"This Was A KEPT SECRET By Monks" - Do This To CHANGE YOUR LIFE! | Jay Shetty

the first thing you learn at monk school is learning how to breathe because we're taught that the only thing that stays with you from the moment you're born the moment you die is your breath when you get stressed what changes your breath when you get angry what changes your breath when you're sad what changes your breath when you're happy what changes your breath every emotion is experienced with the change of the breath he said when you learn how to navigate and manage your breath you can actually navigate any situation in life [Music] welcome back everyone to the school of greatness podcast we have the living legend jay shetty in the house the school of greatness yes man good to have you here very excited you you came and spoke at my greatness mastermind over the weekend and people were blown away thank you through your wisdom we talked a lot about viral video and social media there which maybe we'll get into a little bit but i want to talk more about uh the things you've learned from pre uh monk hood to being a monk to now not being a monk sure and when i met you i didn't know you were a monk i just saw you as the guy who had 50 to 100 million views of video on facebook which i think a lot of people are familiar with you from facebook you make wisdom go viral you do these great parables you do these great stories lessons insights i don't think you really started talking about being a monk until recently yeah so i think people just were like who is this guy and how is he so insightful sure but then when i met you i was like oh it's it all makes sense now that you have all this wisdom and you told me that a lot of your videos just were just notes from your books that you were writing you know your journal when you were a monk yeah you would take all these notes down from the lessons you were learning absolutely and now you're just going back and looking at those notes and saying let me shoot a video about this and it's like it's 50 million views so yeah it's crazy um why did you decide that you wanted to be a monk in the first place and how old were you when you did that absolutely so the story starts with something i've been saying a lot called you can't be what you can't see so i didn't grow up wanting to be a monk like what did you grow up wanting to be yeah i grew up wanting to be a mix of an art director like for a big magazine or online company because i love design i loved graphics i loved video and art when i was growing up i loved philosophy and i loved economics those were like my three favorite subjects art design philosophy and economics and i always thought i'd be something boring like an investment banker because i often say when you when you grow up in a asian or indian family and if you have any asian or indian followers they'll agree i had three options i could either be a doctor a lawyer or a failure right those were like my three options and so that's what i was going to be i couldn't be any of those so i was going to be an investment banker or a strategy consultant because i was like i'm rubbish at medicine you know i'm not very good at law so i was kind of going down that route because you can't be what you can't see and growing up as a young asian person in london you don't see many people in the media you don't see many asians in sport you don't see many asians in anything apart from accountancy business medicine and law that's that's literally what you see and then i was 18 i'm at university i'm studying my undergraduate which is in behavioral science in london in london so i've always been fascinated by why people do what they do always fascinated by why we make decisions why we lie why people cheat why people pretend to be someone they're not like all those questions always fascinated me but just from an intellectual point of view rather than helping people unpackage it so i was studying that and then at my university we'd have some of the best entrepreneurs coming to speak every week in london in london in london at cass business school so there's people coming in every single week and then i found out that the week later after we've been watching entrepreneur after entrepreneur loved hearing from ceos their success stories i was a huge fan of rags to riches stories like not the riches because of wealth but just that whole thing of like people going from nothing to something like that fascinated me so i used to read autobiographies i thought i hated reading until i was 14 until someone handed me an autobiography i i think i remember reading the rocks autobiography back then too because i used to watch wrestling but anyway so i'm fascinated by people who go from nothing to something and then a monks invited to speak at my university and i actually get forced along i'm actually not that interested i'm like what's a monk going to teach me who cares like never seen a monk in my life don't really know what they do get forced by one of my mates to come along i basically have nothing better to do that night i turn up i'm hearing this monk speak and he captivated me like the most beautiful woman in the world right i was just completely enthralled and addicted to everything he said i was hanging off every word and there was a voice in my head that was just like who is this guy and then i find out that he'd given up jobs at google and microsoft to become a monk and i'm thinking wait a minute who does that you know everyone that i've ever met that's all they've been chasing and all the stories that i'd followed in life were people who went from nothing to something and here was a guy who had something but had traded it to have nothing but looked like the happiest person i'd ever met so it was like the most paradoxical moment of my life like the most ironic thing that could have happened anyway so i go and speak to him afterwards i love networking with speakers i'd always approach people after their speech if i was moved i went up to him and i just said you know what everything you said just resonated with me and there was one thing that he said that that stood above everything and he spoke about this principle about plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit all right plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit what he meant was selfless service giving without expecting using everything you have doing something for nothing just being able to give and for some reason that 18 year old me hearing about selflessness that word kind of just i don't know what it was it was just one of those moments that just it penetrated through through every desire i had and service and selflessness became like my biggest aspiration in like a moment and i started talking to him so i started interning with him in india as a monk every summer holidays so i finished my freshman this year when i was yeah yeah basically 18 i i guess yeah i guess that's what you call it when you just started out yeah i got it yeah so after the first year you had a summer break correct you go to india to be with him for a month two months yeah a month or two months however so i'd get a summer holiday i'd spend half of it working at a big corporate firm because i thought that's what i was going to do and i'd spend the rest of it and christmas holidays that we get in london i'd spend it in india just kind of shadowing him and i described it like that i was literally interning to be a monk where you live like a monk you practice monk principles you follow what they do on a daily basis and you get to experience what it's like and i'd work it like the big i'd work with some of these biggest companies in the world and then i'd go to living's monk like polar opposites we'd be out at night drinking networking after this right the stuff you do bars clubs etc and then like for the rest of the months i'm like meditating and spending time with these enlightened beings and and i can honestly say having tested and experimented both i fell in love with that lifestyle more so having everything on that side versus having nothing on that side i i fell in love with having nothing and so it was like a perfect a and b test you know it was like the perfect process which yeah yeah so i always say you can't be what you can't see i wouldn't have become a monk if i didn't see a monk that that's that's my journey to why it started why did i say how to become a monk because i got to meet a monk which exploded the horizons and possibilities of what i could be first of all i became a monk because i got fascinated by giving everything you have in the service of others at a very early age i just got fascinated by that principle and the third thing was i fell in love with the lifestyle of a monk more than i did of a modern person why did you fall in love with that i fell in love with it because i got so fixated on the fact that what if you could spend your whole life just helping people like what if that's all you did what if you had to learn grow create just to make a difference in people's lives yeah and you didn't need anything back and you didn't want anything back and the only example i'd seen of that at that age was the monk so that was the only kind of test i had right that's the only person i'd experience you hadn't met someone who started a non-profit or something like that who could like i had i had but i i had met people who've done ngos and not for profits but i always found that they were still looking for funding oh yeah sure and and i didn't necessarily fall in love with their character and i think that's a big part of it yeah when i was with the monks i felt completely in love with their character the way they behaved the way they spoke their purity their their whole demeanor was just so attractive and i was like that's what i want to be when i grow up you know so while everyone else wanted to be other stuff when i was 18 i wanted to be a monk wow so yeah but i still yeah anyway how many summers did you spend with him before you said okay three so throughout the whole of university i spent three years every break i spent with him and then after college then after college that was it i didn't even go so i graduated but i didn't turn up to my graduation ceremony so my mom's still upset that she doesn't have a picture of me holding the scroll wearing the hat and i i left for india straight away why didn't you complete it then i i finished as i graduated in the sense of i had my degree but why don't you go all the way see it all the way because i had to i remember it being delayed till december and we finished in may and i was just like i'm going i'm not waiting till december i'm not coming back for that it's meaningless yeah what does it even mean and and i left so i literally said i don't care i want nothing in my life yeah yeah yeah and then i went wow yeah so i left and i was 22 years old and and i just left i just wanted to be there and be with him and be with the other monks and