"STOP TRYING TO GET RICH & FOCUS ON THIS INSTEAD!" | Jay Shetty & Lewis Howes

the reason why people think you either have to be spiritual or financially successful is because they think well if you're going down the spiritual path money can be a distraction or if you're going down money then spirituality will distract you and that is true but i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness really yeah please welcome us neither of us are therapists but jay has this incredible background from uh you know being a monk and really being a meditator for a long time in your life and having the mindset of this monk mindset where i've had the more of the athlete mindset playing sports my whole life at a high level and we said what if we could bring our real world experience from these different perspectives come together and answer kind of challenging questions that we get a lot from our different audiences and so we're we're creating this is part one of awkward therapy yeah and uh we've been trying to make this happen for a year now we're finally here so what's the first question that we are going to answer the first topic that you think we should really dive into i was going to start off lewis though by saying that the thing i love about this is we have these conversations anyway all the time all the time all the time and so for those of you that don't know me and louis always make sure that we see each other at least once a month to have dinner together go on a hike hang out and that will inevitably turn into this four-hour conversation conversation about life yes and we just thought how cool would it be to have those conversations that are uncomfortable that are pressing on taboo topics that are a bit thought provoking pushing on the side of like oh that feels really awkward and uncomfortable because i think that people are thinking this but they don't have a place to say it yeah and we and we say to each other and i'm like i don't know if we could say this outside of this private conversation or if we're gonna get a lot of backlash or uh maybe i shouldn't have said that jay you know these these conversations that it's just like how can we create a safe environment to have open conversations i love what emanuel acho has done with his um conversations with a black man right it's like these kind of uncomfortable conversations how can we just put these things out there and be open-minded to it not be so judgmental or critical there's no right or wrong but we're going to come together and have conversations to try to figure out some solutions to some of these bigger questions that a lot of people have yes and uh obviously you've done a lot of work on your own and you've interviewed and are friends with a lot of top elite individuals in different walks of life myself as well and so we wanted to bring it together and see what we can come up with i love it i'm excited i'm very excited we've been trying to make this happen for a year so this is awkward therapy part one yeah and the first topic of discussion is what yeah so the first question that we're going to address today is can you be aspiring to be wealthy or make money and be spiritual at the same time yes that's the first question and i think a lot of people growing up um i think both of us probably growing up had these limits around people who had money and thinking are they good or bad people are they controlling are they mean to people you know if you have money can you be a good person or have some spiritualness to you or is it only one of the other you can either be mother teresa and serve you know you can only be jesus and wash your people's feet and be you know humble or you're this money hungry individual right yeah and i think that when i was growing up at least i grew up in an environment where the people around me believed that if someone was wealthy or someone was rich that they must have done something dodgy or bad to get there like illegal or sketchy or yeah it must be yeah sketchy or illegal activities or they must have stabbed someone in the back or they must have hurt someone or they must be taking advantage of someone or manipulating someone using abusing using an abuse that's the only way they could have got there really yeah and generally the idea that we all know of that money is the root of all evil i think that was something that i was exposed to a lot as a child where a lot of people around me believed that and and we weren't wealthy so we weren't in a position of financial strength and often my extended family and others would look to people with wealth and if we would admire that or see something they would be quick to like dampen that and be like no no no no they they you know they just do all this kind of stuff and so i think there was always that negative view towards people who were rich how do we how do we get to a place of should we admire people that are wealthy should we should we look to that and say it's really cool what they've built should we admire the accomplishment of uh amassing a ton of wealth or should we or is that not something to admire that's you always ask the best questions man this is like you know what i mean it's like it's such a great do you admire the results or do you admire the person they've become on the journey of accomplishing the results and how they how the actions they had in order to get there so this is not an interview lewis so i'm going to make your question first i want to hear your thoughts i think is is interesting because i was going to ask you about this no i was going to have a conversation about how you first because i remember having this conversation years ago with you when you never thought that like making money was for you you were just like struggling in new york city trying to make it and kind of live like month by month in a sense and you told me you kind of had this limit around can i be spiritual and make a lot of money can i serve the world make you know wisdom go viral and also is it okay to receive money is it okay to like charge what i'm worth or charge more for my services so i remember having this conversation with you and i and i was like i vaguely remember what i said i said you know i think you're doing a disservice to yourself by not generating more to be able to then hire more people to scale this message beyond so you're not putting all the weight on your shoulders to be able to invest in more nutrition and food and comfortable sleeping space for yourself all that stuff so you can serve at a greater level and so i think i'm answering the question whereas like i think if you're doing your life and you're being in service and being the best you can be as kind as possible to people on that journey then i think it's both admirable and it's cool to see what you could create financially as well with the impact you're creating in the world but it's all about how you show up on the day-to-day how you treat people in the journey of amassing the wealth i think that that's it but if you've generated a lot of money but you've been a jerk or you haven't been in service except for to yourself only then that's not something to admire as a whole man perspective yeah yeah that's my thought i think that's beautiful i i love that and i remember that conversation as well and i want to go back to that question you asked though because it's such a it's such a powerful question that should we admire people who are wealthy and i think we have to be careful about what we admire because what you admire will be what your actions aspire towards so and you'll start taking on those actions correct you'll start taking actions and behaviors and decisions towards what you admire and so i would say that i've always admired people who had a purpose that's what i admire deeply when i meet someone i'd say there's two things that i admire purpose and humility if i meet someone who has purpose they're willing to sacrifice they're willing to do whatever it takes they are mission driven they want to serve the world it's why i was always a fan of yours from before we even met and we knew each other because i was like oh here's a person who really wants to do good in the world he's a person who really wants to give and so i think that's the first thing i look for and then the second thing i would deeply admire is someone who has humility someone who i feel that they were really doing it from the goodness of their heart so i think for me my admiration has always been for those two things and i don't think i can tell someone whether what they admire is right or wrong but i would say that if you admire something your actions are going to start dictating your journey in that direction right and so you have to be careful what you admire because that's what you're going to chase right and so i would say that i like admiring purpose and humility because i think they are worthy of a pursuit sure who are some people that we could think about uh you know who have amassed a lot of money but also we feel like are purpose-driven and in service to whatever their gift is who are some people that we can think about yeah um i i wasn't thinking about this beforehand but i'm just curious about who is living that lifestyle right now yeah that's and that's a tough question and and i think i mean i'd say we know we know a few people in our own world i think people that i've always admired and looked up to uh anyone from like i'd say that's a hard question i mean there are people like coming to my mind right now but i'd probably say that i think oprah's work's been phenomenal like the conversation she's had that have shifted culture or shifted humanity on her tv show because she's brought in an entertainment uh you know tv show but brought in the elements of healing of prayer of meditation of spirituality of uh you know creating consciousness in the planet which i think is powerful so she's bringing purpose to entertainment yeah and she's built a massive empire financially been rewarded for that service exactly exactly and i think that's a great thing i think that's the reason why i find this question so interesting because if we're saying that spiritual people can't be rich that means that spiritual people have to be poor that means all the people that are rich are not spiritual right is that the world we want to live in do we want to live in a world where the wealthiest people or the most externally uh people who have the most resources are people who don't have spiritual intention i don't know if that's the world i want my kids to grow up in or the world that i want to live in i would rather grow up in a world where the most influential people had a deep spiritual intention yes and with that spiritual intention they were they were i guess were rewarded financially for their level of impact and service the challenge the interesting thing is if you have that much humility and you have that much spiritual intention towards your life and service does the money matter yeah does it does it matter as much like the more you earn and does it really impact the individual's life if they have a million dollars or a hundred million dollars that's the interesting thing also yeah i mean i'm interested in hearing your point because the perspective you gave to me a few years ago when when you brought up that point like i remember having like hundreds of millions of views and they're like four months away from being broke i remember this man it's crazy to me to think that yeah and it was really true like i would sit in meetings and people would be like how many views have you had now and i would share that and i was getting all this incredible feedback and then i i didn't have any money and i was literally gonna be broke in four months and what i realized was that that was negatively impacting the amount of impact i could have sustainably long term and it's what you said to me that what if you're making money but then you're investing that in your team what if you're expanding and creating more opportunity like today where we have teams across the world you have your team here i have my teams who are also living their purpose yes and we can only employ them because there's growth in this regard and then they're getting to have a deeper impact so to me it depends on what scale of impact you want to have like yeah and i think also spirituality for me is harmony it's having peace and inner peace and if you're financially stuck or you're financially struggling or you feel trapped in financial debt and confusion of financial aspect of your life then i feel like that's holding you back from your spiritual