Before You WASTE 2023 Away, WATCH THIS To Change Everything! | Jay Shetty

that's a lot of people Jay they hear these things about purpose and they're not sure how that actually translates for them in the context of their life so this is something you've been talking about for years so as things stand today Jay if someone was to come up to you and say I don't know what my purpose is can you help me what would you say to them so wrong and I think that's a fantastic question because the first thing I'd say is that I believe there is definitely a pressure to pursue your purpose and I think sometimes the pressure to find your purpose actually paralyzes you in the process and in the pursuit and so I think when we are guiding people or talking about purpose we have to have very thoughtful and mindful conversations around it now if someone comes up to me and says Jay I don't know what my purpose is can you help me as you just put there I would focus on the definition of purpose that comes from the Sanskrit term Dharma in my first book think like a monk I talk about this concept of Dharma which has many different definitions but one of my favorite definitions that it has is eternal purpose or Eternal Duty it means something that you're naturally inclined to do something you have proclivities and propensities for and I think both you and I love the Japanese ikigai the reason for being why we live and Dharma and ikigai have a lot in common and so I always tell people look purpose is this big scary word that needs to be simplified and so my first simplification is let's see if we can discover four things the first is what you're passionate about what you're really interested in and if you're like Jay I don't know what I'm passionate about I don't know what I'm interested in we go to the root and we say well what are you curious about what is it that you think intrigues you even if you're not passionate about it yet if that's a strong word the second thing I'd say is what are you naturally good at what do you already have expertise or skills in that you aren't even aware of or you're not even conscious of so many of us have so many talents so many hidden gifts but we keep placing them on the back burner the third thing I'd ask is is there a pain in the world that you want to solve is there a problem in the world that you feel really called to you some people don't find their purpose through their passion they find it through their pain they find it through a stress they want to alleviate in the world a challenge they want to remove from the world and then the fourth and final one is as ikigai says is uh can I get paid for it and that's a that's a that's a fourth and final consideration because I don't think purpose has to be something you have to get paid for it can be something we dedicate our weekends our evenings our vacations too as well and so the way I Define it is that your passion makes you happy and when you use your passion in the service of others that's a purpose because it makes them happy so how can you use your gifts and your talents and the things you love to improve the lives of others that's what purpose really is and now we're not looking at it as this big word we're actually looking at it as this broken up equation of what am I passionate about what am I excelling at what problem do I want to solve and then if I can how can I get paid for it how does your morning routine which I think we spoke about the first time you came on my show how does that help you tap into your purpose or I guess continually refine your purpose because I think there's something really powerful in what you do each morning that many of us can learn from so my morning routine is made up of four key habits and these four habits I have in the form of an acronym called time t-i-m-e and I know you're a fan of of acronyms and things that are memorable and and easy to share as well and I know we we have that in common and so I've always loved your work and reading your books too and so t-i-m-e the T stands for thankfulness I start my day with thankfulness and gratitude and the way I do that wrong again is I have a little Post-It note next to my bed that says what are you grateful for and so the first thing I see in the morning is this Post-It note that says what are you grateful for it's a question back at me I remember when I used to have uh not a bedside table I'd have it on my ceiling I'd have it on my bedside wall and what I love about that is you can write down any question you want uh this comes from the idea that we have 60 to 80 000 thoughts per day and studies show that 80 of them are negative and repetitive now that's quite scary to look at and the truth is you can't control 60 to 80 000 thoughts per day but you can control the first thought of the day and the last thought of the day and so for me when I wake up to that Post-It note I am training myself to make the first thought of the day A Grateful one a thankful one the i in my acronym stands for intention or insight and I try and set my intention for the day uh usually my intention is I want to be of service I want to be able to give love I want to express love I want to be an ambassador of purpose and compassion in my life in my day and then there could be a more specific intention like today it's like well I hope I get to share energy with wrong good I know rangan's been going through a lot of personal things today I hope that my energy he's choosing to spend time with me I hope that that can serve him serve his community and so I'm setting a really powerful intention uh the m t i m m is for meditation I meditate every morning I do three types of meditation which is what I was trained in as a monk it's meditations I teach it's breath work for the body visualization for the mind and mantra for the heart or soul and so I do my three techniques what I find is really what I'm trying to do is in the morning is align my body and mind because what I find is wrong and we usually wake up in the morning and our body is ahead of our mind how many times anyone is listening or watching have you ever felt what your body's running around but your mind is just still in bed or you experience the opposite you wake up and your mind is racing trying to do everything but your body is feeling exhausted and so for me breath work brings my body and mind together visualization allows me to visualize the day what am I going to do how am I going to show up who are the people that I'm going to meet what kind of energy are we going to exchange and then the Mantra or sound meditation is the repetition of sacred sounds affirmations that again become my internal dialogue and then ears exercise movement at the moment I've been hiking I've been doing a 45 minute to an hour hike every day to get some really good cardio in to get my heart rate uh moving and so that's my morning routine pretty much five days a week it's probably a couple of days a week that I'm a bit more flexible yeah thank you for sharing that um I also am a huge fan of morning routines I think the way you start the day really sets the I guess the dial on the compass for what's gonna happen that day you mentioned all these beautiful words like intention and integrating or aligning your body and minds I think this is a really beautiful concepts for people to think about for that single parent who feels that they're out of control and they're rushed off their feet and they hear that and they are thinking Jay hey all right for you buddy maybe you've got a life that allows you to devote that kind of time to yourself each morning I don't have that time what do you say to them the first thing I'd say is I think that's a really fair point I uh am very grateful for having the the time I spent as a monk and the training I received early on in my life that has made me made certain choices and at the same time I'm not a parent yet so just to point that out to everyone that you know I don't think I'm going to be able to keep up with this exact morning routine when I have kids and I don't assume that I'll be able to keep it throughout at all and my wife and I often talk about them when the topic of kids comes up I I think the first thing I'd say is you may not be able to do all of those and you may not even be able to do any of those but I'd ask yourself one question what's the one thing I can do today that is for me as a parent you're probably doing a million things a day that are for your kids maybe for your partner if you're a single parent then maybe you're taking care of a family member maybe you've got busy work schedules what's the one thing you can do today that's truly for yourself it could be as simple as I'm gonna sit and have my cup of coffee I'm gonna sit and have my cup of tea I'm gonna make sure that I listen to an episode of wrong good zap podcast like what is that one thing I can do today that is truly for myself because what we're really talking about here rangan is the point of a morning routine isn't to have a perfect morning routine or to have a perfect setup the reason for having a morning routine is to create some certainty in an otherwise uncertain day yeah that is the reason for a morning routine it's saying I know that something is going to be foundational in a day that is going to be full of chaos I'm going to bring some sense of control into a day that will not have control and that could be as simple as one thing you do that sets you into a positive healthy Rhythm of the direction you want your day to go in and so it can be as simple as I have my uh I'm the chief purpose officer at calm and every day on calm I do a seven minute meditation and it's aimed at anyone who has no more than seven minutes a day to get an insight to be grateful to breathe and literally in seven minutes I guide you through my my own morning routine which is two to three hours I teach within seven minutes and so I think there are lots of simple tools and techniques today that can give you the same benefit without the same amount of time yeah I mean I love that Jay I really appreciate how you shared that I appreciate your honesty you mentioned when you have kids you're not sure you'll be able to keep up with it I think most people would agree with you although you know I've been a father for 12 years now I have a pretty diligent morning read scene that I have learned over time I'm a better person my better father I'm a better human being frankly when I do that so I I do think there are ways