i saw them doing all this incredible work it's not like they were just being monks in the way people think i always talk about how half the day was silence and a half today is service so the service side is building sustainable villages building food distribution programs teaching you know helping communities it wasn't just being it was doing as well so i loved that aspect of half the day to grow myself and then half the day to give yeah and i was just like when am i gonna have time to do this if i work a job right right what's a typical day like then what time did you wake up yeah and your wake up on like a concrete floor with like a little yoga mat type of thing literally yeah so it's like on the floor the floor was wood it was it was like this this this nice wood that you have it was decent wood so it was wood you have it thin yoga mac so anyone who does yoga knows those thin yoga mats not the posh ones and then your sleeping bag literally you have a sleeping bag yeah you get a sleeping bag pillow or no pillow uh most people didn't use their pillows but my sleeping i had a nice sleeping bag you know i was still i was still that mung from london like everyone could tell right it was like a real bag looks a bit too premium but i was like you know this is this is the least i can do of course so i still had the premium sleeping bag we'd wake up at about 4am every day every single day 4am so the first week must have been a little rough to like get into that well you know what the way i remember is that i was so pumped that i talked myself into it plus i've been doing it every summer so it wasn't new it wasn't like i just threw myself in i'd lived like that for three summers yeah so i was kind of aware of what it was like but i pumped myself so much i was gonna i'm gonna be there at 3 30. you know i'm gonna i'm gonna wake up earlier than everyone you know i was in that and i've always been like that i've always been someone who wants to push me i want to do a workout before everyone literally like i was like i'm going to meditate two hours before everyone's awake and so i'm pushing myself to limits that that i didn't know and i wanted to test it i'm going to be for the rest of my life so wow so i'm going to be for the rest of my life so i'm just going to do this properly you know so i ended up yeah waking up at 4 a.m from 4 to 5 15 you have collective meditation collective prayers collective chant yeah group chanting yeah group must have been very like healing almost at the same time just like chanting together yes the the symphony that you create with the melodies and we we underestimate what it feels like to be in a place where people have meditated for hundreds of thousands of years like places take on energies and that place was a place where people have meditated those two monasteries people have meditated for like 40 years in that space right for over four hours a day so you're like walking into like the most spiritual sacred atmosphere in the world you only tap into that more you know when we go to a place we know what it feels like when you've been on a stage that michael jackson performed at or when you've been in an arena where you know your favorite artist whatever it is the analogy that works for you it was like walking into the arena of the monks wow like that that legendary monks yeah the legend of meditate like everything you expect a spiritual atmosphere to contain you're getting that because it's it's amazing so yeah 4-5-15 is group meditation then 5 15 to 7 is private meditation so that's your personal practice so that's already three hours since you've been awake right seven o'clock till 7 30 is group meditation you're a group charting again and then 7 30 to 8 30 is a wisdom class on the vedas so the videos are 5 000 years old linguistically and philosophically the oldest books on the planet and so you're trained in the vedas for an hour 7 30 to 8 30. and then there's a 10 year old book yeah wow it's the oldest book like yeah oldest dated book i've heard of so yeah wow over 5000 years old holy cow yeah it's crazy it's absolutely crazy it was funny actually i i was sharing this and i share this all the time but then i'm gonna throw this in there but i was when i was at ty's house he said this to me he said that i was telling him about the bhagavad-gita which is five thousand years old and he said to me five thousand years just like you did i was just like yeah five thousand years he goes if it lasted five thousand years that must be a really good book and it's true if you think about it how many people using it yeah yeah how many things still matter and change lives today they did five thousand years ago will the beatles be around in five thousand years will elvis will me will you you know will any of this but the fact that a book has withstood five thousand years pretty impressive that's pretty impressive anyway so we do that from 7 30 to 8 30. and then 8 30 you get breakfast right you finally get breakfast and from 8 30 to 9 whenever you eat breakfast and then for the rest of the day you'd spend the morning studying the books again on a personal level you do basic things like cleaning you'd wash your clothes you'd you know all the domestic stuff that you have to do clean the space you live in and then usually by lunchtime everything changed i'd either be out teaching local communities or we'd be helping build these sustainable villages food distribution programs etc so the rest of the day was not as planned as the morning so it when we now talk about morning routines when i hear about that i'm just like yeah that's like a monk thing like as a monk you're trained to have an incredible morning routine and then whatever you do in your day will be incredible because you've started off correctly so it's it's interesting to see the rise of the morning routine right as habits and success because as a monk that's what you're trained in wow so yeah that's that's roughly the shadow and then it changes after 9 30 a.m and where in india was this so this is in mumbai and four hours south of mumbai okay wow so but when you go outside of mumbai i'm looking at these beautiful plant things you have here it's kind of like that you know it's just like woodlands like green yeah like no no cars no traffic no noise fresh air how would you guys commute then or travel to speak or teach or build homes so we would we would have cars that that we would either drive ourselves i never drove in india i never would drive in india it's the scariest experience in the world people get scared about new york india is just a different level yeah so i never drove but they would have drivers etc who would drive us around monks that drive it so the uh what's it called the place you're at ashram or monastery so monastery is an ashram ashram is just a sanskrit word for a monster so it had like some funding so you guys could rent cars or whatever yeah so so the funding comes from donors that really believe in the work you're doing and then that money is used effectively again people say oh how do monk drive how do monks use money well we'd never use it for ourselves we had two sets of clothes we didn't have any possessions but we were using the cars and what we had to create these communities to create sustainable villages to to create change in the world so again everything's being utilized for our higher purpose rather than the mentality of oh you can't use that so if we didn't use that we might be happy but how are you going to help the rest of the world right you know so that's how we were trained were you in contact with your family as well during this time or yeah i used to connect with my family because the tradition was taught of like that again that balance between detachment and attachment so it's said that detachment and attachment are two sides of the same coin attachment and aversion so some people just want to be monks or want to have isolation because they want to get away from reality which is no better than being fully attached so the bhagavad-gita says that attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin so actually the ideal is the central balance where you're able to talk to your parents you're able to give them love you're able to be grateful but then again you're you're still realizing that there's more impact you can have in the world than just making your parents happy so it's that perfect dynamic balance between the two so i'd keep i'd speak to my mom and dad every month probably catch up with them on the phone if i was in europe and traveling for what we were trying to do as monks and i'd come and see them etc say hello to them so i wasn't completely detached but it was always making sure that balance you know not not like oh i'm not that much life should the way we're trained is monk life should never be an escape from reality it shouldn't be that you can't do anything else in life and you don't want responsibilities that's why you become a monk right so it was very it was very much ingrained in us that you're not here because you can't do anything else you do you're here because you know this is higher and you can have more of an impact in your life in the world so but you're not supposed to be in a relationship or having sex as a monk no you're a celibate monk so why do you detach from that then yeah why do you escape from that so that's to be able to give yourself all the time focus and energy on personal growth and development so we all know this right anyone who's been and i've been in multiple relationships before i became a monk we all know this when you're in a relationship things slow down because now you're managing two minds you're now having to give energy to another person you have to give time to another person you lose time energy and moments to invest in your own growth so monks traditionally have lived celibate lives so that they can focus on their own growth so that they're not distracted they're not falling prey to any any lust or engaging in any flirtatious conversations that again brings down the consciousness and distracts the mind you're learning to train your mind like an athlete like so many athletes i mean maybe maybe you had this experience too but i remember reading david beckham's autobiography many years ago and he was talking about that how they were trained not to have sex before big games right no alcohol in the weeks leading up to big games i remember him talking about how when all his friends were out partying he'd have to get to bed on time yeah so it's like you see athletes go to very similar training as monks sure so it's not abnormal we see it in modern life where people who have to be peak performance they also use the same measures yeah very similar measures to monk like this and personal growth also come from experiencing life and not detaching from it only isolating yourself but also experiencing all the things that could happen in life and growing in that yeah absolutely and i think