progress yeah so it's figuring out how to have harmony and balance in these areas of your life and your relationships and your health and your finances for me it's so key and going deeper spiritually in all of those so they're all abundant yes if one is not abundant then are you maximizing your spiritual capacities yeah of this lifetime that's beautiful that's well put yeah and so i think it's and i think so many of us grew up thinking that money was the root of all evil or people with money were bad or this and this whatever we we thought of but i think it's time to start changing the narrative and saying okay i'm going to use money for good and how can i make a commitment to myself to use some of my money to be in service of other people not just all for myself or needing the flashy cars or things we both like nice things you like fashion and experiences i love travel and adventure and healthy foods and investing in that you know we we take care of our health we have trainers nutritionists these things i think it's important so we have more energy and capacity to be of service so i don't think there's anything wrong personally with making a lot of money or having focus on profit and purpose correct but i think you want to have both so you can scale both there's a lot of people who are so well intended who have big missions but don't know how to make money to serve their mission and they're doing a disservice to their cause because they haven't figured out the skill of copyrighting or enrolling people in fundraising or sales or some skill to bring in revenue to support the cause or the mission and i think that's where a lot of nonprofits struggle with these years is they're not thinking they're not thinking about all these other things they have to do to serve yeah yeah so and and and i like that because i also want to clarify that for someone who is spiritual or is conscious or is awake whatever word you want to use or even as in focused on personal growth or self-development their goal is not profit their goal is their purpose their mission their service but they recognize that this is something that they have to think about and organize around yeah in order to serve the purpose so i think it's more about what's your top priority like you don't wake up in the morning every day going how can i make more money today like that's not the mindset you wake up in the morning going how can we serve more people how can we have a greater impact how can we help more people yes and you realize that creating a profitable business or income is a part of that purpose absolutely and i think that's the clarity that we need yeah our measurement for our company is to serve 100 million lives weekly to help them improve the quality of their life exactly it's not to make x amount it's not to make 100 million dollars a year totally but in the okay how do we solve this this mission equation which is we want to reach 100 million lives weekly what does that take well most of it is through video right now video through audio content through social media through books through these different ways to scale a message right a different way to scale a message which takes money resources and a team to execute on these different challenges in business to reach that mission and so it's thinking okay we need more people to support on the team that's going to take more money so how do we make the money to hire people to serve the mission yeah and through the process of figuring out the purpose equation of how to solve that purpose uh conversation then you need to figure out money that's tied to it yes and i also want to make that point that you have to be really vigilant on this path so that you don't buy into your own hype in the sense of it you can convince yourself of anything and you could convince yourself that you're serving people and you're doing this and doing that and then you're making loads of money and then you just convince yourself that it's all okay and so yes you have to be more vigilant on this path i don't think it's fair to say that oh it doesn't matter it's all good you've got to check what do you mean vigilant on what so you have to remain accountable in some way to make sure that you are continuing to do good with the greater facilities and responsibilities as opposed to oh i just made 5 million this year 20 million this year and i'm getting all these accomplishments and awards and recognition so figuring out how to stay humble and confident purpose-driven and promising at the same time at the same time to not get carried away by an opportunity because of that and so what i'm saying is that i think people often say that you know like the reason why people think you either have to be spiritual or financially successful is because they think well if you're going down the spiritual path money can be a distraction or if you're going down money then spirituality will distract you and that is true that is real like you can get really materialistic trying to be spiritual sure and you can become distracted from your materialism by being spiritual that is true but the goal of life is to live in that paradox like in that middle point of trying to figure it out so i often say to people like i don't consider that we've and i know we both feel this way we haven't figured it out we don't know we don't know everything about everything but i'm trying to toggle with that because i believe that the truth is in the middle the truth isn't in the either or yeah i think it's interesting i want to talk about also how we have individually stayed accountable humble in our growth and our trajectory individually because there's at one point where i had no followers at one point you had no followers and we had no business and now both of us have you know an ascension of audience of opportunities of money of accomplishments awards things like that i'll ask you first then i'll answer how have you stopped asking questions lewis this is not the greatness but i'm curious how you have managed the rise to financial gain over the last five years and audience gain and recognition gain how have you and i'll answer it myself how have you personally stayed humble in the process of the rise financially well i mean yeah it's it's like huh it's that that's what i mean by the vigilance like in the sense of you can't ever be complacent about your inner journey so if at any point you think you're humble you're automatically not humble if you think you're so i need to stop saying that to my girlfriend i'm so humbled now yeah it's like if you think you're humble you're not humble if you think you've been really grounded you're not grounded because that automatically cancels out the other but at the same time i would say that for me what what are my anchors and i think i look at them as anchors so my first anchor is impact is always greater than income there is always more impact you can make so i know that for me what i'm trying to do with the work i'm doing is video was an entryway into a journey of transformation i wanted people to move from videos to listen to the podcast to read the book to come to events to come to retreats with me in india like i want to help people go as far on their inner journey as they possibly can that's my personal mission is if someone just wants to watch a three minute video and it makes them feel better that's beautiful but if someone one day wants to come with me to india and live the life i lived and have a deep inward journey then i want to be able to facilitate that i'm still building that bridge to people's deepest selves yes and so the first thing that always humbles me and grounds me is i've got a lot of work to do there's so much suffering and pain in the world there is so much unrest in the world there is so much trauma in the world so we've got a long way to go yeah so all the awards and the views they give you confidence that you're going in the right direction but you'll know you're far away from the destination so that's one thing i think the second thing that really helps me is being around still spending time with my monk teachers who have very different vision as to what is valuable in life yeah because they don't care about they don't care about material possessions or money they don't care and so they're not impressed by that and so to be around people who don't admire certain things helps you lose taste for it it's kind of like when i'm just a man yeah exactly marcus israelis the story is the marcus aurelius would walk through i guess the the town and just have someone saying you're just a man when everyone was praising his name and kind of bowing to him and saying you're like this god right yeah and it's having that accountability that you talked about people in your life that admire you for who you are not for what you're creating in the world right for just your kindness your heart you know your humanness not the the brand that you have built as an individual i think that's so important to have my my girlfriend uh martha over christmas they did it she's great over christmas they have this like uh little game that their family does where you pick out like a word that's gonna be your kind of your word of intention for the year and it's supposed to be the words you need like everyone picks out a word and you hang it in an ornament that goes on like a tree and then you look at it again the next year and then you're always reminded of this word and there's different words like confidence and self-worth and intention and all these things and um can you guess what my word was these are random right so you pick you don't know what it is you pick it out and it's random okay let me think love that's what we've been talking about which is humility oh right no way it's humility i think you told me that yeah i have it so it's humility so she picked it out and you read it in front of like there's like 20 of her family members i have no idea about that and i was like humility they're all like yes you need them i was like you said that like when you're saying you're humble you need more of it and i think the thing is it's always a great reminder whether you're super humble or not it's a great reminder because life will bring things to humble you if you do not consistently stay humble in your life yeah there's injuries sickness you know attacks online or controversy or whatever might come up in the world and it's going to continue to come up but as long as you have the accountability and the right people in your corner who call you out on your bs and also celebrate you when you're doing good things as well i think that's important to have i agree i agree i think life is a journey designed to disconnect you from your ego and dissolve your ego if you think about life as that is the journey and so as much as you willingly hand over of that journey the less it's being pulled away and what i mean by that is and it's it's what you said when you really think about any success you have or any impact you've made there is someone who has helped you get there directly or indirectly so for you to say i am self-made it isn't completely true because there was someone indirectly or directly that helped you get there so if i say that you know people appreciate how i communicate ideas today or certain ideas i have to thank my monk teachers who taught me that wisdom or if someone says hey jay like you're really resilient or you've broken through a lot of challenges but then you have to respect the people that tried to pull you down and so that gave you the opportunity to overcome adversity exactly and so either way yes there have been people who have helped you get to where you are and so you can't claim the ego of i did this all myself and i think there's also something to be said for humility and receiving acknowledgement from others and to yourself yes and celebrating what you've also created i love the uh the acceptance award of snoop dogg where he says something like you know and i want to thank me yes i want to thank me for all the late nights all the early mornings all the hard work and i thank me for never giving up on me yeah and i think there is this over humility sometimes too where people are like well i'll be like hey jay it was so amazing what you did and when people say uh it was nothing it wasn't me you know i got to praise everyone else i think there's a a spiritual way to receive yes accomplishments and be humble in your thank you graceful in your thank you receive it as well because you are showing up in a big way 100 so you can be humble and also gracious in your confidence yes i