to create those routines even when you are a parent so if and when that happens we can probably talk about that at that point I can certainly share some of mics I'll be coming to you for tips I'll be coming to you for tips rangan for sure for sure the the reason I started off Jay talking about purpose and morning routine says because the new book eight rules of love which is such a good read I I struggle to see how anyone would read it and not learn insights about themselves let alone their relationships insights about themselves and we won't have time to go into all the rules but rule one I thought was really really powerful let yourself be alone and when you first hear that you can interpret that in many different ways but this idea of solitude being a foundational practice that we need to better ourselves and to better our relationships I think it's really really powerful in fact you write in the book that Solitude is the beginning of love what do you mean by that so I think it's obvious rangan but we also don't always think about this but Life Starts on our own right like we are born on our own unless you're born as a set of twins and then and then you don't have that but a lot of us start our lives alone we spend time alone I think even today talking about kids I have a lot of nieces and nephews and friends children and everything and I found that parents have found that when their kids are entertaining themselves it's great to leave them alone let the child entertain themselves let the child explore let them be curious it's it's beautiful to see how a child can be so self-satisfied often we feel we have to entertain the children and keep them entertained but sometimes kids can do that for themselves and it's a beautiful thing but it's something we lose as we grow older and I think it comes from the idea rangan that most of us inherently believe that being lonely or being alone is a negative thing and I think this comes from our training in society and at school for example if you were the kid at school who ate alone own you are called The Loner if no one came to your birthday party you were unpopular if you go to a wedding and you don't have a plus one people say oh poor you like are you okay and so we constantly look at people who are not paired up with someone as less than this amazing reset study with college students found that they asked college students to rank how they thought their happiness would change if they were in a serious relationship or if they weren't in the next five years college students said that they believed that if they got married or if they got into a committed relationship in the next five years that their happiness would be a 8 out of ten that's what they predicted and they predicted that if they didn't get into a relationship if they stayed single five years after they graduated their happiness would be a three out of ten so those were their predictions they thought if we get into a relationship we'll be an 8 out of 10 if we don't get into a relationship we'll be at a 3 out of ten the reality is they tracked and spoke to the ones who stayed single their happiness was at a 7 out of ten the point being that people were much happier being single than they thought in their mind which means we have a mental construct around how being alone is a negative thing and so Solitude is the beginning of love going back to your question because in solitude You Learn To Love Yourself and when you learn to love yourself you apply that same process when you learn to love someone else when you learn to love yourself you learn to love the parts of you that are seemingly unlovable when you learn to love yourself you get to learn yourself despite all your flaws and mistakes when you learn to love yourself you learn to love the truth of who you are and by the way when you fall in love with someone else you're going to apply that same process back on them you're gonna have to learn to love them despite their flaws and mistakes and their regrets and their challenges but if you've not done that for yourself you will really struggle to do that for someone else and so Solitude gives you the time it gives you the space it gives you the capsule like the vehicle of figuring yourself out so that when you finally meet someone you're actually able to much more quickly understand are we operating at this same vibration the same frequency or actually is this a person not right for me and so I think you actually save yourself a lot of energy in the long term I hope that answers your question yeah no it does and it just makes me think but this is one of the major problems out there isn't isn't it at the moment Jay where a lot of us don't actually spend any time with ourselves you know you mentioned your morning read scene and how you take a bit of time to Prime yourself for the day to set your intention to at least control that first thought whereas for many people their experience of life is that there is no routine they jump straight into emails or conflicts or problems and so the way they're showing up in that relationship there's there's never been any sort of intentional time to sort of think about how you're going to show up you just show up and you think oh my relationship's not working maybe it isn't working or maybe you haven't taken the time to do something to you know enable it to work or at least enable it to function a little bit better the other thought that came up for me Jay is that a lot of people and I've got friends like this who jump from relationship to relationship you know when one relationship ends and I'm talking about a love relationship here um you know they can't be alone they don't want to be alone and so they look to fill that hole straight away and I think this is something you write about as well in the book about if you are at the end of a relationship or there's been a breakup don't rush in take time to kind of observe you know see what happened reflect heal you talk about emotional injuries and physical injuries it's really beautiful maybe you could speak to some of those Concepts a little bit yeah I mean wrong and I I love the point you just made right now about the idea that so many of the challenges we have in relationships are potentially challenges we actually have within ourselves I think if everyone is listening or watching could just reflect for a second and it might just be in reflecting on the last 24 hours when you say something to your partner that you later regret how many of you in all honesty and I'll raise my hand too how many of you said something because of your own insecurity or your own trigger how many of us say something we don't mean because of some lack of meaning within ourselves how many of us say things that hurt someone else because of some hurt we're going through that day how many of us reflect our stress onto our partner now you're not and this is where we go wrong wrong and I'm going to give a personal example of of how I went through this I live a high performance productive efficient purposeful life I have for quite a few years now what that means is I am constantly dealing with also high levels of stress and monitoring and managing them in in high doses what that also means is that if if uncontrolled or if not communicated effectively there are times when I can be snappier and more irritated at my wife because she's the person that I'm around all the time and what I started to realize wrong and was I was becoming someone I didn't want to be because when it came to the person I love most in this world who's my wife I was being irritable I was being Snappy I was I was releasing my stress not in a angry loud shouty way that's not who I am but but even if it was passive aggressive it could be silent or subtle but it was still not healthy and I started to look at that and I think wait a minute if I'm trying to be a good person if I believe I'm a good person why am I acting in ways that are not aligned with myself and I think everyone can relate to that when you've had the stress of your day or your boss is giving you a hard time or the kids haven't been well behaved today or whatever it may be and now you and your partner are the ones sharing all that stress and I started to realize a couple of things the first thing was managing stress was as important as managing my relationship and that's the point you've just raised you think the challenges in your relationship chances are the challenges in how you manage stress when I've meditated effectively when I've rested and slept my eight hours seven to nine hours a day when I've set my intention I am less likely to be bothered by the levels of stress and the second point that I understood was that I'm not going to be able to perfectly manage stress all the time because I'm not perfect I'm human but I can communicate that to my wife ahead of time so I'll give an example I'm traveling for the next couple of weeks or I'm getting ready to travel and I'm not with my wife right now she's in London uh because she has some family uh someone's not well in her family and if we were together what I'd be saying to my wife is hey I just want you to know the next couple of weeks is going to be stressful for me so if you find me kind of frantically running around or hectic just know that I'm going to be experiencing a bit of stress if you want my undivided attention just let me know and I'll be there for you but I just want to preempt the fact that that I'm I'm gonna be slightly more stressed out next week so if I'm not as present if I'm not the same as I usually am just don't take it personally it's not about you it's me and I think saying that and communicating that ahead of the time just saves the other person from having so many other feelings about what's going on uh and and then you can actually deal with it better yeah one of the things I wanted to talk to you about in this conversation was communication because you know weaved throughout your entire book for me at least is this idea that you have to be able to communicate effectively as you just mentioned none of us are perfect right no matter how well we're doing in our work or whatever we're doing and you know home life or professional life you know we all get stressed from time to time and here's the irony which you've just sort of highlighted often we take out those stresses on the people closest to us which if you look from the outside it's rather bizarre isn't it why would we take out our