the whole thing there is that most of us just throw ourselves into the deep end and then try swim and figure it out right monk life actually begins at like five years old like the training of monk life is ultimately training in self-actualization and self-awareness it's meant to start when you're five the problem is we all went to normal schools that try to put stuff in us rather than take stuff out of us it's crazy you talk about this right right like you you know you were told at school that you weren't very good and you weren't going to english and now you have new york times best seller right yeah and it and it's like but no one noticed that potential inside you no one noticed that oh lewis was really creative right and you're not the only person there's so many people who feel like that so the modern schooling system didn't extrapolate your self-actualization your element and just try to put maths english science inside so the point is that you're trying to get to such a strong foundation that when you interact in the world you're going with a sense of strength fuel energy to make a difference rather than going into the world and then going oh my god where am i trying to figure it out and i find what happens today is that when you don't we all know this we i mean self-love has become such a big thing now and when people don't figure out yeah it's like a huge trend now but but my point is that if you don't start at a place where you have self-awareness self-actualization you have figured out what works for you what your strengths are how you want to be in an environment when you walk out there most of us just pretend to be someone else most of us get lost most of us get carried away yeah so my point is strengthen yourself grow yourself and then of course interact with the world so we had that we were going out to pitch to forbes ritualist members to fund our philanthropy work wow right we'd be in these pitch meetings dressed as monks and then be laying bricks the next moment so you get the perfect balance at one point you're in this fancy office and the next morning you're laying bricks you're like digging you know so so it's not that you're not getting both you are getting both just the relationship aspect of a of a female partner or a male partner if you're a female monk is is limited because the whole aim is to allow you to just focus on first finding yourself before you try and find the checklist you've been following your whole life right what did you notice about the outside world maybe a year or two years into the flow of your learning you know about yourself and about the wisdom and the philosophy of being a monk what did you start to notice the most most common things of when you were just talking to people or just walking down the street and just being aware of what was happening absolutely it's it's it's actually i've been quite in the gita a lot the bhagavad gita but i'll quote a modern day i guess somewhat modern-day philosopher because i think this encapsulated perfectly he said that this is cooley uh philosopher wright he said today i'm not what i think i am i'm not what you think i am i am what i think you think i am right and i always feel that blows my mind every time i say it i'm not what i think i am i'm not what you think i am i am what i think you think i am so we live in this perception of a perception of ourselves so we've all seen the movie inception imagine you get lost so far into someone's perception and that's your perception so if i think lewis thinks jay is good then i feel good but if i think lewis thinks jay's not good then i don't feel good and we live like that today if i think someone thinks i'm confident i feel confident but if someone thinks if i think someone thinks i'm not confident then i don't feel confident and that's what i noticed when i lived as a monk that people were so far removed from their own understanding of themselves that they were either lost living a life they didn't want to lost living up to someone else's expectations or lost becoming someone to impress someone else and so people were so their real identity is almost buried under six feet of multiple identities they've created and that's what i started to notice we have a social media identity we have a linkedin identity we have a twitter identity we have a facebook identity then we have an identity we are to our boss then we have an identity we are with our friday night friends then we have an identity we are to our sunday people and we just created all of these identities and if you ask people who are you we struggle to answer that question and so as a monk you're just taught to dig deeper beyond all those identities and kind of again bring out yourself rather than define yourself so that was what i noticed i just started to notice that people had a big lack of self-actualization they were very disconnected from what they wanted needed and understood about themselves and most people's identities were crafted by the reflection in this mirror of their mom dad friends boss partner whatever it makes right how do we start to tap into self realization better yeah how do we learn that about ourselves so i think it starts even at a physical level i'll give a basic example at a physical level anyone who's a physical fitness or a health coach will know that different bodies need different food different sleep different fluids we don't all need the same thing me and you with different body types can't do the same workout right right we can't i would die if i tried to lift what you lift it just wouldn't work and i would die trying to sleep on the floor right exactly no but exactly right and that's the point our bodies have different tolerances in different things that's self-awareness at the physical level already so now what i realize by living as a monk is i can't survive of a four-hour sleep at night like i realized that about my body when you were a monk uh kind of when i was leaving and when i kind of came back to my real bed and i was just like oh i like this this is yeah this is good yeah right and and i kind of came to that realization that i'm not able to function as effectively as i want to i could when i was a monk because we meditated so much that just got you to a higher vibration exactly so now i meditate two hours a day then i used to meditate four six hours a day plus the collective plus the environment all of that helps so now that i don't have that i can't but if i have that i can could have just slept with those four hours and been battery exactly so so the point i'm making is that's physical self-awareness we know our limits we know what we can do no we know what we can't do we know what challenge is on a mental level what's self-awareness knowing what type of people i like to be with knowing who helps me grow and who drains me that's mental self-awareness so self-awareness at every level and then we go into the spiritual consciousness level that's disconnecting from all these identities and understanding the identity that we are wired for generosity and we're wired to serve and only in service can we be happy and that's us on a consciousness level that's the identity of consciousness like water is wet the sun is heating in light consciousness is service like that's how it fits why are we wired for that we're wired for that because all of us as consciousness have been designed and we see it since like even kids like i was giving this example of this beautiful and you may have seen it it went viral on instagram it was this little girl probably two years old watching a cartoon and she takes a handkerchief and the cartoon character's crying and she goes up to the television and she tries to wipe it off right and it's it's incredible because this girl's two years old and she thinks this cartoon character animal is crying and she gets a real tissue and tries to wipe it on the tv obviously it doesn't work and there's another another one that i saw with this statue of this rabbit and there's like four rabbits and one rabbit's like falling off the end and this little boy is trying to push the rabbit up but it's a stone rabbit it's just a statue but he's trying to help it back up so we see and there was a great article in wired about this about how we're wired for generosity our brain is happier in service why are we that way i'm not fully sure but what i do know from my experience as a monk or what i can verify is that we've been created to connect and serve right we've been created to connect and search you don't know why my i can give you my opinion in the vedic opinion i i can't tell you why for everyone right the reason is the the the main deep or the main vedic reason is is that we've been created that way because that's our nature and that's what makes us most happy because this whole world is almost a school and education system to make us realize that one truth to make us realize that one truth and we see that when we're serving when we're doing that we feel genuine happiness but when we're trying to gain and greed and power and strength we even feel empty as it slips through our fingers so the why is because that allows us to connect to our deepest self the happiest self that we have and modern studies have shown that so michael norton at cambridge university he did a study where they gave people five ten twenty dollars to spend on themselves have you seen this yeah and then they spent five ten twenty dollars on others so people spent five ten twenty dollars on makeup starbucks and normal right right that was the that was the three comments three make up starbucks and then something else i can't remember and then people who spent on other people they also bought others the same stuff starbucks was still in there and they're buying all this stuff what they found is that when people self-assess their happiness before and after without knowing about this a b test people who spent the money on themselves didn't feel any happier or any less happier but the people that spent on others felt 10 to 20 percent happier and then he went and tried this out this was a college in in the united states that then when it did in africa they did it all over the world and the stats and the patterns showed the same wow that we're wired for generosity we're wired to serve to make us realize that that's our real nature that's our greatest self-awareness wow right so that's that's the vedic opinion and that's why i was that's why you had to probe me to go to why it is i know why it is but but but i yeah i want to give people an answer that i feel they can connect with so what was one of the greatest lessons you learned in those three years then do you want to share the one i shared before or share another one i've got an i'll share another one yeah okay i'll show another one this is this is probably my one of my favorite things and it's because this was what i learned on my first day of monk school so if you think about what you learned on the