think that's a great great point and i i completely agree with you i don't think it's again it's never either all i think that's the point that whenever anyone tries to make it like should he be humble or should he be confident it's like be both should i be successful or should be spiritually be both like you can be both like and and we need to be both because sometimes you are going to need to i agree like when when you reject praise what happens or genuine acknowledgement what ends up happening is you lose the opportunity for someone else to express gratitude to give to give you've blocked that ability for them to get you're robbing someone's gift yes and that's a no no no we'll talk about a whole nother session on the law of attraction and the hustle yes but uh there's something to be you know and people that make money know how to receive because they receive money and there's a flow also there's a flow to it they they the ones who are really good don't hoard it right they let it in and they let it out it's like a cycle and they're investing it and they're spending on people and they're building things and they don't say no i'm not ready for money don't give it to me right now it's the same thing like you don't want to block someone's acknowledgement or praise or opportunities and say i'm not ready for it yeah like take it in receive it be graceful and and you can also be humble at the same time yeah use it as fuel don't let it go to your head right right but you use it as fuel so if someone gives you praise you go oh thank you so much that's amazing now i'm gonna use that to work harder yeah right but you're not just using it to go okay it's going to my head now i'm going to feel that you're using it as fuel and so and i think that's why it's everyone needs someone accountable to them yeah whether that's your partner i know roddy is there for you probably martha's that way for me where she will celebrate me but she also just gives me great feedback if i'm if she thinks i'm being you know over the top on something which i never try to be but yeah it's just even just her just her being there as a reminder to stay humble yeah you know even if she doesn't have to say anything it's just like okay i don't need to be boasting anything yeah and having someone that you are inspired by in your life that can be that accountability is so key i think having that community not everyone that just says you're incredible all the time but someone who keeps you grounded and also supports your growth yeah yeah i i fully agree and it's it's for me the interesting thing going back to our original question is money and spirituality yeah like and going back to in context of this is if you're proud of something that can be taken away it will always leave you empty um should be proud of your money correct if that's all you're proud of of what you've done and ultimately whether you die with it or you lose it before you die it is gonna go somewhere else it's gonna be transferred even if that's to your children or to anyone else then that can be a very scary place to live it can be a fearful place to live but you can never lose the impact you've made on people totally like that you know and i think that's what i've noticed is that purpose is the only thing that keeps giving to you because it's such a like it's it's the only thing that can give to you without needing anything else and here's something else that i'm thinking about there are there are a few people that i know and i think you know as well who have made a lot of money but they still don't have that fulfillment inside remember their relationships are off or their health is off but there are others who have made a lot of money and they are so fulfilled with so much joy because it's purposeful money it's money made with a mission in mind and i think that's what we need to be thinking about on our journeys is the money we're making and i think money is great to have it helps solve a lot of problems in our lives but it doesn't solve the problem of fulfillment yes and it doesn't solve the problem of inner peace it might solve some peace it might be able to help pay for challenges to overcome but it doesn't bring us ultimate inner peace by itself correct unless we figure out purpose and mission as well yes money gives financial security yes and financial stability and financial safety which are all very important things but financial stability does not equate to mental peace right like we know people who have financial security but they are not mentally peaceful they're emotionally unstable correct because those two things don't correlate same with emotional stability does not lead to financial security right i know people who are really emotionally together but they may not have figured out how to organize their business or their life to facilitate that i would say i was in that bucket for a long time in my life and so we've got to start seeing them as just two different pursuits if i buy a ticket to la i'm not going to get to new york and if i buy a ticket to new york i'm not going to get to la you've got to pay for that ticket that you want and then two different things an emotional regulation and emotional peace and making money are two different skill sets yes and you have to you have to study and practice the art of emotional regulation of emotional peace of inner peace it has taken me decades to get to a place where i feel peace inside right and i know you you went off to go on this journey when you were 21 22 or something because you didn't feel that early on in your life and you were inspired by the monks that you met who came and taught and you're like i want to go learn this and have this in my life so i think it's two separate journeys it's learning and some people make money naturally and it comes easier to them and other people are just peaceful joyful people naturally yeah i would say roddy's like one of these just peaceful joyful people naturally just in her nature yes where other people struggle and have more depressed thoughts and they're more stressed out and so it's a pr each of our practice and they can both be very challenging but so worthwhile pursuing correct because when you master both it gives you even more peace yeah yeah yeah i mean i have friends that make you know i i have friends that work their job make their money and then spend all their evenings and weekends with their family and they're really happy yeah because they know what their purpose is and then i have friends that have all the money in the world that are unhappy but then i also have the opposite where i have friends who are doing their nine-to-five job and spending time every day and they have time but they're not happy they're stressed yeah and then i have friends that are living their purpose making lots of money that are happy and so we need to stop equating money and happiness in the same conversation or money and success they just provide different things and like you beautifully said they're different skills and we have to decide each one has to decide what type of life we want to lead and i think both are i don't know you tell me both are equally as important to learn at the same time because if you're putting your energy on making money but then you can't sleep at night because you're emotionally stressed and you have no peace but you figure out the money thing your health is going to go to crap and your relationships are going to crap if you're just zenned out all day and you don't spend time on figuring out the money side then you're broke you know and there becomes some stress around not having things to buy yes and pay for and going month to month yes that has an element of stress so they're both so important to be working on together i think correct uh i'm a big believer that emotional regulation is the key in general yeah because it just makes you less reactive in all life situations yeah but finding a way to make money within a meaningful pursuit is so fulfilling as well yeah it doesn't feel like work yes when you're doing something meaningful and making your money around it yeah and and if you can't do that yet i think that's one of the biggest issues too is that doing a job just because it pays the bills and takes care of what you need and then having time to figure out your passions and what else you want to do that's a beautiful place to start that's where i started i think that's probably where you started too it's like you start with just a base and i think too many people hate on their current life because they want this passion life but hating on your current life is just training yourself to hate on your future life mm-hmm and i think we don't recognize that you'll never be happy where you're at yeah and and i'm not saying you you're gonna love like i would say i've done so many jobs in my life that i honestly did not love me too but i choose and i did everything from stacking shelves at grocery stores to working in retail to delivering newspapers i calculated the other day i've been working now for 20 years because i started working when i was 14 34 now so i've been working for 20 years and i've done i would say that up until six years ago most of the jobs i did i didn't want to do wow but all of them i learned to take a skill that i use today and so now when i look back i'm like oh well being a delivery boy taught me discipline because i had to do all the streets in my area without any reciprocation in the rain and lugging around this like you know delivery news thing which didn't make me look cool i missed out on hanging out with friends whatever but it taught me discipline and i think it's you know i had a lot of those jobs as well where i was a bouncer on the weekends at a nightclub i never knew that so i was a truck driver during the day for i only did this for three and a half months and i was like i can't do this anymore truck driver for six hours a day i would drive a massive u-haul kind of the biggest truck before you had to get a special license for a truck so imagine like the biggest u-haul and i was driving for napa auto parts which is like a car manufacturer and i would drive two and a half hours from columbus to cincinnati ohio and two and a half hours back every day and transfer these auto parts from one truck to another and bring others back up to columbus and the truck only went 55 miles an hour all the way the pedal to the metal and so i was just in the slow lane uh this was before like really cell phones and all these different things and i would do that during the day and i would do the bouncing on the weekend to make some money and i remember thinking like this is not for me yeah this is not what i was born to do yeah but i think in those situations just like you had in your situations it's figuring out how to be purpose in the thing you're doing be joy be fun in those moments while you're thinking of like the next thing to get out of or how to get out of that into the next thing what you want to be doing and you know have you ever been to a restaurant where you have a waiter a waitress that's just like full of light yeah full of joy they're so grateful they're they they bring a smile to your face they remember the order perfectly they just like want to make the experience incredible yeah you always hear these stories about get them getting hired and then going on to some other career because they brought the joy they brought purpose to their career to their job yeah which maybe they didn't really want to be at yeah but that's how you get to the next place yeah it's by bringing that energy to the thing you don't enjoy and being purposeful anyways yeah i think if we could start doing that you're going to be a magnet for opportunities yeah to finding your purpose i love that there was we were just in rwanda and there was a i don't drink alcohol but i was with a group of people who were and so there was a sommelier who was explaining the wine experts like telling everyone what's in the wine and all that kind of stuff and the person i was with encouraged him to he was he was uh he was from africa and the person who was leading the retreat asked the person to explain their journey to how they became a sommelier at this beautiful hotel that we were at and he sat down and he told us his story and it's exactly what he's not aware yeah literally cool so he was saying that he worked at a restaurant he was waiting and then he was asked one night to like choose a bottle of wine for a table and so he chose a bottle of wine for that table gave advice and he was really good at it because he'd been doing his youtube