stress on the people we love the most and my current view on this is because I think in some ways there are safe space we kind of we feel oh you know I don't have to perform at the moment I'm in my safe space where I can just say it like it is but in some ways it's disrespectful because we're doing it to that person we love the most so I really appreciate you sharing that and the other point there Jay for me was you know it's so beautiful that you've got to that point now where you can say that to your wife in advance because if you don't say that as as you just highlighted you get into these situations where because it's not been expressed or you don't care about me you know this is going on yeah and you know these little niggles become bigger and bigger and bigger like a snowball so how do we learn because I'm sure as you've expressed that example people will be going yeah I've done that before I've done that before oh yeah I can remember that time when my partner did that to me and I think this speaks to Solitude again how do we learn how to regulate our emotions and when to say these things in advance of things blowing up yeah great great question and and I'm really enjoying this conversation because of how how raw and real it is and I'm really appreciating your reflection on it as well I was just thinking that the people that come first in our lives experience the worst of us because they're our first opening of expression of how we feel the reason why you perfectly brilliantly linked it back to Solitude there is because when you take time out to reflect on what's happening in the next seven days if you've found an 30 minutes block on every Sunday and you looked at your week ahead and you looked at what's going to stress me out what's easy what's hard when are my gaps when am I free you're going to have a much more bird's eye view of your life which you can now explain and communicate with your partner so for example Riley and me will often go up to each other on Sunday and Riley will come up to me and say oh by the way Jay on Wednesday I'm going for a workout in the evening and on Friday I'm seeing the girls and I'll be like okay great Wednesday I'm gonna take out time for Solitude and Friday I'm gonna see the guys now we've had that communication we don't get to Wednesday and all of a sudden she goes oh you were expecting to have dinner with me oh sorry babe I've already set up a uh a gym I'm going to the gym tonight or we get to Friday and I'm like oh I planned a date night for us and she's like oh sorry the girls told me they were going out and now you're dealing with conflict in the moment so Solitude gives you the space to actually reflect a week in advance and say what do I need to communicate with my partner what do I need to communicate with my teammate what do I need to communicate with my husband my wife whoever they are to say this is kind of what it looks like this is what I'm thinking about shall we plan a date night often I'll say to radhi you know what Riley for the next four nights I've just got work things every night but but Saturday and Sunday should we go away for the weekend should we should we go and you know should we do this for the weekend I've thought about that and I think what often happens rangan is that we're waiting till the moment to communicate and another mistake we make is we communicate what we want but we don't communicate why we want it so for example if you say to your partner you know what I just need some time on Wednesday night to be alone if you told your partner you just wanted to be alone your partner the first thing that goes through their mind is they don't want to spend time with me did I do something wrong uh what's going on are they do they need space so you ask for space so you ask for time or time alone and you never explained why you needed it now if you said to your partner you know what I've got a really big presentation coming up on Friday so Thursday night I just need to be in the zone I just need to be focused and I just need to be ready now all of a sudden they have context and I think so many of us communicate what we need but not why we need it yeah if someone's listening Jay and saying you know Jay I get you I do this work on myself I'm about to say I have solitude I'm patient and caring with my partner but they always seem to be Mega stressed and no matter how much I change they're not changing how would you advise them to approach their relationship yeah the first thing I'd say is that people don't change for other people they change for themselves yeah and I think this is something that we keep getting wrong in relationships we think that people will change for us we think that if we change someone else will change back we think of love as that exchange when we don't realize that anyone who changes a habit or a practice changes it for themselves now I will say that for example like if you are setting a good example when it comes to taking care of yourself chances are it rubs off on your partner I know that with me and radi so radi's always been very dedicated to her workouts for her mental well-being and her physical well-being and when we got married I was someone who was very focused on my mental well-being with mindfulness and meditation but I wasn't necessarily someone who loved working out I played Sports when I was growing up and that was my workout and as I got older I kind of got lazier now when I would see my wife be dedicated she would not negotiate with her morning workouts at the beginning of our relationship he used to play on my insecurities I used to say oh yeah well I'm working hard and you'll get time to go to the gym or I'd say oh I don't even have time to go to the gym because it would affect my ego and then I started to realize well it upsets me because I'm not even willing to make that time for myself because of how important it is and so without her even knowing she was inspiring me to work out more and today working out and my physical health has become such a top priority and it's not because she forced me to go or told me to go it's because she said a good example now let's say you're setting a good example but your partner's stressed and they're not doing certain things I think one of the first things I'd say is we usually like to tell our partners what to do and we might say to them oh you need to listen that podcast with rangan and Jay and they're like no I don't right like I don't want to do that uh or someone says oh you need to start doing this breath work that I learned from so and so teacher and then the partner's like well I don't want to learn from that person I think what we don't realize is we've got to help that person take the next step in their Journey not the next step in our journey and the next step in their Journey could be introducing them to books teachers podcasts that appeal to them one of the things I often tell people is the reason why I sit down with so many different people on my podcast is because I believe that personal growth and self-development is so Broad and so you know just in the last month like Lewis Hamilton came on this week and I know that so many people who are Formula One fans were learning about purpose through Lewis Hamilton or a couple of weeks ago Kevin Hart was on the show now you know Kevin Hart's a comedian he's known to make people laugh but people came and they learned about The Man Behind the movies and so to me people's entryway into growth and into creating less stress in their lives is not always going to come through the same route that it came for you so the first thing I'd say is find out what inspires them find out what it is that helps and supports them what are their things and if you really love them you'll know what they connect with the second thing I'd say is help them work on their stress not work on your relationship you want them to change how they are with you but actually what's stopping them being their best with you is that they're not being their best selves for themselves and so let's figure out the root of their stress and sit with them talk to them understand them don't go up to them and say you're always stressed out what's wrong with you our life is great I'm good to you that will put them on the defensive you want to go up to them and say a few things and this is really beautiful this is from uh a study that was done in schools about how to give effective feedback in a way that doesn't defeat someone I use this in my company I use this in my relationship I use it everywhere because it's not just for students at a university it literally applies anywhere they found that there were three key things you had to say the first thing you had to say is that we have really high standards here now you can't say that in a relationship so how would you translate that you would translate that to be like I know that we have something really special here I know that there's I know that we value each other you're you're acknowledging the fact that underlying all this stress there is a deeper real relationship I know that we have a real relationship I know that we have a special bond I know we've committed many years to each other you're setting the standard of what we have the second thing you say is I trust we can live up to that standard I trust you can get there people need to hear and feel so it's like I know you're going through stress right now but I know you don't want to feel it and I know that you can get Beyond this stress and the third is let's figure out how to get there together what do you need how can I support you how how can we go through this together and I think so often in relationships it's it's so funny wrong good so often in relationships people actually feel more alone because they don't feel their partner has the time to see them to understand them to hear them and they feel like they're fighting that battle all alone even when they sleep right next to someone yeah I mean there's just so much fantastic wisdom in what you just said Jay you know I love what you said at the start they're about you know our job really isn't to change our partner it's to help support them on their next journey of their growth which I think is a really important point for us to sit with I love what you just said about feedback I had Rick Rubin on this show a couple of weeks ago the record which is so cool yeah and it was a beautiful conversation but one bit I think that I think about a lot is