first day of school when you were three or four if you remember what it was lbcd the numbers right one two one to ten abc right the 26 letters of the alphabet so i remember my first day of monk school i've just shaved my head i'm now wearing robes i still look like i'm from london like i can't get away with it i'm walking around and i notice this monk who's teaching this monk's 10 years old and he's teaching a group of five-year-old monks right and i see him teaching he looks like an adult like wow you know his ability to like teach these five-year-olds and conduct himself and he's got this great aura about him and so i'm kind of eavesdropping on his class i can't obviously go and sit with a bunch of five-year-olds even though i really want to because i'm like i feel like a five-year-old next to that 10 year old and i i went up to him and i said what are you doing and he said oh well we just taught their first class ever and i said oh cool and he said well what did you learn in your first class at school and i said oh well i learned the alphabet numbers and i said well what did they learn he said do you want to know what they learned on their first day of school i said yeah of course he said the first thing that we teach them the first thing you learn at monk school is learning how to breathe i said why he said because we're taught that the only thing that stays with you from the moment you're born to the moment you die is your breath all your friends family the country you live in all of that's going to change the only thing that doesn't change that stays with you from the moment you're born to the moment you die is your breath and he said notice when you get stressed what changes your breath when you get angry what changes your breath when you're sad what changes your breath when you're happy what changes your breath every emotion is experienced with the change of the breath so he said when you learn how to navigate and manage your breath you can actually navigate any situation in life and i was just blown away i was just like wow and then i remember researching it and noticing how athletes were taught how to breathe musicians singers especially those who play wind instruments who have to reach really high notes they're all trained how to breathe because they have to use their breath in challenging stressful pressure-filled situations but i was like so are all of us you've got to go on stage in front of 10 000 people you've got to go to a concert you just lost a deal or a contract our breath changes in all those scenarios yet we don't know how to use our breath to change our life and so for me that was a huge learning point where i just thought wow that's what you're taught the priority is on the root of things not the leaf or the symptoms and that's the biggest thing about living as a monk you're not dealing with your challenges at symptomatic level you're dealing with it at root level right people say are you stressed out just take a stress pill if you're stressed out just go to get a massage if you're stressed out just just relax watch netflix and chill but all that's doing is pacifying you escape for that hour two hours maybe a week but going to the root of it and learning how to change your breath means you can manage any situation in life and and that principle that's an example of the principle which is so much deeper that always go to the root it will take longer but it will last longer right right right if you go to the root it takes longer but it lasts longer but if you go for the symptom you get it quick and it never lasts and it never lasts and we don't know that yeah so that was the deepest principle i learned as a monk you always go to the root cut down the root of that weed in your heart get down the root of that weed in your mind don't just let it grow and kind of water a little bit and snip snip cut it a bit like let just really go to the root and just knock it out there you know just get rid of it get a big axe and cut it down wow are there any weeds in your life right now loads uh in your heart or in your mind always my my daily practice is to refine my intention that the biggest weeds that we all get is on our intention so when i say intention i mean my current intention is to use everything i've been given everything that i have in the service of others so i want to use the following that i have to help people i want to use the money that i have to help people i want to use the network that i have to help people but every day that intention which is a beautiful little plant that's growing gets weeds around it no do it for the money hear that voice right do it for the face just do it for the fame do it for the followers do it for this all these weeds are like going around my real intention every day every day that's a weed a weed is the intention that you don't want and the problem is sometimes you've let it grow so much the weed looks like the plant right the weed looks like your intention and you start believing it's the same thing so for me my daily practice is going back in reflecting on what is my voice right now in my head what am i saying to myself and i'm hearing make that deal it makes a lot of money do this do that do this more followers fame all that stuff and i'm cutting it down i'm cutting that weed every day and you've got to do it every day because the more you're surrounded by that energy right the more it's going to keep creeping in like a creeper weed right like i'm just using the plant analogy because i don't garden the tour right like i have no idea but what's the intention you set every morning for yourself then if it's going back to the the core of what you really want to create what is that thing you want to create the most service yes service to to help people find their purpose whatever that may be and help them help other people find their purpose i think mark zuckerberg said it brilliantly at harvard he was saying that finding your purpose isn't enough you have to help other people find theirs and i know you're passionate about this whatever that definition is but it has to lead everyone so if i'm whether i meet a celebrity an entrepreneur or whether i meet someone who's starting out i'm always asking them the question how can you use what you have to make a difference in the life of other people yeah because if you start there everything else will work out but if you're starting from the point of what am i going to get then you're always going to feel disconnected and i see that i see people who live like that and feel pain in their lives every day i see that it's not like some conceptual philosophy we see it i see people who are only in it for themselves and they feel disconnected dissatisfied every single day and then you see the other extreme where people are just trying to give too much more than they even have themselves and they also feel disconnected and again nothing at all they have nothing at all right so we know again attachment and aversion two sides of the same coin so we want to be in that dynamic balance of growth but always to give yeah so i always think how can i go three steps deeper so that i can move three steps forward so i can give three times as much right it's all that's always my mentality how do i go deeper to go more forward to give more yeah and if i can get those three in action for that reason see it's all about the reasoning you can do anything you like but it's why are you doing right it so you were in there for a few years and three years you told yourself you were gonna do this for the rest of your life i was high i really wanted to genuinely generally from the bottom i wanted to and then all of a sudden one of your mentors was a teacher there this ashram right yes you said it's time for you to go yes so what was that conversation like when you said you're no longer welcome yeah and how did you start to plan for your exit yeah definitely so i've been there for three years i've literally traded everything been celibate for the first time in my life for that long it's you know for that long ever like it's huge yeah and then he sits down with me and he says i think you'll be able to share what you've learned if you leave you'll be able to share this with everyone if you leave and i felt like it was this nice way of saying you're not ready to be a monk like get out of here that's how it felt it felt like i'd failed and it felt like he was like breaking up with me like i equate it to a divorce it was almost like him saying to me it's not you it's me you know it's not working out like it kind of felt like that it's not the same month that you who came to speak no no it was his teacher oh wow so his teacher so like yeah even more so right like and and it kind of felt it wasn't disingenuous on his part it was just it was a reality check it was a reality check that this wasn't going to last forever and it was it was one of the most toughest humiliating ego bashing crushing things that happened because here i was thinking i'm gonna be a monk and i'm gonna do this and i've got all these plans and then all of a sudden three years on all your plans have failed i've got no money i've rejected all my corporate job offers and i moved back in my parents five years ago with 25 000 worth of debt from studying which is a lot less than what you have in the us because uk education is cheaper but still 25k debt no work experience for three years and and also just it's not even just no work experience you've literally been in another world right you've been in another world it's not just like oh i've been on the same planet you've been disconnected i forgot who won the world cup right right i have not read a newspaper i've kind of kept up to date but not much not much you know so i moved back to my parents and i'm thinking to myself what am i gonna do like now i'm gonna have to think about paying bills and i'm gonna have to think about my my parents aren't well off so i didn't have anywhere to just i had their home to hang out in but it wasn't like oh yeah i'll just live off my parents for a bit i'll figure it out i was just like i literally have nothing like if i don't figure this out i'll be sleeping in my bedroom that i grew up in for the rest of my life and that's it like that's life sure so so it was tough it was it was the closest i've ever been to like a very low point because your biggest dreams have just crushed and i know no one can really understand my dream of becoming a monk but you can equate it to i don't know playing in sports like i know for you it's like that but whatever it is music it was it was like your biggest dream on the planet just comes crumbling down and and i felt it it hurt it really hurt and it hurt the ego because all my friends or family who are just about convinced that i was becoming a monk when i was coming back they were all like well i thought you were going to be a monk what are you doing like do you fail at that you know it was kind of like