research learning on the side and he said that when he gave it to this person at the table they asked him why this wine why not the other one like they were really quizzing him and because he'd done his research he knew what to say he said that at the end of the meal that person who was sitting at the table gave him a car that was so cool and when he looked at it the next day that was the owner of the brand of wine that he gave no way that is cool and and that person deceptive if you want to train to be a somalia then you know we'll put you into training school everything that's cool and it's amazing like you know he was so beaming when he's telling this story he's so happy doing it and for him it was a big change because he was saying that the family he grew up in would have not been happy with him working in alcohol and whatnot but it was his passion it was what drove him there right it's just those kind of stories that melt my heart but if he showed up stressed that he was going to a job that he didn't like correct and saying i really don't want to be here i'm not doing the thing i want to do exactly and let me just get through the night let me do the bare minimum let me show up and just get my check and go back yeah if we go through life in those moments where we don't want to be doing something nothing good is going to happen for us not we're not going to create an energy that attracts financial abundance yeah and that's not a spiritual practice showing up being kind of half lazy half disinterested and just going through the motions that's not a spiritual practice either totally a spiritual practice from my perspective is being present in the moment and giving your fullest joy giving your light giving your heart to the moment yes that's that's a spiritual practice i'm not saying you're gonna be able to have the energy to do that every moment of every day yeah but it's doing your best to get back to the moment and say how can i be of service to this moment yes how can i use my light how can i use my gift whatever that is in this moment to serve absolutely what would you say is yeah what would you say is a spiritual practice for you kind of day to day yeah i think the spiritual practice is how can i truly treat everyone i meet as an equal as a human how do i see them through equal vision how do i not talk down to someone or talk up to someone how do i truly allow each person the space to express themselves and express myself to connect with them and if i'm going to a place of work if i'm going to a place of wherever i am how can i show up believing that my positive energy and what i put out in the world will some way come back to me yeah it made it it's hard to believe that it's hard to believe that but it will i've seen sometimes you know it's like an investment like sometimes you make an investment and you don't see the benefits until 20 years later but you're so grateful for it 20 years later because it almost surprises you and that's how the world works like there's very few things that are instant in life i mean i would say that you probably feel you're living off of habits and disciplines you built 10 20 years ago totally like it's not like it's not like what you're winning in now is what you just did yesterday like it's stuff that you'd like when you you know were playing sport and developing as an athlete like all of those skill sets are useful today absolutely even though you're not doing the same thing absolutely yeah yeah it's similar to my athletic background which you were an athlete as well but you're more trained the you were the athletes of the mind right this you're the spiritual athlete you're getting up at 4am sleeping on the ground you know just being of service all day learning teaching meditating uh being with your your monk community and you had to go through adversity on a daily basis essentially you had to do uncomfortable things and be positive about it in football when you're doing three a days it is not fun and 105 degree humidity and heat showing up putting pads on and getting smashed over and over again for two hours at a time three times a day it's not fun yeah but the coaches ingraining you attitude and how you show up for others and your team the team and if you are missing the play you're letting the whole team down and it's how each individual shows up with a positive attitude makes the entire mission of the team move forward in progress yeah but if you're stressed and overwhelmed and allowing the adversity of the moment to hold you back then the team's gonna be held back yeah i think you did that in the monk community by constantly being of service even if you're only getting two hours of sleep and in the heat all day serving you know just asking for food uh and same thing in life and you're using that discipline now from 10 15 years ago well i think what i see in you is that i didn't know you when you were an athlete back then but i feel like the thing i noticed about you is that you're always bringing the most amount of value to everything you do that's the goal and whether i was i when i spoke at your mastermind a few years ago i saw how much value you brought your community and i saw how much success all of them have had and the journeys and careers they've had and i want to talk about this and i think it'll be useful for us to answer this together i think one of the biggest issues that people have so let's say first they recognize as we both clarified that we realized that money is an energy that it's a resource money is not good or bad it's defined by how you use it if your goal is to use money for a higher purpose and for a mission it can be a beautiful thing absolutely you've established that i think one of the biggest things that people struggle with and that's what i wanted us to talk about is people struggle with the idea of how do i charge for what i'm worth or i feel uncomfortable to charge for my services i know coaches feel this way i know therapists feel this way i know people are in the service business feel difficult to feel like they're allowed to feel comfortable to charge for their services because it's assumed that if you're doing good for the world you should be doing it for free and so let's address that mindset because i think a lot of people might be watching right now going lewis and jam with you but i just feel really unconfident about saying this is how much my services are worth yes and so i'll go first because i brought it up yes but but i think it's the idea of like the first thing i say to people is we know this that when people are paid for something including when i pay for something i take it more seriously i'm more likely to show up and be my best and i'm more likely to complete a great example for us is a personal trainer absolutely the reason i have that is because i know i've already paid for his time i already know i've paid for an hour and if i cancel i'm going to lose that money and if i show up and i'm not full energy then i'm not going to get that much out of it right if i haven't paid someone i may or may not go to the gym if i feel like it or not i probably won't turn up if i turn up to the gym i might just be on my phone the whole time by the way if you're going to gym you probably paid membership too so the idea of the transaction of money forces a higher commitment and energy from me included yes and from everyone absolutely and so of course it's all based on affordability and privilege and access of course like i'm not telling people to pay more than they have but the idea that when we exchange money for something we value it more 100 and i think uh our friend dean graciosi says uh you pay attention to what you pay for and the more you pay for it you pay more attention to the thing that you've invested in or signed up on if you buy a house and you spend a lot of money on that house you're probably going to make sure the house is in good order and you're going to fix it up and you're going to treat it well you buy a new car same thing you're going to not trash it at least not right away hopefully but if you buy a car for a few hundred bucks you may say yeah if it hits a wall or if this is scratched like who cares because i didn't invest that much in it so we pay attention to what we pay for and i think you're doing a disservice to yourself and you're creating a a model to everyone around you that you're not worth receiving of money if you're not willing to charge or eventually charge more when you can deliver more value for that and i think um it's important to we'll probably talk about this more in another session about you know a law of attraction and the hustle and grind and things around that but i think when we i think we should be constantly striving to to develop more skills add more value and then in that process be willing to charge more yeah otherwise we're staying stagnant and i think you just hit a nail on the head it's that you're charging for your skills that you've developed and you're not charging for the time you're charging for the time it took to build those skills and the value can deliver with the speed of delivery hopefully correct correct because i think a lot of people feel like oh i can't charge that much for an hour or i can't charge that much for x or y or z but it's like you're not charging for that hour you're charging for all the hours that it took to build that exactly and i think a good example from my personal life is i'm paying for a therapist slash coach right now that's i pay her like kind of a lump sum for six months for a certain amount of sessions but if i was to average the sessions out and call it per session rate it's around 700 bucks a session right for an hour and a half which is probably the highest amount of any therapist out there yeah should therapy is maybe 150 maybe 250 on the high end some of the celebrity therapists are 500 a session so i'm paying above that and i'm paying it because i'm getting incredible results from my inner peace yes and it's worth it it's worth it um you're also investing in your future investing in my future forever and the skills that i'm developing that will allow me to have greater peace in my intimacy and my relationships greater peace in my friendships greater harmony in my business and allow me to soar financially and with my mission so it's like it's all around a good investment correct even if it's a three times more than the average right right right for me yeah yeah and other people that may not make sense of course based on where they're at and i get it but there is an investment that will make sense for you and maybe it's not in hiring a therapist or a coach but it's going through a workshop online that you pay something for or buying a book buying a book something else or listening to our podcast either one of those it's like yeah exactly but you're investing time yeah your time you're investing time to learn something and then investing and applying it and testing it and i think that's just is that's valuable as well and i want to address that it is by the way i feel awkward talking about money we all feel awkward talking about money because we were told that it's a taboo in society you never ask someone their wage you never ask them how much money they make you don't tell someone what your bonus was this year so we've created a taboo in society to talk about money and that's why most of us feel really uncomfortable where we'd rather not have that conversation but the problem is then we spend all of our mind thinking about money because then we're like well they didn't pay me enough or they don't value me oh i should have got a bigger bonus oh i should have got a better promotion or my salary should be this and so by you pretending or not even pretending by you feeling uncomfortable to address money you actually end up spending more time obsessed with the lack of it yes and i think that's the pain that you're actually obsessing over the lack of money because you're scared of talking about it and i know i've been there like i know what that feels like and i think some things that people can think about as they leave this conversation is i'm so glad you said this because i was probably going to forget this a mentor of mine early on when i was broke said money comes to you when you're ready for it and i was like i feel pretty ready to have some money because i don't have any i feel ready and he's like it'll come to you when you're ready for it and i didn't understand it when you're lacking it doesn't make sense but it understood it as money started to come to me because i was like i wasn't