he talks about giving feedback with the artist that he's worked with and although it's a different form of relationship than let's say the relationships that maybe we're talking about at the moment let's say with a partner for example actually some of the themes are very very similar it's about making it about the idea hey we're both trying to make a phenomenal album here right so when I give feedback the feedback isn't uh you that you wrote a bad song or that lyric isn't good no it's together we have the shared goal of a beautiful beautifully crafted excellent album and so I think there's a similarity again speaking to what you said about people can get entry points some through um through different people and through Lewis Hamilton or Kevin Hart and I think very much like you that's why I like to talk to lots of different types of people because I think we can all learn from any human being actually there's always something to learn from someone um so that's really powerful Jay um there is so much I'm itching to talk to you about but I'm I think if we talked about everything in the book that I wish to speak about we'd be here in about five hours still it's that thorough um I do want to get to rule four shortly your partner is your Guru because I think a few of the things you just mentioned really speak to that but before we do I want to jump right to the end of the book because I wasn't expecting this part in the book it really took me by surprise and I I literally loved it would you mind if I read a few lines from sure chapter eight from rule eights which is love again and again we want love in our lives and we naturally assume it should take the form of romantic love but it's a misconception that the only love in your life is between you and your partner your family and your friends it's a misconception that life is meant to be a love story between you and one other person that love is just a stepping stone having a partner isn't the end goal it's practice for something bigger something life-changing a form of love that is even more expansive and rewarding than romantic love Jay I've underlined that in your book this is pretty profound that that love with our partner might be a stepping stone to something bigger what do you mean by that yeah I this was actually a revelation that deeply came to me it's an idea that I understood before writing the book but it's a revelation that came through the process of writing the book and that's why I love like obsessing over this book took two to three years to put together and it's I love obsessing about ideas for that long because you plant the seed and then they grow into something surprising by the end of it I was really looking rangana the greatest love stories of all time and the greatest acts of Love of All Time and I started to realize that most the stories we would consider the greatest stories of all time like Romeo and Juliet are myths they're not real they're fiction right it's completely made up and not no one really benefited from that love story like it it ends badly and it doesn't really help anyone or it doesn't improve anyone's life and so I started to look at what were the love stories that improved people's lives and I realized the challenges we'd put romantic love on such a pedestal that even if people had beautiful relationships with their children with their parents with their colleagues with their teams maybe even with their country you know when you look at what Martin Luther King Jr did for the world that was love that was an act of love that was a love story but we don't present it that way but that was a love story if not then what else was it where someone was willing to sacrifice their life for for the benefit of others and we have countless examples of that in history where people have gone above and beyond to help other people and so I started to realize that the greatest acts of Love Are Not Just romantic they can be parental they can be brotherly they can be friends they can be leadership and I think we limit love to one person and maybe a couple of hours a day we say I'm gonna go to work and that's not a place of love I'm gonna come home and I'm gonna love my family and when we live in that way we limit love there's a beautiful story I love Zen stories and in this Zen Story the teacher asks the student a question and everyone who's listening can pretend they're the student the teacher says if you could give 100 to one person or give one dollar each to a hundred people which one would you do and the student says you know I don't can't really it doesn't really matter I'm you know pretty I'm not sure I have no idea which one would it be the teacher says that although it's wonderful if we can give a hundred dollars to one person and it will change their life they said the right answer is to choose to give one dollar each to a hundred people and the student said why and the teacher replies two reasons the first is you get to impact 100 people the second is you get to practice loving and giving a hundred times and I love that idea because it's the idea of you only get better at love and you only get better at giving and you only get better at Compassion the more you extend and practice that love and so for some people that maybe their school and uh a good way to think about it is let's say narangan how many children do you have two two so you have two children and I'm guessing you you love your two children obviously I do how much would you say you love them if I asked you to quantify how much do you love them how much would you say you love them oh man how much um first of all I feel it's almost impossible with words to describe the love that I have for my children I can't imagine there's anything I wouldn't do for them I feel all the love that exists inside the world times it by infinity and that's how much I love my children that's my attempt in the English language yeah to say how much I love them I love them that's so beautiful and I think I think any parent would agree with you so now let's take that it's a lot of love you have for them right so think about how this actually plays out in real life if you love your children and you want them to have a great childhood you have to love their school and their friends because they're going to grow up around those people so in order to care for your children you have to care for their school in order to care for your children you have to care for their school and in order for care for the school you have to care for the area you live in and when you care for the area you live in you have to care about your town you have to care about your city you have to care about your country you have to care about the world and so I'm not saying everyone has to go out there and do something for the world but what I'm saying is that if we deeply love our children that much our love has to extend beyond them in order to protect them and the world they grow up in and live in and I think that's what I'm trying to get at in love again and again is that we need to practice loving again and again and the more we can expand our radius of love and our radius of care the more our love is truly Justified and true but if it's limited by those two people it actually ends up being a disservice to them as well yeah I mean what you're talking about is something I feel I've only really got my head around in the past few years I feel we one of the first things we have to do and you do talk about this in in your latest book you almost have to undo some of the myths you've absorbed growing up you know in many ways the word love at least the way that many of us understand it is quite a limiting word you know I don't know about UK I even try and practice this on social media if someone's ever leaving a Anarchy comment or you know maybe disagree but you can see in a very triggered way disagreeing it's now like can you choose love as your first approach here instead of getting triggered back it's not always easy of course but can you practice oh I wonder what they're going through I wonder why they're feeling so upset at the moment and I think you speak about this in the in the introduction you say love is a daily effort I want to develop the habit of love with you in this book right so it's kind of a habit it's a practice you're I guess talking about entry points then the entry point and for many people will be I want a better relationship with my partner let me pick up Jay's book to help me with my communication help me with certain practices I can do with them but actually that's just the entry point because you will end up if you follow that path ex you know expressing that love and compassion ideally to everyone but certainly you're widened out that Circle of love and compassion which can only be a good thing I also think this section is really powerful because there's a lot of people Jay who are either single maybe not by choice but many people these days are single by choice they're like no you know what I've tried a lot I don't want it I'm happy being by myself but this chapter I believe and this rule makes it very inclusive it's like yeah because a lot of the time when we talk about relationships people who are intentionally single feel left out you know that's that's not relevant to me but I think it's really peaceful how you put that section in because I think it will help single people feel very much included in the conversation around love yeah I think so many people feel inadequate or incomplete because they don't have romantic love and that's like you saying that you your love for your wife is greater than your love for your kids now I'm sure you'd say Well they're different they don't even compare or compete but in the hierarchy of our psychology we are putting as a society romantic love on the pedestal and again like like you said my book is aimed at helping people find romantic love keep romantic love and let go of the challenges that come with breakups and heartbreak but at the same time I had to get to this point in the last chapter because I think we all want to live in a world where we're surrounded by more love more kindness more compassion more empathy more understanding and I also want people to experience More Love by expressing it I think we think of love as something we have to receive achieved something that we hope for that we wish for that's going to come to us but love is actually experienced if I say to you rangan I am loving this