you failed to be kidding me okay exactly you can't even think about nothing you can't even focus on nothing so i was getting a lot of backlash and i was feeling like the monks i was like i you know you start judging yourself and you put that mirror on to others i was like oh the monks are gonna judge me my friends are gonna judge me like i'm gonna feel so and i felt alone i really felt alone because i'd let go of a lot to go there i hadn't talked to my friends for ages and so anyway i moved back and i literally from the day after i left i just started reading and learning more about what was happening in the world started leading reading about personal development and started reading about the vedas again like my practice so i never left my practice i brought it with me and i had that moment where i had to decide i was like wait a minute i've been taught how to deal with anxiety uh pain pressure and everything is a monk and for the first time in my life i had to put it into like practice but in like acceleration mode like i had to put everything i'd learned into practice and everything i'd learned was tested in that moment and that was hard because i was just like wow i really need to now apply everything i've been talking about teaching all this kind of stuff and i have been tested but now this is a real test right real world yeah real world it took me like nine months to 12 months to feel like i could go into a normal space again maintain my energy and still be able to interact without feeling drained or without feeling like i'm in a lower space or without feeling like what's the point of this you know all that kind of stuff because that's your mentality what's the point of this all you know so meaningless yeah but then having to realize actually it's not meaningless because i was trained to realize that everything gets meaning when i give it meaning so if i see it as meaningless it is but if i use it as a service it can be the most powerful thing in the world it took me like 9 to 12 months to be able to adapt that mindset so that i could kind of live with normality again to something right yeah so when did you realize you wanted to start creating videos that was much later so i ended up doing two things when i left one thing was all my friends who work now at big companies they were stressed out and hating their lives and so they started to invite me to speak at their companies like google and starbucks and they were what you learned from being a monk yeah that's it they were all working on these big brands and they're like jay come teach us what you've learned like we're stressed out maybe you learn how to meditate and i was like oh yeah and this is like this is five years ago when four to five years ago when mindfulness and all this stuff was just on the rise it was it wasn't huge yet like now everyone talks about it so i kind of had come back just to that moment when yeah good timing but without any strategy whatsoever and i actually remember this is i know you've got andy pritikin on your wall i remember finding about finding out about andy pettigon when i was still a monk and and i always talk about this i always was there for 10 years or something 12. he was a monk for 10 years and i think when he left in startup headspace i remember learning about headspace when i was a monk i remember hearing about it and it was very early days then like monk made it yeah that's possible yeah and now i always look back and i was my big i wish i could have invested then that's like my thing like i was like i had no money to invest but anyway it's brilliant app but the point being that i kind of came back at that moment in our in our world where mindfulness well-being all these things were coming into the corporate workplace and so all my friends were inviting me so i started speaking at all these venues and i'd been speaking while i was a monk i've been speaking since i was 16 so that was a very natural part teaching was very natural and i loved it and people were getting so much out of it i was like wow like my monk experience is really there to help so many people and because i'm still living it i can still give it and all of a sudden all of this environment had a meaning and purpose again and i started to see what my teacher had said that you're there to share this with people but then i saw this barrier that i was hitting that most of the companies that wanted it were corporates and i saw this rise in technology and i hadn't even joined social media yet so i avoided facebook when i was when i was in university because i thought i was going to be a monk so i tried to avoid it and i never used it when i was a monk so i never used facebook youtube twitter anything until 2014 when i just had a normal friend page where i didn't do anything on it so i joined social media in 2014 10 years after facebook's launched so i noticed this rising technology and i also start thinking i need to understand companies better so i start reapplying to loads of companies to get my job back to see if i can learn about technology because i'm like i need to get technology i don't get it enough so i'm applying to all these companies i get rejected by the same 30 40 companies that would have let me walk in three years ago and finally one company gives me a job it's called accenture and so i get this break at accenture and i join it when i'm like 26 27 and i'm joining with a bunch of new grads who are the oldest guy there and and i'm joining and i'm like i'm just here to learn like i keep reminding myself the intention here is just learn consume and you're not going to be here for a long time so i start learning about social media technology so happens they were growing digital and social media at the same time and i just got stuck in self-learning spent every hour trying to figure it out had training from their experts and i ended up becoming the top social media influencer in accenture inside 400 000 people just through just experimenting learning and figuring it out because i had a feeling and it wasn't because i was preparing i just had a feeling that social media would be useful right that was it so anyway then i've been at accenture for 2013 october to 2015 october and i'm recognizing that now i'm not playing to my own passion everything that i'm teaching about living your passion your purpose your living what really matters to you i'm not doing that myself because i'm still talking about digital and technology when actually what i want to talk about is life and the mind and wisdom so i quit my job comfy corporate job doing really well for myself and i'm trying to get into media and so i'm writing to every big media company with before my videos and saying please give me a job like i'll come in at like a video journalist salary i was looking at salaries that like a quarter of what i made i was like i don't care about the money i want to make videos and i want to spread a message i'm getting rejection email after rejection email saying jay you never studied media jay you have no background so i'm getting rejected by all the biggest companies business insider huffpost the economist wired you name it i've got all the emails and then i try and network with the editors of these magazines so i find out where they are i go to the events i try and talk to them and they're like to me hey man you're like 28 years old why do you want to do this you make more money right now hang in the corporate world do it as a hobby i remember running after one of our biggest news anchors in england called jon snow and he rides a biker in london but he's like he's huge he's on channel 4 one of the biggest broadcasters for us and so i run after him when he's on his bike and i'm like john please please stop and he stops he's really kind i said john can you please give me a job i'll just i don't even want to get paid i'll just watch you and i because he creates these powerful documentaries he's interviewed the best of the best like mandela and all this stuff life-changing conversations and he goes to me he gives me a card and he goes jay go get a masters in media and then come back and i'm thinking i'll spend two three more years yeah exactly i'm gonna go back like anyway so i came to a point where i literally had no other option than to start a youtube channel and and my honest limiting belief at the time was that doesn't work for anyone and that's what i said to myself i was like it's not going to work for anyone but i literally had exhausted i think it's thomas edison who says when you feel you've exhausted every option remember you haven't and i'd come to that point where i felt i'd exhausted every option apart from starting a youtube channel so i launched the channel jan 3rd 2016 two years ago and it's doing pretty well and so i started to make videos because i felt that was the only way we could scale this message beyond corporates beyond companies to people in the world who can't pay for that coaching who aren't part of this industry you know when you grow up in that circumstance you think everyone has that but when you look around the world most people do not work at a huge fortune 500 company yeah and i wanted to go to them and beyond and i always always had this scale mind in my head i've always been a big thinker and wanted scale and when it comes to helping people there's nothing more important than scale to me like being able to impact everyone in the world right you can't if you really want to help you can't say i'm happy helping 10 people no you know you want to help more people that's why video is the most powerful platform to spread a message incredible speaking in front of a hundred thousand people at an event isn't as powerful it's not big but it's limited still exactly it's a lot of people yeah but if you want to take it to as many as you can i think video is the greatest option at low cost to them and yourself like at completely like at no expense to anyone yeah you can change you can have an impact on someone's life and i didn't know that then but i knew that video was the form so i just tried and that's when i started making videos because i felt anyone in the world with a phone like more people have a phone than a toothbrush right so i was like anyone who has a phone can watch this and it can impact them and get their journey going whatever that is and so that's why i started making videos wow when did you realize it started to take off so it was after a month i was doing okay i was getting like 10 20 30 50k views on youtube which was pretty decent and it was just all organic me pushing it out sharing my videos again tweeting it out to lots of editors and publishers saying please feature my video and then coming back even on twitter and saying i'm not sure about this message don't quite connect with it we don't think it quite works i got a lot of negative feedback as well but the audience liked it i was getting good feedback on youtube but from official people i was getting