ready to manage the responsibility the weight i didn't have the knowledge on how to receive money how to manage it how to pay off credit cards and debts how to automate things like i would have blown it because i didn't understand it enough so what you said right there is so important that we need to have conscious conversations about money and be be willing to be uncomfortable with your friends or family members that maybe you've never talked about money and start talking about it i love normalizing the conversation so it's not scary so it's not bad so it's not this i don't know i don't want to talk about it it's scary if you know these things letting go of the shame around money conversations and do it in an appropriate setting with the right people but be willing to have these conversations you won't feel the pressure of it as much and when it comes it's not going to feel like you have to hold on to it as much and you'll just be able to naturally flow in the world more with open conversation so i think what you said there is so important we need to do yeah and i think that the reason we feel uncomfortable is because we've never been trained and the reason why we decided to do this is because we're trying to have the uncomfortable conversation so that hopefully all of you feel encouraged i've always found uh our friend david bark yes he has some really great stuff on like i remember reading his stuff years before i met him about how much money to spend on rent and how much money to save and how to do this like when you when you first have like a an income from a job and i found that so useful because no one in my life has ever talked to us no one taught about it so if you're scared of talking about money if you're scared of figuring out how to charge and by the way if you're someone who in your heart goes jay i feel like i'm somewhat taking advantage of someone when i ask them for money bring more value yes bring more value over deliver give your heart and then you won't feel that way because you realize you're having a genuine impact on them i realized when we launched some of our courses and programs we studied how they improved people's lives and we saw that someone in our community had been part of genius for 90 days their happiness goes up by 40 and we were like that's incredible like that's beautiful right and so when you start to measure impact yes measure your impact don't just create something and hope that it works measure your impact you'll feel more confident really take the time to create an offering that genuinely improves people's lives you'll be more confident and then ultimately keep checking in with yourself absolutely to check am i truly delivering or not yeah one of the things we do every monday today is monday uh our team calls is we talk about what are some of the impact we're making on all the different programs and products and from the courses to the podcast like what are the testimonials of the week we have a big uh spreadsheet with all the testimonials that come in different people on the team read out what they kind of have ownership over here are the biggest testimonials of the week and it constantly reminds us why we're doing what we're doing yeah so don't neglect hearing testimonials hearing the impact you've made on your friends lives or if you have a freelance gig or a career how you're being of service with your talents and your skills you are living and you know when you live in purpose that is the fuel to keep going you love it i love it when people come up to us on the street and say hey i'm listening right now this i read your book it helped me hear two years ago i found you and i got it into this incredible relationship or i got out of this challenging relationship or got in shape because of you or what you shared it's fuel for our purpose to have more energy and go you know bigger at it so be willing to receive that as well and um start having these conversations what else should we leave people with as we wrap up episode one of the awkward conversations i i think my big takeaway from today's conversation is we all have to evaluate our relationship with money do you have a positive relationship do you have a negative relationship do you have a neutral or void relationship most of us don't realize that we all have a relationship with money if you don't talk about money that's like not talking to someone right that's what it is if you don't talk about money then your relationship is you don't communicate with that person then you can have negative communication you have negative thoughts about that person you have negative feelings towards that person or you have positive feelings and healthy feelings figure out your relationship and the quote or the wisdom that changed my relationship with money uh was this beautiful thought by martin luther king which was that the people who love peace and i believe i'm a person who who loves peace i believe you are that the people who love peace need to learn to organize themselves as well as those who love war absolutely and what i realized was that the challenge with spirituality or positivity in the world was that it was not organized enough and organization requires finances businesses structure operations implementation and so to me that was something that really made me realize that if i truly believe i want to positively improve the world i have to think about money it's not my goal it's not my obsession it's not my priority but i can't ignore it because if i ignore it it's going to negatively impact everything there's another like viral quote online that says it's better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war and i think it's we need to train ourselves to be prepared for the financial world for the ups and downs of the financial world for just the world in general that is has a lot of ups and downs and be prepared for all of it with a spiritual practice and a financial practice as well i think that's the key so that you're not stressed when life comes at you with war yeah because there will be some war at some point whether it be metaphorical or spiritual war or we're on something right and for us to be prepared on both financially spiritually and be working on both of those will be so key so if you guys enjoyed this conversation um let us know in the comments below and tell us what topic you want us to go over next in this series with me and jay also make sure you check out jay's show on apple podcast spotify on purpose with jay shetty make sure you check it out subscribe there subscribe over on jay's youtube channel as well below we'll have all this stuff linked up we're going to be doing a series of this going back and forth so the next episode will be on jay's show and then we'll come back here on the school of greatness so make sure you subscribe to jay so you can get all the content we do together in this series where we're covering uncomfortable unique taboo topics around life so make sure to check it out subscribe leave a yes if you enjoyed this and if you want more and share what topic you want to see more of below in the comments on youtube as well if you got value from that then go ahead and stick around for more coming up right now monk mind is calm and composed the monk my knows to be focused and aware among my nose so everything in this book and everything that we're talking about is the transformation from the monkey mind that we experience to the monk mind the monkey mind is almost the enemy to the monk mind it's the opposite yes and how does someone who is living in a sense of scarcity because there are people living in scarcity where they're unable to pay their bills they're unable to provide food for their kids they're single moms they're they're stressed they're stressed they're overwhelmed it's hard to get into a sense of abundance when you're in scarcity and stress so how does someone find purpose in chaos when they can't even get out of the thinking because they're just trying to survive yeah so a beautiful question my my biggest answer is first of all i empathize with anyone who's been in that situation having i can't ever say i've been in that situation in the same way but i've experienced similar things or have stealing in your life yeah in my own way and i've seen my mom go through stuff like that i i know that my mom worked really hard to raise me and my sister while working you know while running around and i've i've seen my mom be that incredible powerhouse of a person and the the main thing i would say is what you can do right now is find meaning in what you do make what you do meaningful passionate and purposeful you don't need to suddenly look to become an entrepreneur or start a side hustle or find some more time find meaning and the way you find meaning as you genuinely stop press pause for a second and go what am i living for like what am i living for right now and if you're living for your child and if you're living to provide and put food on the table that is a beautiful thing that we should celebrate more and sometimes it takes us a moment to stop and celebrate that and so i would say find meaning because you can't always find happiness you can't always find positivity but you can always find meaning in that position so i'll give an example like i lost someone really important to me a mentor a few days back i can't be positive about that you can't be happy about it yeah it's hurtful you feel sad you you feel lost but guess what i can find meaning in it because i can make a list of every lesson he taught me and make a plan to try and live every one of those lessons wow that's beautiful and and so if you're in a really tough situation right now don't look for positivity don't look for happiness look for meaning that's a good one not trying to and not trying to get yourself out of pain too quickly or discomfort or frustration yeah which i've been a guilt of being like just be positive or whatever to people but i think it's like you know have your experience yes live your experience and find meaning as quickly as possible and create a commitment to how you want to use that meaning moving forward okay i may not be great tomorrow maybe not with next week next month but i'm going to use this meaning to serve other people to continue to do what i love continue to be great to my friends my family in the best way possible and when you start doing those small things with love and kindness so much more opens up it's like when you when you can be trusted with the small things and the small moments you get trusted with more and more and more and so like it helps to just in that moment and it's in those painful moments that you realize how powerful you are we all know that like you've really recognized it and and what you said was beautiful about not rushing through the pain because and and you know this example's probably been shared before but if you have a wound and you've cut yourself it's like you can't rush the healing you can't rush it if you broke your arm i mean and you've been through so many bodily injuries you can't rush the process it's gonna take six weeks minimum to heal broken oh yeah minimum and you've got to sit through that it's painful there's no injections you can take there's no videos you can watch there's nothing you can listen to but our challenge is we try and rush through the pain rather than reflect through the pain we try to rush the healing process try to rush the healing and you can't rush healing and healing is meant to be slow because it buys you time it buys you reflection it gives you so much space to slow down to slow down and that's what your body is calling out for this is our emergency like how many times have you heard it where you slow down you slow down and that's when you fall ill because guess what your body has been trying to tell you to slow down when you feel pain so i write about it and think like a monk pain makes you pay attention yeah that's what pain's for pain notice this notice this well notice me look at me it's crazy it's like a crying baby craving for attention when a baby's crying you don't just go eyes crying you don't just go oh yeah we'll just put it in another room and forget about it right like you go to it you find its needs whereas without pain when something's painful we're just like oh yeah i'll just forget about it i'll escape from i'll do something else you have to go into that i'm number five i'm numb the pain that's said or whatever yeah a hundred percent that's that's usually our responses what can i do to numb this work more have sex more drink more whatever is more whatever