaning into service with skills that are unique to you and that became really powerful. I'd love to hear the moment where you seek counsel because you're thinking, not sure that I'm meant to stay in the ashram. And the advice that you get and how you sort of reconceive of your own identity as you transition out. Yeah, so it's it's weird the way it sounds, but becoming a monk was my biggest dream growing up. From that time period that I meet the monk 18, which we spoke about the last time I was here. And so that became like my identity from 18 to 22 and then 22 to 25 when I lived as a monk. So it's like that's been my identity for 7 years, at least in my heart and my head. And so when you get to the end of a self-awareness journey, which is actually the beginning, but you get to the end of it because you're like, oh, I'm not a monk anymore. And I'm sure you've gone through similar things like, oh, I'm not a CEO anymore of this, right? Of a business that does this. Or someone else may go through, I'm not married anymore. I'm now divorced. I am now not single anymore or I'm not uh alone. I've got kids, right? It's like we all go through these identity transitions in our life. And to me going from being a monk to not being a monk was the hardest transition that I'd been through at that time. And the question that I'm having is I'm having reflections on who I truly am and what my skills are, what my strengths are, what my passion is, what my compassion is. And I'm saying, I want to share all of this in like a cool way through entertainment and I love movies and that's where the book's full of like pop culture references and it's it's a it's it's who I am and what I love about myself. And then I'm going, "But this doesn't align with what monk life is meant to be in a sacred way." And that is like looking in the mirror and going, "Uh, like I'm not comfortable with that." So, when I share that with my teacher and we're having this discussion, his his advice and I think this is the part that you're referring to. He says to me that there's students that come to university and then they become professors. And there are students that come to the university and then they go out and become entrepreneurs or go out and work. And he says, "Which do you think are better?" I'm like, "I mean, neither really. Like I can't really choose what makes someone better." And he was just like, "That's the point. You You came here. Some people stay in the monastery to become senior monks and teachers and some people will go out and do what they do outside." And he goes, "But neither is better." And it was the simplest advice. It's one of those pieces of advice that it's all about the person that says it and not necessarily what you're hearing. But for me, it just clarified the judgment I had, the attachment I had, that I could only be happy and purposeful in this way. And that's really what we're all struggling with. That currently we all have a projector screen up here that goes, "This is what life's meant to look like for it to be happy." And then down here we have the reality version of what life actually looks like and we go, "Oh, no, they don't match. That doesn't match. That's not working. That means I'm going in the wrong direction." The funny thing is the version you have doesn't exist at all. It's just an imagination. It's It's virtual reality. And the reality that you're experiencing could actually be getting you closer to that goal than you even think, but you just don't want to go down that path because it doesn't look like the one you imagined. And that's where I was at. I was having to go down a path that I didn't imagine look like success. But then the question is, well, what does success look like then? And it definitely doesn't look like the version in your head. So to me, I started to realize, and I genuinely believe this, and and your affirmation is very useful to me, the 3 years of my life living as a monk were like being at monk school. And the last 7 years have been the exam. And everything in this book is stuff that I've tried and tested in the last 7 years. I learned it at monk school, but I tested it in in reality. And I'm only sharing what in the last 7 years has perfectly worked for me to feel like I'm exactly where I need to be. That doesn't mean I don't have off days. That doesn't mean that I'm happy all the time. It doesn't mean that I don't get angry. It doesn't mean that I don't get upset, but I'm going in the direction that I want to be going. I had been asking myself, what do I need to do to get rich? And it left me really unhappy. So I changed the question. And I started asking, what would I do and love every day even if I were failing?