quite not negative but not not great feedback but i kept going i i've always had this mantra that i always believe all you need is one person to say yes and i still live like that when i have an idea i'm just like i'm gonna knock on every door and all i need is for one door to stay open it doesn't matter how many that is and so i started doing that and somehow someone showed it to ariana huffington she was at the world economic forum and someone showed it to her there and then i met with one of her team members who's now a really good friend of mine he was like he was the editor-in-chief of the half post at that time and he loved my videos he liked me and then i pestered him for a month after i'd met him to actually get my videos on half post then ariana called me she said i love your videos we want to feature them just make a series for us and we'll post them up so i made a series of four videos so this was about three months after i started on youtube so it's march 2016 march april 2016. they launched my first video it gets a million in a week views on facebook on the huff post which was great for them they're like let's try the second one they learned the second one a week after and that video is now on 40 million views and has another 120 million across facebook on other channels but that video did 40 million it did it it did 1 million in 24 hours and then like 12 million by the end of the week and then 24 million in two weeks and 40 million overall and then the third video did another 15 million and the fourth video did another 20 million and so that was the most views huffpost has ever had on any of their series in their history and then ariana was just like hey do you want to come over and be a part of us so that's when it really took off when when ariana spotted it and her team spotted it danny shea one of my favorite people in the world who who really had faith in me yeah and fought my battle uh when when i was just this guy making videos on youtube which i still still am but he really saw that add potential and ariana so them two were like the best and danny's uh danny's ariana's one of her favorite people they made it happen he invited me to new york to host a show on huffpost live which was their partnership with facebook live and i had a show called follow the reader that i created and produced where i interviewed self-development experts so i would have loved to have you on that show had i still been there but we interviewed deepak chopra tim ferriss gabby uh dr shafali russell simmons etcetera and shafar is great yeah she finally is awesome yeah she's really cool so i got to meet all these incredible people and more on that show and that's when it so that was september 2016. and that's when it really started that's when i came to new york what are people not understanding about video okay what are they not understanding about how powerful it is for their business their brand and ultimately their message to impact people you mean people are already doing it or people who don't get why video is important which side both but you know what are they not what are they not getting people that are doing it maybe it's not working well for them that aren't doing it yeah let's start with the people that aren't doing it and then move towards so the people that aren't doing it it's always that same question what's the roi on social media right what's the roi now the funny thing is your business work and service my business work and service literally lives off of social media so there's obviously an roi but the problem is we live in a world where we want everything to be measurable and there's a beautiful einstein quote that says not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that you can count counts right and we live in this world where everything needs to be measured like oh that video has a million views how many sales did you get through that but it's like life doesn't work like that there's a lot of adverts and billboards on the street that the biggest brands pay for that don't convert into direct sales do you think that coca-cola looks at the billboard out there and goes how many people saw that advert today and how many people bought a coca-cola because of that advert they don't have that number it doesn't exist and they're one of the biggest brands in the world but they still do it so social media video is just a new billboard and the biggest brands know that the more you see it like i mean this is funny i saw this today i saw a big billboard outside of my hotel that has all the jenners and the kardashians wearing their kelvins have you seen it right i saw it straight away this morning then i saw it on instagram and then i swear everywhere so already i've seen it in three places now i don't need women's calvin underwear but the point is that i've seen it in a million places so anyone who's not using video hasn't understood that more people are going to see video than anything else and not just that video is so much better than a billboard you can say so much more right so for me it's just a lack of seeing opportunity there's a there's a great i think this is a old tale it's not true but but it's told that when nike first went to india they went there and it's not nike it's any any sneaker brand it's it's a nice story and when they first went to india they saw everyone was barefoot so the first reporter came back and said oh there's no market there because no one wears trainers and then the second reporter went then he said oh no one wears shoes and then he came back and says we've got a huge market out there right and it's the way you see it that someone saw no one wearing shoes there's no market but another person saw everyone not wearing shoes as a market right and that's what video is that you can sit here and debate the roi and video for as long as you want but the truth is every major brand has invested in a front window that may not translate to direct sales or work or whatever it is right but it does do you think every brand should be using video every brand should be using videos what's the best way they should be using video yeah it should be like just buy my product or should it be more telling a story and inspiring people yeah so i i don't like to advise and work with brands i believe are selling things that i don't believe are legitimate so this advice that i'm giving is me saying the brands that i think are having a positive difference in the world or have a product that's good that's good it helps people yeah that helps people yeah my advice is that the story is one thing but you really have to go into the heart of the emotion what are people experiencing when they use your product what experience are they having how is it transforming their life how is it making a difference and building an experience and a story around that emotion rather than hey if you doing this you're going to be really happy and you know but it's like well where's your proof right how is this changing lives i think people look at it how is it changing your current day-to-day life but they're not looking at how it changes lives in general how can a very simple product actually make a huge difference in people's daily life so every company is trying to sell vr so so i recently made a video for a brand about vr but i took a completely different spin on it and they'd asked me to make a video about vr and i said well i like vr but that's boring i don't want to make a video about vr so my spin on it is what if vr was used to increase empathy in humanity so what if a young child could put on vr goggles and live through the eyes of another young child who doesn't have what they have could that increase gratitude could that increase empathy that's looking at how vr can change lives that's not looking at oh vr's gonna let us play more games and be in 3d environments like who cares and that's what really touches our hearts right it's like how can this product service or tool change lives so brands are not focused on that brands are focused too much on the transactional purpose as opposed to the transformational purpose of a product service or tool so i'm requesting brands switch away from transactional thinking to transformational thinking how can that technology service or tool transform people's lives not just get you another transaction yeah and people need to move away from that direct selling that direct kind of kind of cheesy salesy stuff that that doesn't work on any of us and neither does it change lives does that answer your question of course yeah so it's really learning how to master telling a better storytelling yeah it's all storytelling and creating experiences how can you create an experience that really touches on human emotion so i was talking to you the other day that the main emotions are adventure emotion positive or negative like controversy debate you've got comedy you've got inspire or motivate and you've got surprise those are the five key emotions that all of us are triggered by so brands need to figure out which of those fit their brand and are aligned with their ethos and it has to be content-led too many people are making bad content content and expecting good marketing to sell it and that's what i see everyone interested in every brand influencer expert author comes to me and says jay i want to sell this what tools do i need what techniques do i need what marketing do i need and i'm like no but the content doesn't work so you can put a thousand hundred thousand a million dollars behind a bad advert or a bad piece of content and it won't get anywhere or you can have an amazing piece of content and you can just touch a few distribution channels and it will have millions of views yeah and so too many people are not content focused they're marketing focused and that's where people are that gap is ruining brands right tell better stories give more value yeah tell better stories give more value craft content that makes people understand what you're creating how you're making a difference in someone's life and why you're doing it what's the thing that makes someone want to share it and leave a comment what is that main thing that someone watches keeps them watching the whole time and then says i have to share this so first thing is people need to see themselves in the situation they need to be able to see themselves in the story you're creating if they can't identify with the character they'll switch off why is it that marvel and dc have so many different characters because we can all connect with one of their origin stories whichever one it is now i know a lot of people want to be wolverine but the point is there's multiple right everyone has a favorite x-men everyone has a favorite uh what do you call a justice league character because we all identify with a different origin story so the more deeply you understand your origin story of your customer or client or audience the more deeply you can create a story around it