it is rather than let me actually become alert and guess what the pain just gets higher and higher and higher and higher because unfortunately until it really hurts we don't stop or you need more and more to numb it with so true and so you go down the extremes of life so true now what's been the most painful thing you've had to experience since because i know leaving the monk hood was painful for you because this was a mission of yours that you wanted to have for your whole life and i think you were there for three and a half years so what's been the most painful thing i guess in the last six or seven years since that time that you've had to reflect back on take notice of pay attention to and reevaluate that's a great question i think for me it was in 2016 i moved out to new york so just let me paint a picture of 2016. i moved three jobs i got married wow i moved country and i just just started a whole new life like my life just transformed so we went to all of that with my wife in one year and by the way all of that was surprises the job chains were surprises yeah the country change was a surprise the marriage was not a surprise we planned apart from everything else everything was a surprise now i said i like surprises so i can roll with it but my point is that's a lot of transition so much transition and i felt the burden of being in a new city where we had no family we had no friends and my wife who loves being around her family and no one understands just how close she is to them i felt this burden on me that i had taken away her time with her family and now she was alone so i was going out to work and she'd be crying at home and i was thinking she's got no friends she's got no support and i know you can relate to this with moving and relationships and so much going on and so it's like i'm dealing with that and guess what six months later i have to leave and move on and work on a new career to build everything myself and then i'm four months away from being broke and so on top of all of this i've now got four months away from being broke i've got enough money money saved for four months to pay for rent and groceries and that's it in new york city and that's it and guess what even on top of that i've got 30 days before my visa runs out and i'm kicked out of the country so i can't even live here anymore so not only have i just got married moved job three times changed career again had to move into apartment four months of being broke and i might get kicked out in 30 days and my renewal for my visa costs 15 000 so that's going to eat into those four months i have probably never been under that much emotional physical and and mental pressure in my life like genuinely i felt it and i thought my body changed my my breath was more stressed i would be breathing faster shorter breaths not deep breaths heartbeating faster not working out you get into lazy habits you start craving junk food i'm living in a 500 square foot apartment with my wife which is which is tiny like everything's in that space and guess what we both work from home so i'm now sitting at a desk hunched over trying to figure stuff out she's trying to cook in the same room like i'm trying to just just try to figure out what to do and i remember the next morning sending like a hundred emails to people and just being like this is who i am this is what i can do how can we serve and that was the same year that i ended up meeting you later in that year and the beginning three months of that journey was so stressful like they were so stressful because i was like what if i have to move back to london what am i gonna say to her parents i mean i just took their daughter away like uh just got married i've lived in new york city for six months and my life's falling apart like you know so much and i've got all these views but there's nothing there's nothing happening in it we met you also you also i mean at this time you're also growing so much how are you able to create and reach this impact with your videos that's growing while you're under so much stress and uncertainty and i stopped a bit of that time like things slowed down horrible like things slowed down i remember i i wasn't creating as much as i was because i don't enjoy creating from stress or pressure and i don't think you can really create something from stress and pressure so we really slowed down at that time and when i was creating i was creating from a place of recognizing that i could share what i had learned and what i had grown in so far so anything i was sharing was like this is what i've learned so far so that was the biggest pain that i've been through in the last seven years for sure and all i can say is that i remember coming home to my wife knowing that this was going to be the truth and i came and i said to i said to you i guarantee you this is going to be the best thing that ever happened to us what the pain the pain i said that to the night i came home and then she gave out i literally came up i looked in the eyes and go this is the scenario and i just want you to know that i guarantee to you this is the best thing that's ever going to happen to us and i said to them this is this is a monk statement that we used to repeat i said i'm just not going to judge the moment don't judge the moment because what we do is we try to label moments as good or bad and when you label the moment as bad it now does not have the opportunity to become good i'll give an example if i go i don't like this book this book's bad right and i don't and i love this book but if i say that guess what i will never pick it up and recognize the value that's inside of it because you've labeled it yes and we label stuff like we label or that restaurant is bad but when you label them that person's bad now you can't learn from that person oh a great one that's a really good one as soon as you start labeling people or anything is good or bad you limit it you stop it from being something else and here's the truth every moment can evolve into being anything if you give it the opportunity to right but as soon as you say it's got no value anymore you lose it and so for me i had to say to myself don't judge the moment and i'd keep repeating that don't judge where you're at don't judge what's happening yeah don't judge it as negative don't don't just start saying it's negative because guess what we've all been in positions where a gift turned into a curse and a curse turned into a gift true right we've always our dreams came true and it ended up not being what we wanted exactly it fell apart and it led us into our dream totally why is it that so many people that win the lottery yeah go broke yeah gifts can turn into curses too but because we label them as the best moment in our life or the worst moment in our life whereas when you approach things to neutrality and just what you have on the table you can be like okay what am i going to do next before we continue this video make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day that's why the greatest quarterbacks are neutral energy they'll get a little excited they'll get a little fist pump in there every now and then but they're not hyped every play and they're not negative every play they have this calm they see the field they you drop a pass and it's like a little bit let's go but it's very neutral even when you score a touchdown unless it's maybe the super bowl or a big championship at the end of a game in the middle of the game you want to keep it pretty like even keel paced so you can prepare for the best or the worst that's great yeah but always up and down it's like your energy levels will go up and down and you'll be exhausted you need to have energy in life totally and if everything is tied around a story of this is bad this is wrong i'm in a bad place i'm messing up i'm going broke that energy is going to pull you away from service exactly or creation or creativity of how do i get out of this place so i think it's really i love that and i used to have a coach and i think a lot of coaches use this or at least he used to say to us he would be like if you if you lose cry for a day and if you celebrate if you win celebrate for a day yeah and then move on the next day get back to training don't don't let it run live in the past don't live in the past and what we do is when we lose we cry for a month and when we win we just move on which means that our negative experiences hold us back and weigh us down more than our positive experiences so we're actually allowing because we don't immerse ourselves in winning and growth we only submerge ourselves in negative experiences we need to celebrate also we try to celebrate i've been uh you know that's been part of my life as well as like moving on too quick and now we try to like let's enjoy let's go to lunch or dinner and really like appreciate this moment and celebrate this moment and even have a dinner with some friends and family otherwise what are we working so hard for 100 and we almost feel like we can't we can't do that because that makes us complacent right but but that's my point it's never good enough exactly but if you win celebrate for a day if you lose cry for a day move on simple and you've learned so many lessons over your years as a monk you learned a ton of lessons moving to you know getting married moving into a new country building building companies launching products and books and you've had ups and downs what's been the biggest lesson in the last 12 months for you because you've learned you've created so much in the last 12 months you've done so many things what's been the biggest lesson for you in your life well that's a great question i think i'd have to say that it's a and i was saying it to a friend on the phone this morning when i was on the way to you and i was just i was just sharing it with him because he was having a moment in recognizing this there's a wonderful verse in the manusmithi which i talk about think like a monk it's a monk book and in the verse it says when you protect your purpose your purpose protects you now i wanna i wanna unpack that what i mean by that is your purpose is like a rare jewel and a rare gemstone and imagine you were walking around with the most expensive diamond or jewel in the world how would you protect it you want to just like you want to just wave it out yeah yeah you want to wear it on your chest like this like a baby holding it yeah putting a pillow around a blanket you do like yeah protect it you'd protect it and so your purpose is like that and guess what people are gonna tell you every day that that jewel is not worth anything they're gonna tell you that that jewel is actually valueless it doesn't have any impact on your life they're going to try and take away that value they're going to tell you that there's another jewel out there that you need to have more value and what ends up happening is you don't i love the word look at the wording protect your purpose you have to protect it so what happens is your success grows you get more opportunities more ideas more things coming your way temptations but they can all take you away from your purpose distractions and to me i'm repeating this for myself because i'm like i just want to stick to what i was born to do and i'm so grateful that i get to do it i'm so happy i get to do it and i want to keep protecting it i don't want to get lost in the waves you know you don't want to just get chucked in the waves of the ocean and just get lost and just not know where you're going so for me when you protect your purpose your purpose protects you so that's been your biggest lesson that's my biggest lesson why do you feel like your purpose has been maybe distracted i don't think it has but i'm saying it so it doesn't like you're reminding me yeah i'm reminding myself like i'm preaching to myself right now especially being in hollywood and the temptation of all these opportunities out here totally and i think for me it's a bigger lesson also because it gives me more faith so i always encourage and this is actually actually this is why it's my biggest lesson i encourage so many people that i coach so many people i mentor obviously everyone in my community and audience and everything to go and follow that go and live that purpose and i see time and time again that when i see people trying to live their purpose they are protected that it things work when you're playing in your dharma and your purpose things work things move you feel momentum they happen and i'm not saying they happen without effort but they happen they move whereas when you're not you just constantly feel like