conversation I am experiencing love just by saying that because I'm feeling it inside now you may also feel that and say Jay I'm loving it too and that's great but even if you don't say it back I still get to experience Love by saying I'm loving this conversation and so I think we again limit love to being something someone has to give us rather than it being something that we can experience by expressing it yeah and I think that's a fear sometimes isn't there to express these things whether it's to our partner to our friends I think we touched on this the first time we spoke on my podcast about how important it is to express gratitudes and sometimes we can feel it but just when we go that that extra step and tell someone hey you know what I really appreciate what you did there that was really quite powerful I mean on that day I kind of feel and you're probably uniquely positioned to answer this in many ways because if you're I guess your Indian family backgrounds you grew up in the UK you've now live in LA so you've you've got a whole mix of different cultural kind of exposures within you right and you know Brits are known for their stiff upper lips and you know traditionally and in a lot of Brits have struggled with this concept of you know expressing gratitude or telling your friends how much they mean to you you know it's I'm sure you'll know this it's not a very British thing to do what is your take on that do you think it's changing and have you noticed a difference in how people approach that in America yes I'll be honest and say that one of the things I love about being with my friends back at home all my best friends in London and I was just there for the holidays and I spent a ton of time with with the lads uh and it was one of the best things is our love is shown by How Deeply we can banter with each other right like as the the deeper you can cuss someone and diss someone the more you love them and the more you can take it back and I love that like to me that's so much fun and me and my guy friends do it all the time when I'm back in London I would say that my feelings about how I want to live are less impacted by Indian British or American culture and their most impacted by my monk life and the reason I say that is because I think in every country you can find lots of different people lots of different identities lots of different cultures but the way I live is is what I learned as a monk and for me the idea that someone could die at any given time makes every relationship in my life that much more important and I don't know about you and anyone who's listening but I don't want to regret the last thing I said to someone and I don't want to regret the last thing they heard from me and so I lived that way and with everyone in my life I want the last thing they heard from me to be like I love you you matter to me you're important to me that doesn't mean I'm saying that 24 hours a day but it does mean that if we've had a meaningful interaction I want them to know that because I would hate to live with the fact I had a friend many many years ago who had the worst argument with his dad after they didn't argue often but they had a really bad argument and they didn't speak for a couple of weeks and then a couple of weeks later his father passed away he wasn't old he wasn't in hospital he wasn't that wasn't the the natural course of events no one saw it coming and my friend held on to that pain for so many years because he hated that the last conversation he had with his dad who he loved completely was an argument and so to me it's not about whether we're British or American or Indian it's it's looking at life through the lens of reality and I think as Brits we are very good at being realistic well there's nothing more realistic than death and loss and so living with that ideology and living with that understanding we we actually get to love people a lot more deeply and and the other thing I'd say is that I I also want people to know how amazing they are while they're alive I think we celebrate people too late I think too many people in this world are celebrated far too late and you know I I had the fortune of interviewing Kobe Bryant a few years ago literally two months before he passed away three months maybe before he passed away I had no idea of course no one did and and I think about that in whenever I always get asked this question like which interview would you love to redo or which interview like would you do wish you could do again and I'm like that one because had I have known and it's like but we should always know that this this you know and it's not a morbid way of living it's actually a more magical way of living because you're like this is such a special moment yeah I I completely agree thank you for sharing that Jay very very powerful I think there's a I don't want to get the quote wrong I'm pretty sure there's a stoic phrase to do with when you kiss your kids good night imagine it's the last time you're gonna see them something like that please forgive me if I've got that quote slightly wrong but that's certainly what I remember from it and it's actually quite triggering for people sometimes when they hear that and I've thought a lot about it and I really like it actually and I think it really speaks to what you've just said and I do think about this when I'm kissing my kids good night it's so easy to rush it I've got work to do you know I just need to put them to bed so I can get and do my emails and again I'm human so I do fall into that trap but I try and remind myself yeah it's a it's a nice reminder to go hey you know what what if and it's not it's as you say it's not morbids it's just trying to help you be more present to appreciate that moment and you know it really has extra poignancy at the moment for me um because in the past few weeks I have gone through some really challenging times which I shared with you just before we spoke and you know my mum who who for many years my brother and I've helped to care for this is why we live where we do we live nearby Mom was admitted to hospital uh around Christmas and she was seriously unwell to the point where you know for a few days we thought that was it thought mum's dying and I couldn't stop crying for days and I went through a sort of grief process now mum has miraculously recovered she's back home with a load of challenges but every time I leave mum you know every time I'm there and I say goodbye I remember three weeks ago wrong again you thought you were never gonna have another conversation with your mother again I would have given my right arm back then so even in mum's frustrated or she's asking for a lot and I've got other stuff on so far I've been really proud of myself and be like okay I've been patient I've been smiling I've been calm and I thought you would have given everything for this three weeks ago you thought you were never gonna have a conversation with your mum again and you know dad died 10 years ago I I started to imagine what's life going to be like with no parents so when you speak about love like that when you talk about make these interactions as if they were going to be as if they're the last time you're going to have those interactions I think it's really powerful and I don't think it's morbid at all I think as you say it does make our day-to-day life much more magical yeah I know really well said and it's not meant and if it is and if it is anxiety inducing for people I do understand that and I empathize with you yeah and that's where I think we're talking about this subtle spot where it's like you're not thinking oh my God I'm gonna lose them oh my God I need to tell them I love them like that's not the mood it's what you said so so wonderfully was like I want to be fully present with this person because I love them and something you were talking about earlier I think wrong and I I've learned something I've moved and lived in so many different cities at this point in my life I've lived in Mumbai I've lived in London I've lived in New York I've now live in L.A and I've had to make a lot of new friends at so many different stages in my life obviously some of my best friends of all time my best man at my wedding everyone's back in London and I still talk to my best friend probably three times a week uh back in London and we figure out the time difference but I've had to make so many new friends along the journey that I've learned to just to say how I feel I've literally had to say to people as an adult hey I think we'd really connect let's spend more time together or you know what I think we'd make really good friends like should we connect more and it's like it sounds so stupid when you're looking at it from a childish view of you're like oh Jay you sound desperate and I'm like well I am for connection I am like I I want real human life connection and if that makes me look like a loser and desperate hey I'll take it because I'd rather live my life having really beautiful relationships with people then live my life pretending like I'm too cool for that or I'm too good for that and I'm too important for that and then missing them when they're gone and I think sometimes we're just living in this false safety we're actually scared of being open with people and again I'm compassionate I'm compassionate to people who struggle to show love because we struggle to show love because we're scared of losing that person that's what it is it's not that we're trying to act cool or we think we're better it's because we're actually scared if I really open up to this person and I'm vulnerable with them and then they're not here anymore I'm gonna feel really all over the place and so I get that it also comes from a self-preservation has your wife read this book yet so my wife's got my wife just finished reading think like a monk I believe it's been two years now since the book's been out and uh she's read bits of it she's read bits of it not all of it she's I always say my wife is the number one supporter of who I am but the least subscriber and listener to what I do but she told me recently because she's been in London because of her family and I've been in La she literally just started listening to my podcast and she's she she's she's been telling me how much she's enjoying you which is which is actually really nice after we've been married for seven years the podcast is three and a half no four years old this year and it's funny when after four years she started