so people have to be able to see themselves in it that's the first thing to keep them watching to even get them to watch in the first place the way you keep them watching is to create a scenario where there will be a surprise or a reveal at the end who doesn't want to know how a magic trick is done right who doesn't want to know how something finishes there's a beautiful movie called the prestige by christopher nolan i don't know if you've seen it it's my favorite movie of all time uh hugh jackman christian bale directed and produced by christopher nolan and he talks about how every magic trick has three uh elements yeah and the third element is called the prestige which is the reveal yes where you're surprised where you see what you didn't think was gonna happen video has to have that video has to have a message a link a surprise at the end that delights people that has taken them on a surprising journey or a different turn and then finally what a video needs for someone to share it after that is you need to help them experience that emotion at the deepest level where they feel compelled to want to tag their friend now you can do this through language you can do it through crafting so title of a video these are the these are the more logistical aspects but you again you can have rubbish content put a good title it won't work but titling the caption all of this stuff is going to impact the audience right so things that help people watch and share immediately so i have a video called before you break up watch this right we've released it just before summer because a lot of people break up just before summer i wanted to try and see if people didn't have to break up before summer because it hurts a lot of people so i made a video called before you break up watch this but what's this makes you want to watch it now it makes it instant it makes it current it makes it relevant and the before you break up is pulling in on an emotion that most people don't want to go through how many people want to break up right most people don't want to break up right so we're tapping into an emotion and then i'm presenting a video that isn't lying isn't manipulating i'm sharing how so many of us are in love but not together and so many of us are together but not in love and helping realize helping people reflect and realize where are they at on that scale so i'm also offering a solution through the video and and that video is of course completely free it's completely there but people are sharing it because they realize the value in the message i think too many people are not message led they're like cool effects led or cool text led yeah but it has to be message like what are you really sharing and how are you taxing your brain to craft a message without just saying it i could just say to you lewis i think you need to use more video right or i could do what we've just talked about we'll just share with you why you should use more videos yeah and we all know that we're more compelled when someone talks about the why as simon sinek says why do you use video right yeah what's the message that you're crafting right wow yeah if you were starting over again you didn't you just came out of the monk world would you go right to video again no you know what my experience at accenture was hugely helpful it also gave me time to kind of transfer and transition i think if i went straight to video i'm not sure because first of all at accenture i learned social media second of all at accenture i understood corporate culture properly again which was very useful thirdly i made a bunch of great friends that i'm in contact now that i love yeah and i have a great relationship with the company and they're one of my biggest clients that's good so it's like there's nothing that could have been done differently but did i know that then no so you can't connect the dots moving forwards you only can when you look back right steve jobs and i feel like that with accenture that i wouldn't change it because the amount i gained there in those uh in the two to three years that i was there two years that i was there is is priceless you know on so many levels wow yeah what's something that most people don't know about you that you're really proud of oh what do i what people don't know i mean i'm really proud of wow i don't think a lot of people know that i meditate two hours a day which i'm not proud of in the oh look how good i am since but i'm proud that i've been able to maintain that since living it's tough yeah it's really tough i went to india a year a little over a year yeah yeah i want to hear from two weeks and practice all day for two weeks essentially until we'd stop at like i don't know nine o'clock at night or whatever but and then sometimes we do like 2 a.m meditations to kind of be in this space of like am i asleep am i awake to see what was possible for the mind then yeah so it was two weeks and for about six to eight months i was very consistent afterwards yes and since then amazing i sometimes am sometimes not sometimes but you felt you felt compelled to carry it on it unbelievable yeah like i wanted it and when i was doing it consistently it was profound right no i was still not perfect and had no flaws but it was so much more powerful for me and i haven't been as consistent so it's amazing that you have been i've been if you do it for three years every single day for four to eight hours a day you should be able to keep it for hopefully like 10 years i did it for two weeks it's amazing and kept it for like seven months or something so yeah um that's great but it's definitely i feel much clearer when i'm meditating even for 15 minutes yeah i don't know if i could do two hours every day but 15 minutes a day yeah is powerful absolutely just to reconnect to the intention right and to get rid of the weeds exactly so yeah so that's most people don't know that i think people think that i like you did as well when we met that people think i make videos and i teach but for me my personal practice is such a big part of grounding and who i am that i don't feel proud like oh look how good i can do two hours that's when i go live with the monks and i'm like i'm only at two hours you know you're like it's not a big achievement and it's also about the depth of the two hours yeah anyone can meditate for two hours but it's like what's the depth it's like i go to the gym for two hours and do nothing right and listen to music all day like but those people are going to the gym and really going deep so those the the mind is uh meditation is just a gym for the mind that's all it is it's a gym for the mind and your wife supports the two hours in the morning and the lifestyle yeah so my wife i actually met her while teaching her meditation and philosophy so when i left being among she used to come to my classes i met her before that i'd actually met her before i became a monk but we didn't we weren't friends we didn't really know each other i knew of her and i'd seen her around but then after i left she used to come to my classes and i used to teach meditation and philosophy and and i have to be honest and say she's a better meditator than me now yeah she's way better than possible because she's so genuinely pure like she's a sincere soul who's more more monk than i'll ever be really you know yeah she just has it naturally inherently within her so she's now wakes up earlier than i do yeah she wakes up earlier than i do she meditates better than i do she reminds me to meditate she's the one who's like always questioning my intention and purity level not in a negative way in a good way where i feel accountable to someone who's who's really grounding me and make me value what i have and what i've learned and and i think and it's not just because she's newer to it because now she's been meditating for around four or five years so she's been doing it for a long amount of time for two hours a day as well so the great thing is i wake up and i don't feel good at all because she's just finished two hours and i'm like oh yeah i gotta start wow so yeah she supports it because she's better than me at it and i i think that's i i take and this is gonna be my my ego moment i'm gonna have it where where you feel like i'm a good teacher right if the student the is better than the teacher then then i must be pretty good so i know she's yeah she's a better meditator is there anything you do during during your day that you're not proud of yeah loads i i'm besides a couple of moments or of oh am i chasing this for the money for like a moment or something no i i you know i have my moments where i'll snap at my wife or um i'll be you know i won't communicate with her in the most compassionate beautiful way that i want to and i'm busy and i'm carrying all this stuff and that that that release happens and and i never feel proud of that i always end up feeling bad about it because i'm like here's this beautiful amazing person who is supporting me in every way possible and here i am being ungrateful not following my own advice not communicating with empathy and love and falling prey to the stress that doesn't even matter that much anymore so yeah that's something that i really really don't i'm not happy about when i do that if i snap at her or i i don't give her the the right energy or i'm not connecting with her with the right language and the right tone and the right mood because i'm kind of trying to focus or and i'm quite an extremist i like to get lost in creative worlds so when i need that i need like complete silence i need like nothing yeah yeah that's exactly what it is it's like i'm trying to write the script for another viral you know for another video and she's asking me what i want for dinner or something which is like her trying to serve me and i'm just like no just i need you know and i hate that about myself like i don't like it when i'm like that way because it's it's ungrateful so yeah that definitely is something i need to change and i'm working on it is there anything that you're ashamed of that you've done in your life oh loads of stuff um and i and i feel it back karma's real right like i used to be a really stupid kid so when between 14 and 18 i experimented with all the worst stuff and therefore i'm not a i was never a saint i was never meant to be a monk i just got lucky i met the right people i used to do stupid stuff we used to we used to mess around with drugs we used to steal we used to hot wire cars we used to all the all the stuff that you would never be proud of and we did it from 14 to 18. and now i have the worst car karma in the world right right and that's not just for the play on words like i literally have the worst car karma i i always get parking tickets always something goes wrong with i don't have a car in new york now but every time i'm in london i rent a car something will go wrong with it and i realize i'm just getting back all the pain i caused to people from whatever i did to their