you're grinding up against you know a war right now challenges just just constant so what is your purpose and when did you discover it good question what is my purpose is simple it always has been since not since the beginning because i discovered it afterwards my purpose is making wisdom go viral and i've stuck with that and i've kept it that way because to me and there's more to it making wisdom go viral through entertainment i would say is my purpose because i believe that that is something that is uniquely my goal impact and service and the beautiful thing is i'm not limited to a platform so that could be books it can be podcasts it can be tv shows it can be moved it's not limited and this i learned by reading i was reading after and this was after my video started to to get seen this wasn't before i did it it wasn't like i sat down and i wrote this fancy tag line i was reading selene ishmael's book called exponential organizations and in this book he talks about something called an mtp a massive transformational purpose and he says that every major person organization in the world has an mtp so an mtp has to be aspirational it has to be massive and it has to be service and purpose based so google's is organizing the world's information notice it doesn't say we're an seo company notice it doesn't say we do google ads right they're organizing the world's information that's how big they're dreaming and when you're organizing the world's information you can do driverless cars you can do google glass you can sell google ads whatever it is and so ted's is ideas worth spreading that's what they are that's what they're about so j shetty is making wisdom go viral that's what i'm dedicated to so when did you discover it because it wasn't when you were it wasn't before it wasn't when you were 21 college i'd say i was 30 probably two three years ago so i'm 32 now so i'd say like two three years ago is when i discovered 30 years old is when you discovered your purpose correct so what was your purpose before that my purpose before that was finding my purpose like it's like that process of just like my purpose before that was 14 years so i've been online for four years i've spent 10 years offline talking about the same stuff sharing the same messages in talks in universities in small seminars in coaching and mentoring like i've been doing the same thing for 14 years but i didn't realize it was my purpose until very recently but i just did what i enjoyed and naturally try to get better at it so if we don't know what our purpose is and we're working towards finding our purpose it's okay that's actually where you're gonna spend most of your life discovering what you're purchasing totally and that's the best bit because i think a lot of people are like well i don't know what my purpose is totally that's why i just how should i find it the pressure of finding your purpose is crazy will stop you from finding your purpose literally the pressure is so heavy and that's why it's not about finding that it's just starting with the basics what am i good at and i talk about it and i break down dharma and here and i talk about what are your passion what is your expertise what is your compassion because that's really important what is your compassion for the world like what problem do you want to solve i often people will say there's so many things i could do there's so many things i'm like my question is not what causes you the greatest joy sometimes my question is what is what causes you the greatest pain make that your purpose make that your purpose if you don't know what your joy is you definitely know what your pain is what do you know like and so for me go serve that thing 100 so for me the greatest pain i see in the world is people not reaching their potential that is that causes me more pain because i believe that there is someone out there who is stacking shelves who has the cure to cancer right there is someone out there or talented singer he's a talented singer there is someone out there who's not living to their potential and i think we're better people we're better partners and we're better parents when we live to our potential so that's what i'm trying to solve and i'm not saying that's the biggest thing sure you're saying it's my thing whenever i work with people i'm always telling them to find your purpose focus on what you're most passionate about or what you you have the most pain around they go it's the same thing like do the thing you love the most keep doing it until you either discover that's it or maybe i don't love that anymore like i played so many sports growing up i used to love baseball i used to love soccer and then i got bored with it i got burnt out by it it wasn't a love of mine anymore it wasn't a passion and then i switched to football and it was like oh this is a passion and i'm actually more gifted physically for this sport than it would be for soccer i was too big for soccer i kind of run seven miles a day right now on the field but i think you need to try lots of things and you might think it's a passion but you might get burnt out and discover i don't love it anymore what else is there and keep trying new things like you said eight new things a month yeah until you discover it might take you to take a 30 40 50. right it doesn't and that doesn't matter like it doesn't matter like the fun is in the growth and the journey and the like for me the last 10 years before this happened and my life changed is like those were fun i was happy i wasn't unhappy because of that because i didn't have to know the exact course yeah exactly and now i'm very clear on it and i'm happy for it to evolve too like i don't think it has to stay the same i may sit with you in two years time and tell you something completely different right and i'm okay with that but i can only work with what i have now and i think we start trying to postpone our purpose or find a date by which you have to you put a deadline on your purpose doesn't make any sense yeah i'd say one of the first questions that always comes to my mind is is how can i be of service today how can i be in and this is extended from that first question how can it be an instrument of love compassion and kindness and that's what i count as service in my own definition and so what i would say to anyone listening is define the words yourself because what service means to you me may be different to you and so it's important but for me it's like how can i be of service today and the reason why i love that is we've talked about this before when you're wired for service you're set up right we talked about in the last podcast like service sets you up to feel satisfaction to build bonds and create connections and does so much so being of service is one of the first questions i would ask the second question i was asked myself is what do i love about myself right what do i actually love about myself that is probably the most powerful question anyone could ask because most people never learn to love themselves totally and we always find the things that we don't love about ourselves and we fixate on those things and that's one of the repeating thoughts in our head that keeps us playing small every day all the time all the time and and we talk a lot about today self-love and self-care but i think you know a lot of that starts with self awareness which we know about self knowledge but self knowledge creates self trust and a lot of it's like learning to trust ourselves and it's like if i don't know what i love about myself how am i ever going to trust myself how am i going to trust that i have my best interest at her and so asking yourself what do you love and and then the third and final question i think i would ask myself is is who do i want to be right who do i want who is the person that i need to be that i can love that i want to love that i want to give more love to like what parts of growth are there still available and there's one thing i want to add which isn't a question but it has been a really reaffirming or deepening affirmation for me that i keep reminding myself and i think it's helped a lot of people that i've shared it with is literally some days i'll just put my hand on my heart and i'll just repeat to myself i'm exactly where i need to be and that's so true it's just such a great reminder like if you literally put your hand on your heart you just go i am exactly where i need to be you stop getting lost in the future you stop worrying about the past and you realize that everything you need to learn everything you read right now to make a change it's all right now it's all right here and so that's one of my favorite things to repeat it's not a question but it's more of a mantra saying yeah right yeah because i think i find it so hard for people today who compare themselves to everyone online yeah about not being where they want to be or not having the the career or the relationship or the body or whatever the following or the attention a lot of people compare themselves to other people in their space yeah friends family and then don't feel enough and so when we say to ourselves i'm exactly where i need to be does that help us eliminate the feeling of not being enough yeah absolutely you're spot on because we're always feeling like we're we either feel like we're ahead we feel like oh i'm doing better than everyone i'm kind of like winning the game or more often we feel behind where we feel like oh they just got promoted oh they just you know they got proposed to whatever it is like we always feel like we have their first child or whenever your first child they bought their first house whatever it is and we're always feeling ahead or behind and so when you say to yourself i'm exactly where i need to be you realize you're not a head or behind and the problem is if you always think you're a head or behind then you're always comparing yourself to others whereas if you're where you need to be you now just need to get to the next place of where you want to be yeah and and also you only get ahead of yourself by first being present with yourself and i think it's really hard to say that when you're in a challenging place in your life i'm exactly where i need to be i'm broke my yeah my dog died my girlfriend broke up with me like yeah it's hard to accept that yeah and i've been there i know you've been there and it's really challenging to say my life is perfect right now when you don't feel that way yeah but i think when you can learn to accept timing of life and know that you know a mentor of mine early on um when i was broke and i was an intern working for free for six months for someone i was living on my sister's couch i remember saying i would do walks with him every day and i was like man i could really use some money like in my life i'm just sick of being broke and he said something i'll never forget he said money comes to you when you're ready for it and i was like i feel pretty ready right now like i feel like i could have some money yeah and i wasn't ready for it mentally emotionally my life wasn't set up i didn't have systems set up in place to really receive the money and be able to do good with it and be able to use it for good in my life and put it to good use and later when i started to make money i realized like oh i probably would have blown that money i would have spent it poorly i would have made the wrong investments whatever it may be yeah it's hard to hear when things aren't going well but i think trusting the timing of your life like if you would have built your empire seven years ago you probably wouldn't have been ready for maybe maybe you would have been but you wouldn't have been ready or social media wasn't the right timing for your message to be out there is that right yeah i i think that if i wouldn't have gone to monk school then i think you can become successful but still feel extremely dissatisfied or misuse the success yes and i don't think that that can be blamed on anyone because no one's ever been taught how to deal with failure or success there's no class on here's how you deal with failure well here's how you deal with success but the funny thing is those are the two most extreme things that we all experience and the things we're most afraid of are failure and success and success before we continue this video make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day so how do we deal with failure if you can give a mini master class right now what would you suggest to people who are afraid to fail how to deal with it yeah i think one of my first things in failure is don't take it more personally