listening to she's like this is really good I get it now why people I'm like yes you're hilarious uh it's it's humbling and adorable at the same time it's beautiful I think that's a really interesting point there Jay where sorry since you're UPS if you are enjoying this content there's loads more just like it on my channel so please do take a moment to press subscribe hit the notification Bell and now back to the conversation a lot of relationships I think fall into traps when we think we have to have the same passions we have to do the same things together you know you could potentially expect your partner your wife to listen because it's a podcast that's loved by millions all over the world it's helping so many people and you could potentially be offended that how come all these other people who I don't know were listening but my dear wife is not and I'm not sure this is in the book or whether I heard you say this in another conversation a few years ago that I think you said one year after you got married you got a good break in your work life like a really good break and you got the impression that your wife wasn't that happy about it I want to explain that situation because like it really speaks to what you just said about your podcasts and your first book which and your wife not reading them or not listening because I think it gets us into a lot of trouble in our relationships when we feel our partner has to do and love the same things as us yeah I I'm so glad you brought this up because it's something people struggle with and I want to tell you my example I also want to tell you about a client I worked with uh because I've been doing so much relationship coaching over the last few years hence hence this book as well uh but yeah with my my wife and I you know what I I want to go back a bit more when I met my wife when we first started dating which is nearly 10 years ago now I didn't have a job I didn't have any money actually I was in 18 000 pounds worth of debt because of my student loan I was getting turned down and was turned down by about 40 companies this is when I'm dating my wife and she knows all of this is going on my my wife comes from a you know a wonderful family and she's dating a guy who has just been a monk for three years doesn't have any job prospects has no money and is in debt and doesn't know what to do because 40 companies have said no and my wife chose to be with that guy and I like to remind myself I like to remind others I like to remind friends and family of that because a lot of the time today people will be like oh radi you're so lucky like to be with Jay and I'm like no no you don't understand I'm lucky because she chose to be me be with me when all I had to offer was myself and I'm almost getting teary because it's so it's so real because my yeah my wife chose to be with me when all I had to offer was myself and she backed that guy and so when I look at it now and when I think back to that when I first started to experience success in my career I would almost metaphorically hold up my trophies and metaphorically hold up my achievements to her and say we should be celebrating this look what I did look what I achieved look what I look where I got to like let's let's celebrate how amazing I am and what I've done and she wouldn't respond to that like that wouldn't bring her alive and often I'd sit there and I'd think well maybe she doesn't she doesn't care about me she doesn't love me she's not celebrating me she doesn't read my stuff she doesn't listen to me and I started to realize that I wanted my wife to love me for what I achieved when she loved me for who I was and now when I ask you that question logically do you want to be loved for your achievements or do you want to be love for your character which one do you want it's so obvious it's so glaringly obvious but I think we want to be loved our ego actually that's what it is our ego wants to be loved for our achievements but our heart wants to be loved for our characters and when our ego overtakes our heart the ego demands that respect and adoration when all the heart wants is true affection for who you are and I saw this play out with one of my clients who's a speaker and an author as well and he was saying to me that he goes Jay when I go and speak on stage I have so many women who are attracted to me who who want to get to know me who adore me who respect me who compliment me who who think I'm incredible and he goes when I go home my wife doesn't even care about that and so I went through the same process with him where I was like do you want to be loved for your performance or do you want to be loved as a person and I think when he sat with that he realized that there will always be people who love his performance but they may not love him as a person but someone who loves you as a person it doesn't matter whether they love your performance or not because they're with you for the right reasons they're with you for the deepest truths of who you are and so to me that was a big Revelation and it saved so much stress and anxiety that I had because now I take pride in the fact that I'm with someone who has my back no matter what happens whether this stays goes away whether I'm relevant irrelevant insignificant significant my wife doesn't care about that stuff isn't isn't that love like isn't that what we really want sorry for getting emotional I don't think I've ever got emotional on an interview you just really like we're not even in the same room uh and and you fully fully got me I was like literally on the verge of tears there but yeah it's it's powerful Jay um there's so many elements of that I could Echo where they resonate with um you know you you wrote about this in the book and you said you are lucky that she fell in love with you when you had nothing right and you just beautifully you know explain and elaborated on that but let's flip it let's flip it to someone who's listening or watching right now who's who's got success he's got a a good job earning good money got a nice house got the societal mattress of success but is single perhaps they work so hard they neglected to nourish important relationships you know we know this is very very common people get stuck into work they're trying to get at that career ladder and the price they often pay is that they don't you know create meaningful relationships so for that person who wasn't lucky enough let's say like you two meet your wife when you literally had nothing you had minus eighteen thousand nothing um and they go yeah but now I don't know if when I meet someone they want me because of my position and my money and my salary how would you help them find someone who loves them for who they are not for what they are yeah yeah there's a hidden rule in the book that isn't one of the eight rules but it's that's why I call it a hidden rule because it's it's really powerful but uh I put it inside one of the chapters and it's called you attract what you use to impress what I mean by that is whatever you use to impress someone that's what you're going to attract into your life so if you're someone that flaunts your wealth it's likely that you'll attract someone who comes to you for your wealth I had a client who was saying to me Jay every woman I day is just into me for my money and what I have and I said well can you take a look in the mirror and they were like drenched in designer clothing they're the biggest designer bag like and I was like well what do you expect like you're showing that part of yourself now I'm not saying you're not allowed to love fashion or you're not allowed I love fashion I love Brands you're allowed tonight like nice things but I said if that's the things you talk about when you're on a date if that's the things you reference if you're always talking about how much you made last month and the amazing expensive trip you went on or you order a fancy bottle of champagne or wine or whatever it may be to the table like what message do you think you're sending now you may say Jim I'm just trying to show I'm confident or I'm trying to show I'm able but you have to get really clear on how you show confidence and how you show ability and I think that what we have to understand is if that we use those very uh if we use those very physical ways of attracting someone it's very likely that you're going to bring that person closer I think another thing I'd say to them is what are the values that you have and what are the values of someone you want to be with and where are you going to find a person of equal value often I find you find people of equal value through people you know of equal value you know someone who knows you deeply who loves you my sister was uh our wing person for me and my wife because my sister was really good friends with my wife and my sister's one of my best friends my sister is a person of value she's the one who was the wing person between me and my wife so I trust her what's a project of value maybe there's a project at work maybe there's a project in your community maybe there's a project you can take on that's of similar value uh and what's thirdly what's a place of similar value is it a charity is it a passion that you have is it a sport you love you're gonna meet people in places of similar value projects of similar value and with people of similar value and I think often we the problem is we value ourselves based on our achievements and so we flaunt them attracting the wrong people only to regret it and so it's better to present yourself as you are and present yourself with who you are in order to attract someone to it again we're going against societal conditioning where we have to kind of give roses and diamond rings and all these things and you you do outline those stories to where the traps you fell into uh yeah you do talk about them in the book which is super super interesting it's interesting what you just said there about your sister basically introducing you in many ways to your wife and something I'll be thinking about recently in preparation of this conversation is obviously we're both got Indian families as our background right both of us I think were born and brought up in the UK but oh yeah and it's interesting I don't know how your parents got together but my parents had a full-on arranged marriage you know my dad was working in the UK he'd emigrated hey he'd been here for about 10 years and he basically took his annual leave his family had arranged for him to get married he literally flew home to India for I don't know a week he met my mum I think on the Saturday for just a cup of tea and on the Sunday they got married and then a few days later Dad Dad flies back home to work and about three months later my mum comes over and you know they set up life together now it's really interesting as a kid growing up as an immigrant kids struggling with identity trying to fit in with you know your English friends around you I was always I think I was a little embarrassed once I realized that Mum and Dad had never met I'm like oh that's just not cool you know you know people need to me and fall in love and have a romance and you know the things you see on TV and in films but as I get older and as I reflect and I'm not saying Mom and Dad's marriage was perfect by any stretch you know I'm not I'm not saying it was or it wasn't I'm just I'm not trying to put it on a pedestal but what I'm saying is there are many different ways I think this really speaks to a lot of the messages in your book Jay there's many different ways to love there's not just one way that we get to experience love and as you just said your sister introduced you to the the the lady who now is your wife yeah and we think about it's either a love marriage or an arranged marriage but actually for many years even in Britain you know families have put dinners on an interview oh you know I think you'll really get on with that family's daughter it's the right age it's always happened somewhere along the the somewhere along the way we've kind of lost all that and thought we're just gonna randomly meet someone in a bar that we've never met before go on a date as Suddenly It's Gonna all mash up do you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah there's there's a study I think it was from like maybe like 30 years ago no up until 30 years ago I think the research shows that you are likely to meet someone that you spent your life with within five miles radius of your home like that's how close to home it was now that's not a good or bad thing exactly like what you're saying I'm not saying oh things were better in the past and everything's going I'm not someone who's painting that picture either but I do think you're spot on that I don't think we're open I know clients who've met because they care about the same charity I have friends that have met because they both love cycling I've I've had friends that have got together because someone introduced them and I think when we limit it to say well I'm just gonna hope I bump into someone or I'm going to go on the apps casually and see if I find someone I think the Casual approach to love doesn't work because it's a game of odds you've got to meet a lot of people to figure it out and I think today the problem is with the Paradox of choice that we both know about when we talk about this idea that now there's just plenty of fish in the sea and you actually know that oh my gosh yeah I mean anyone who's on this app there's just so many more options and what I've realized is that love isn't about finding the right person it's about finding the person that you want to make it right with and I think love is so much more about a choice of Are We energized and enthusiastic to figure this out versus I'm gonna find someone who perfectly matches and fits and so I think now we're looking for this perfect match this perfect fist fit this perfect connection and that alienates us because every time we meet it's like slightly wonky it's slightly doesn't fit there's there's a slight issue and we're like oh no there will be someone who who is all 10 of the things and I'm like well I don't think there is I think what there is is you know what we have enough energy excitement and enthusiasm for each other that we're gonna figure it out every single day and we're gonna bring that energy every single day and so I I think that that's what's eluding us to the challenges that we face in trying to meet someone yeah I want to move on to rule six uh sorry rule four your partner is your Guru because wow I love all the rules this one I really really like and you you say the book we don't usually think about our partners as teachers or guides but none of us can see ourselves all the world clearly on our own I think that's very powerful and relating to what you just said there about love being a choice in that chapter you write about your experiences as a monk and you say as a monk you choose your Guru right then it's not allocated to you you choose your Guru so we'll talk a little bit about how love is a choice how you chose your Guru how all monks do and how our partner ends up being our Guru so effectively we're choosing our partners to be our gurus right so for people who are getting confused perhaps you can elaborate what exactly you mean by that yeah so this is definitely probably one of the most counter-intuitive chapters in the book because everyone reads Dan goes God my partner ain't my Guru what am I going to learn from them and I I don't want them to know that because if they know that they're going to start telling me what to do I think the first thing is to define the word guru uh I I'll do this through you know experience of it our gurus in the monastery sat in our classes often my gurus were twice my age if not even older a 70 year old man or or one of our female guides as well would sit at the back of a class by a 25 year old uh they'd sit with us in meditation they'd sit on the floor and eat with us they would sleep on the floor with us the guru was not this hierarchy of position in how they were treated or how they were lived it was a position that was held with humility and held with compassion and held with encouragement and support so just to alleviate any idea that a guru is just someone who's falsely revered or is acting holier than thou that is not a guru a guru is not judgmental or critical but supportive and encouraging I think a lot of people think well gurus mean they have to like spoil your flaws and everything the reason why your partner is your Guru is because a guru in spiritual terms Act is almost a mirror to your inner self and that's what I believe our partners are partners are like mirrors because you see the best and worst of yourself in your interactions with your partner your partner knows all your flaws right my wife knows whether I actually meditated my wife knows what time I slept my wife knows how messy the kitchen is my wife knows whether I did my laundry or not my wife no she actually knows me in the deepest way and therefore she's one person in the world who can constantly Help Me Grow if life is about growing if life is about becoming better and so you're choosing someone who you're willing to learn from and you're willing to grow with so you're going to grow with them you're going to grow through them and you're going to grow together and I feel that often we don't think of relationships as growth we think of them as pleasure we think of them as fun we think of them as just enjoying ourselves and I'm not saying there isn't of course pleasure fun and enjoyment in every relationship but I think and especially at your stage when you have kids when you have family responsibilities you realize that your partnership becomes so much more about growing together and the satisfaction from growing together is so much greater than what you felt on the first date but you can't explain that to someone who's starting out they'll be like no no this is so fun it can't get any better but what I'm trying to encourage in this chapter is the growth that you will make because of your partner physically and mentally and emotionally is actually what relationships are about relationships are far more about Enlightenment than they are about entertainment and enjoyment and the enlightenment that comes from being in a committed relationship is the greatest satisfaction that comes from it uh and and you're going to learn practical things along the way too it what I'm saying is the deeper lessons you learn from your partner uh and I teach in the book how to be a guru how to be a student depending on what type of partner you're with so it's very deeply laid out I really feel that most people have been together and I learned this from speaking to couples who'd been together for 20 30 40 years they all said that they had learned phenomenal lessons through their partner that was like their favorite thing and so to me that's what I was trying to get at in this chapter yeah it's a it's a brilliant chapter it really is and you know I guess I love it because I've experienced a lot of it as well you know I've recently just celebrated 15 years of marriage with my wife and it's a very different relationship from what it was when we were dating over 15 years ago completely different but when you adopt that approach of Mutual growth together it never gets boring because there's always an opportunity for growth right there's always a niggle or something you disagree on or something you have a different perspective on and if you can Shine the mirror up and go what can I learn here primarily about myself it's it's arguably the best it's a master class in your own inner world isn't it you've got that mirror around you all the time you you get you know you get to be a black belt in yourself if you approach your relationship in that way yes yes and that's what I'm exactly you've fully understood what I'm trying to get at it's it's what is life ultimately about if not about growth learning and joy and I argue that growth and learning are the greatest joy because when you grow and learn you can deal with all your problems better see what we don't understand is that entertainment is and I love entertainment by the way I'm not hating on anytime I love TV I love movies I'm a big fan of all of that but entertainment is an escape and when you escape your problems you come back to them with less time and the same amount of knowledge when you elevate when you learn and you grow you come back to your problems with more skills more insights and more tools so life becomes more joyful and so you have this Choice every day to escape or Elevate and your partner can either be your Escape or be someone you elevate with now go on escapes go on dates I'm not of course me and radi love to travel together of course but the core Spirit of that is growing and learning so it's not that we don't go out for dinners of course that's all great but don't lose the