than it actually is and i'll give an example of that when i was applying to 40 companies that all rejected me before an interview yeah all i was getting was an automated response saying your application will not go any further i can't take that personally because they didn't meet me in person they didn't have a interaction with me they just saw my name they saw i'd been a monk for three years that resume is useless i mean what's your transferable skills like sitting in silence and stillness you're surprised surprise no one wants to hire a monk and so they rejected you but that's not personal because they didn't meet me in person but what if they had me right so that's the first thing the first step is don't take all fear failure i'll give an example me and you we reach out to countless guests to be on our podcast we're saying no all the time you're saying all the time but if i don't hear a no from the guest directly that's not a no like someone's team can say no someone's assistant can say no someone's pr team can say no but until they say no personally it's not a no okay but when they do say no then that's a no yeah so then let's how do you deal with that type of failure yes so if i deal with a failure where someone meets me in person and gets to know no jay you're horrible you suck like i don't want to deal with a monk ever in my life yeah i would never go on your show i'm never listening to you never yeah then how do you deal with that type so i've heard you say this i've said it a couple of times and i'm sure it's been repeated a bunch of times around how i genuinely believe failure has feedback and and so for me it's like failure has the ability to actually tell you what you need to improve now not to improve to get their attention improving to get the actions that you want to take yeah the results you want the results you want and don't make that result about the person who said no don't try use failure as a way to prove someone else wrong because what happens when we prove others wrong when you prove others wrong you end up trying to get validation and approval for them and now if they're not impressed when you're right you lose again so you end up losing twice and you spend all this time and energy years maybe to prove something wrong i've been there many times and then you're like i felt good for a moment yeah and then i feel empty again totally and and so that's the thing about failure in the second half is you have to see failure as an improvement if if i'm completely honest everyone who rejected me in my life up until now has made me more hungry taught me so much more about myself and made me up my game yeah and i think if failure doesn't make you up your game it's the same as losing in a sport right when you fail and you've lost games and you've won games you know on the big stages you didn't have the skills you didn't have the teamwork you guys weren't hungry enough you were never communicating enough there's something you were missing yeah so you go review the game film you check the stats you see what could have done better and you try to improve that for the next game yeah i think a lot of people can do that in life but we're so afraid to like go on the next game of life like i got rejected once and it hurts so bad yeah how do people learn to overcome that pain of rejection yeah you keep going yeah you know in sports luckily there's a season which is like you might have 30 basketball games after you lose the first two you don't say uh i'm just gonna give up the rest of the season yeah you keep playing yes but in life a lot of people stop playing yeah why yeah i think that's great mental training too i think sports is great mental training because you have to show up to the next game even if you lost and you don't feel bad exactly that you don't feel good sorry and and one of the things before i dive into that question one of the things that you reminded me of was that the last dance documentary so there's that season that michael jordan everyone is agreement in an agreement that he is one of the best players to be playing and they keep losing they didn't make the fight they didn't make the finals they lost and then they realized they need to get the team and they need to find i think they bring in dennis rodman and then start bringing in all these other players that strengthen whereas if they would have just said oh we got the best player in the world we just keep doing this i'm not sure they would have got there right but the coach phil jackson and the team they had to adapt and so you're saying why do we feel that pain in rejection and how do we deal with that i think we feel that pain because we look at a failure right we look at it as a complete definition of us right we're looking at as as there's that famous statement of like you know failure is an event not a person right i don't know who said it but it's one of those statements that that really clicks like failure is uh an event not a person whereas we start thinking we are the failure like we say i am a very exactly right like i those are the words i am a failure i got rejected and it's like no your application got rejected yeah your efforts your effort your specific effort at this moment in time got rejected your specific exam at this point got failed you didn't you are not a failure and so you have to disconnect and distance yourself from the event you know what's interesting is like no one who was successful at everything they did ever told a good story like the greatest stories are the ones who overcame failure and adversity it's not the ones who were like everything was easy for me everyone loved me everyone accepted my actions i didn't have to work hard and it just came to me effortlessly like people don't care about that no that's not a good story that's not an inspirational human being yeah it's a human that had to deal with adversity that we really admire and we look up to yeah even if they had some low moments it's a much better story of hearing about someone's failure than hearing how they succeeded totally and you've that's a beautiful lesson that one of the biggest mistakes we make is we don't study the stories of the greats so how many people's lives have you studied from start to finish yeah if you've studied someone's life from start to finish i genuinely believe this is like the core skill that's needed i would say that the people i admire i have studied their lives from start to finish i know why they made bad decisions what they consider to be good decisions like there's autobiographies and biographies out there there's podcasts like hours where people come and listen to people's stories if you've not studied someone's story then you can't follow that path because every time you hit a rejection so every time i get rejected i think of steve jobs getting kicked out of his own company crazy every time i fail i think about michael jordan losing a game every time i get tired of training i think about cristiano ronaldo putting in that extra rep those are the visual cues that we need but you only get those visual cues if you've done the research and the study and then you go oh if steve jobs was kicked out of his own company but then still had the audacity at one point to go and build pixar then i think i'm all right if i just didn't get this job yeah and he would and apple wouldn't be where it is today without him getting kicked out learning the lessons having humility like gaining some compassion all the things that people said he didn't have fully at that time he learned by having to be kicked out start something else bring a new perspective yeah what did you call it the um association yeah associating yeah like he was able to then go somewhere else and spot different trends and then he came back to apple and built it to where it is today will help build it to where it is today and he probably apple wouldn't be where it is yeah today without him being a rejection which is crazy to just think of that yeah exactly so if he would have kept saying i'm gonna keep doing it my way and this is the way it is it probably would have had some challenges yeah absolutely and and i think that's the the more you study the lives of inspirational people and that's what i'd say is everyone should pick their top three inspirational people and go and study their life before life their full life yeah and read the biography the autobiography listen to every podcast i mean like seriously get immersed in that person all the journey in the industry you're trying to make it in and when you do that you'll realize that your journey actually doesn't look that different from theirs yeah it actually probably looks similar so how do we go inside our minds and say okay i'm getting rejected over and over again i'm trying really hard it's not working how do we still deal with that emotional pain is it just the self-awareness that every great person had to go through this and this is just a timing thing like how do we eventually just ease that or should we not try to use that pain i don't think it's about easing it i think it's about engaging it you know it's and i i believe that the engaging does the easing in my opinion at least so what i mean by that is behind that pain is a understanding that i don't have this skill or is an understanding of i didn't try hard enough or is an understanding of oh maybe there's just another option because guess what sometimes you may have done the best pitch in the world and you just had an executive that didn't like your vibe keep going yeah keep going like you you know you've just got to realize that there's one there's a there's a you have to engage that pain in discovery and that eases it because when you discover like oh like for example let's take my podcast my podcast producer the team that was meant to produce my podcast pulled out two weeks before we launched my podcast and i thought i had this big deal lined up i was really excited i'd never launched a podcast before and i thought oh yeah this could be amazing and i was in india meditating for my annual trip that i take i come back and the first news i remember receiving is by the way this isn't happening anymore and i'd say that i was going to launch my podcast on valentine's day 2019 and i had my episodes recorded with my wife and i'd already gone out and made the content so just to tee up how bad that two-week notice was i'd already gone to monaco interviewed novak i'd already interviewed lily i'd interviewed russell brandon london i'd interviewed my wife and obviously those people are all close friends and people i know so they were very happy to be on the podcast even when uh it was new so i'd already done all that effort i'd already created all the content myself all this podcast company was going to do was put it out there and help me market it a bit and then they pull out two weeks before it comes out and i'm going to myself wow okay like i can either sit here and be really sad or i can scrap together and figure it out and so the only thing i realized was it actually turned out perfectly because now i own my podcast video and i'm completely aware of every part of the journey and it gave me more confidence in myself that i could scrap together when i had to yeah and i think that's what it is that we lack confidence we're waiting for someone else to tell us how we should feel about ourselves and i think if we go back to those three questions you said like when you're feeling a failure over and over and over again or you feel a sense of i'm not enough or whatever it may be go back to asking those three questions to yourself how can i be of service today or serve today what can i love about myself so even when everyone's saying no what is there to love about me to remind yourself and not be validated by other people's opinions yeah and who do i want to be yeah that i can love yes exactly who do i need to become who i need to become that i can love and just keep focusing on the process because the process is the prize yes and focus on that journey the stuff is really fleeting and temporary i bought an island lately you know that right like when i bought this island they didn't give me they didn't make me more confident it just was something that i've always wanted to be able to do but i i it's not stuff what needs to happen for me is that i'm most confident when i'm living in my intention which is to serve

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 151,246

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: dBFz0GgC9UQ

Length: 98min 2sec (5882 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2022