spirit and the Heart of we're trying to help each other become the best versions of ourselves and reach our potential that's the kind of person I want to be married to before we wrap up our conversation I wanted to briefly touch on the the three commonest sources of conflict that you write about these are the the three things I think many people will relate to this that that couples fight about money bringing up kids and sex and as a as a doctor something I have seen many many times people would come in to see me and they would talk about their sex lives and you know the the frustrations whether it's you know a different desire compared to their partner what does that say about them let's not go through all three I don't think we'll have time for that but particularly on the conflicts around sex I think this is really really common and in your practice of coaching people and coaching through their relationships for years I'm sure this must have come up what is really going on when there is an issue around sex in a relationship yeah that so the first thing is that sex is an extremely vulnerable act and we often don't think about it in that way we assume it's just is but you can't be physically vulnerable with someone when you don't feel emotionally safe with them and I feel a lot of people don't feel emotional safety either within themselves or with their Partners to be that intimate and vulnerable with their partner or the quality of that exchange is not as high because of the lack of emotional security and emotional vulnerability and the reason that I found that that had come about rungen is because I talk about the four ease of intimacy in the book and what I found was that if you look at most couples over years the number one activity they do together by no surprise is watch TV together that's the number one thing couples do every night we watch TV together we do this too so I'm not I'm not Beyond this or better than this now if all you do is watch TV together what's happening there's no vulnerability there's no intimacy and there's no shared experience you haven't watched the show and then talked about it and dissected it and emotionally connected you've watched it gone ah that episode was all right okay look forward to the next episode switch it off go to bed there's no connection so so bonding over entertainment is a very low form of intimacy to increase our intimacy I talk about experiences going to date nights going to vacations traveling together having new experiences together helps you learn new things about your partner see most of us are just used to our partners we watch our partners wash the dishes do the laundry clean the house take care of the kids you're watching your partner do the same old four activities for potentially 40 years if you don't see your partner do anything new how are you going to have a creative spark a moment of Attraction how are you gonna fall in love with them again when all you see them do is do old things higher than that is experiments I recommend that couples do things that they're both novices in go into a pottery class because neither of you knows how to do Pottery go into a painting class because neither of you knows how to paint go out and try a surfing lesson if you can because neither of you knows how to surf it doesn't have to be big or small go to an escape room go and do something where you both are not experts where again you get to learn about a new side the reason why we we've lost intimacy and connection is because we think we know our partners we think they're the same we think maybe they're boring maybe we've lost that attraction to them and the fourth and final stage is go and do some education and engagement together if you're learning and growing together you're going to feel so emotionally close that the physical closeness is just a byproduct and in engagement if you can go and serve together if you can go make a difference together the connection you feel is so much more powerful so those are reasons why you can both work on stuff but often we find when it comes to sex one of the biggest things is a personal sense of dissatisfaction someone's not happy with their body someone's not happy with their own purpose and passion someone's going through their own disconnection with themselves sometimes it's not about you at all and I think so often we make it about us that's what I've seen in relationships with coaching when someone doesn't want to have sex with you you make it about you and you go oh you don't have sex with me and they're like I just don't want to have sex like I I still have to figure out what's going inside of me because I'm healing trauma I'm healing stuff from my parents I'm healing my ex-girlfriend boyfriend in relationships and I think we don't talk about any of these things and so I think we're often expecting someone to be vulnerable and intimate with us when we are not emotionally safe and secure with them yeah such wonderful advice Jay it's it really isn't another fantastic book I think it's going to help so many people um it's been a real Joy talking to you just to finish off Jay um for anyone who is listening to that thinking yeah you know what there's something there something isn't right in my life with my current relationship whether it's someone who's single and they want to get with someone or whether someone's in a relationship and they realize that maybe you know what we've taken this for granted a little bit things are getting a little bit stale it isn't what it once was I think there's a lot of Hope and inspiration in what you've shared today and with what's in your book but just to finish off do you have any final words of Hope for that person yeah I would say that I would want everyone to have a check-in conversation with your partner about this and about your relationship every month I'm sure you connect about how the kids are doing at school I'm sure you connect about the plumbing issues in the house I'm sure you connect about who's doing the gardening and the laundry and the cooking and the cleaning but are we connecting on the quality of our connection and so the way I would recommend to do that is start every conversation with us and we not you and me most conversations start with you never do the dishes this is how you make me feel start your conversation with I really want us and I often say this to radi I really want us to have an incredible relationship let's check in about what we're both willing to do to get there what is it that we are willing to do to have a beautiful experience of this relationship in our lives and I think if everyone could start that conversation with their partner in a non-intimidating a non-critical a non-judgmental way because most of our conversations about checking in are look you know what you just you know you never fill the gas up and I'm late oh this you never do it's always you never do this or you always do this right and so when our language becomes you never or you always now we've created a debate and a fight and an argument whereas when our language is I we can we have something special and let's figure out how we can continue to help each other grow and become better that approach anyone who truly loves you and is with you will open up with you but and it may be you may have to be patient and ask that a few times but be patient and ask it a few times don't get frustrated that they don't respond immediately and they aren't jumping for joy saying I'm gonna read Jay's book with you like that's that's not the reaction you want be patient Be Be steady like this is something that we should have been doing from day one but we're doing it on day 1000 and that's okay start at day one thousand Jay you're doing incredible work you're changing so many lies it's a fantastic book that's coming on the show rungan I want to say this to you because I know how much it feels when I hear this feedback and I want you to leave it on the show is um I've been doing so many interviews that's one of the best ones I've done and that's because even and I really struggle with zoom nowadays because you know I've been trying to do more in person but I probably I feel so present with you I feel so heard by you I feel like you deeply digested the book which is you know so fulfilling as an author uh and on top of all of that I feel like your Reflections on the book and your digestion of what you've read is so on point that this conversation has been so meaningful to me and even though you're miles away and we're both you know it's early for me it's late for you where there's so many things and you've got personal stuff going on so do I it's like there's so many reasons why this conversation could have been rushed and you know whatever like just kind of getting through it and it's actually been so special and I wanted to say that's because of the energy that you brought to it today and the the Consciousness and the work and the practice and anyone who listens to you every week I just want them to know how much value they're getting of you're such a world-class human and I think this is the time I felt it the most in knowing you and so I just want to share that and I want you to leave that on there for everyone to hear because I I think it's it's very it's very rare to get me emotional in an interview but uh it's also well not rare I think it's pretty important I don't think I've ever ever been on the verge of tears in any interview I've ever done um but I've also just felt like I've really felt connected to you and the message today so so thank you thank you for that gift I I really value that hey I appreciate that Jay so much thanks man if you enjoyed that conversation I think you are really going to enjoy this one all about why happiness is a choice you can make any time you like if you actually went to the happiness gym several times a week you'll actually have a happier life right and the happiness gym is very straightforward it's a set of skills that you need to practice

Channel: Dr Rangan Chatterjee

Views: 222,192

Keywords: the4pillarplan, thestresssolution, feelbetterin5, wellness, drchatterjee, feelbetterlivemore, ranganchatterjee, 4pillars, drchatterjee podcast, health tips, nutrition tips, health hacks, live longer, age in reverse, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, motivation, inspiration, health interview

Id: RQP2NrU7zNM

Length: 92min 6sec (5526 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 08 2023