car when i was 14 to 18. whether we stole it whether we hot wired it whether we scratched the car whatever it was all the stupid stuff that i did i'm just so ashamed of because i was just but i was just i was that kid he was just looking for a i was looking for a thrill in life and i was looking for something in life that had more meaning than just being someone who did well at school or you know that just wasn't enough like that can't be life but unfortunately i went down the wrong you know i was suspended from school three times for for everything from violence to stealing to you know all this kind of stuff like so i'm super ashamed of that and it's it's the best grounding thing because i look back and i go no matter what anyone says about me today or how i think i've grown today i've got all these anchors that humble me sure and remind me of who i was and could have ended up as if i didn't meet these great people and and i i'm hugely ashamed of how many bad relationships i had how many girls hearts i broke people that i i wouldn't say i never i never cheated on anyone so that was that's kind of like my my like holding up my card and going i never cheated but um but with the kind of pain that i caused anyone through leading them on the wrong path or breaking up with them when they thought there was a future or all that stuff like my favorite thing is finding out their next girlfriend got married and has a baby like when i find that out i was happy please forgive me you know like yes like you know i didn't ruin your life and and that that i'm super ashamed of and those are my biggest grounding moments because before i became a monk that's what i was like and and it was me failing people rather than the relationship failing i was getting lost too quickly in relationships not treating people properly and yeah that stuff i'm like you know that that stuff makes me grounded all the time yeah and i'm reminded of of the low how low i can go and have gone mm-hmm and so you need to stay consistent with the practice exactly and never to buy into your own hype right i always just don't buy into it like yes it's beautiful to be able to live a life now where i don't i'm not like that and i don't feel like that anymore but it could happen to any of us anyone can fall at any moment and i think the moment you think you can't fall i was talking about this with someone the other day uh benjamin franklin's 13 precepts he had 13 things he wanted to achieve by the time he died includes things like integrity honesty principles of that sort of values deep core values and at the end of his life he was asked which one did you not accomplish out of the 13 and he said it was the 13th one and the 13th one is humility and and and i give that example because if he felt he'd achieved humility then he would lose all humility in that one statement he you can't be humble if you say oh i'm humble you know if you feel humble then you can't be humble and that's that's what i feel about if you feel safe that's when you're at your most vulnerable when you feel you're infallible and you feel that there's no moment where you could ever fall that's when you're at your worst moment and and i think too often when you do good you feel good you live good you can get to a point where you're like i got this and i think that's where most of us fall and fail and ryan holiday i know was on the show he goes the enemy it's a beautiful book i i think it's a great book and that's what i mean that ego becomes the enemy even when you start living the most pure well-intentioned life like that's the last you know that's the last step of ego and the ego is just like ready so so for me that self-reflection that grounding that meditation remembering you know there i think it's there's always two things as a monk we were taught two things to remember two things to forget always remember the bad you've done to others and remember the good others have done for you i always remember the bad you've done to others and the good others have done to you when you remember the bad you've done to others you'll always feel grounded you'll always feel humbled you'll never let your ego get over you and when you remember the good others have done for you you feel grateful two things to forget forget the good you've done for others if you get fixated and fascinated by that too long your ego's gonna grow and forget the bad others have done to you that doesn't mean you have to be their best friend again but to forget because otherwise that's just going to drain your energy forever and those two points have really stayed with me because they both stop you from ego and they increase gratitude yeah and they keep you humble and grounded and so i aspire for that that's powerful yeah yeah um final few questions for you this one's called the three truths okay uh from all the things you've learned in your life yeah from monk life to stealing cars to everything else breaking hearts before you're a monk all those things to what you've learned now yeah uh if this was the last day for you many years from now you've created every video you want you've told every story shared every parable you've shared every lesson you've written all the books you want to do anything you want to do you've done yeah those 13 things that you want it happened right but for whatever reason they're all erased everything is gone from the internet the world print it's all gone your words of wisdom okay uh but you had a piece of paper a piece of paper and a pen yeah this would last for five thousand years the three things that you wrote down would last for the next five thousand years but that's all that would last yeah yeah what would be your three truths or three lessons uh your consciousness and the soul not the body that'll be the number one thing your consciousness you're not this physical mental emotional being you're a spiritual being in a human experience you're not a human and having a spiritual experience that'd be the first thing that would be on the moment we realized that you cut through so much nonsense in your life so that would be number one it's one of the biggest principles in the bhagavad-gita the second principle would be the second principle that's huge in the bhagavad-gita is play to your own element don't try and perform someone else's expertly so in modern terminology or how would i say that is don't waste your time steve jobs don't waste your time trying to live someone else's life you know don't be trapped by dogma focus in on your own strengths your own element what you have to offer don't get lost in trying to become like someone else or pretend to be someone else there's a beautiful one of my favorite quotes by einstein and then steve jobs again einstein said if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree it will spend its whole life believing that it's stupid and too many of us are fish trying to climb a tree too many of us are monkeys being taught how to swim too many of us are lions being taught to live like cats we're not getting to live in our element so my second piece of advice is live in that element that you've naturally been given don't try adopt another you know we've all got a special genius inside of us it was steve wozniak and steve jobs this conversation steve wozniak looked steve wozniak for those who don't know is the tech guy behind apple he practically invented the technology and the software and everything so steve wozniak looked at steve jobs and he says this is in walter isaacson's biography of steve jobs steve wozniak wozniak looks at steve jobs and he says what do you even do he said you're not a coder you're not a designer you're not a marketer and you're not an engineer what do you even do imagine challenging steve jobs and steve jobs replies he says he says musicians play their instruments i play the orchestra that is the most deep understanding of one's role in life and not getting lost in other people's identities and perceptions of you steve jobs knew that he wasn't a marketer he wasn't an engineer he wasn't a coder so he hired all of those but he played the orchestra he brought it all together and that's when you when you find confidence in your own role you won't be envious of anyone else so that's the second one i don't know how big this piece of paper is but anyway and then and the third one is lead with service like just serve try and use the understanding of the first and the second to make a difference if you're a musician serve if you're a coder serve if you're a orchestra leader serve if you're uh entrepreneur serve like make your life about service and helping other people not just to feel good but make that the reason why you do what you do don't make that what happens because you have money make that the reason you do what you do yeah and if people start with service then you'll experience love then you'll experience compassion then you'll experience gratitude services gandhi said that you find yourself when you lose yourself in the service of others and and that's the deepest level of self-actualization so know that you're the soul and the consciousness not the body know that you have a unique genius and don't settle for any less and use both of those to serve other people as the reason for the first two that would be my three those are great i love those i love those they're from the ladies they're not mine yeah i like them though yeah you told them well you just good analogies to tell them well um how can we connect with you the most where do you spend the most time online or how can we support you you're jay shetty on social media yeah shelly on social media facebook's the place where i am most in terms of content but instagram and youtube any of those three are perfect places to find me in my content my content generally sits across three areas relationships passion purpose success and greatness those are the three things i'm most fascinated by right so whether you're an entrepreneur whether you're working a corporate job you know whatever you're doing wherever you are in the world i'm very fortunate to have a very global audience so i'm very grateful that i've got everyone from australia to south africa to south america to india to china so wherever you are in the world the us uk europe please come and find me on any of those three channels that work for you and there's always like two to three new videos a week so that's great two or three a week yeah make sure you guys check them out check them out there we're going to have them we're going to make sure you have a book out soon too yes we're going to make sure that happens soon so stay tuned for that in the future um before i ask the final question i'll acknowledge you for a moment jay for your ability to really dive into a place of letting go of everything and then coming out the other side to be of service i think you went through you know a lot growing up where you realized it wasn't the life you wanted then you saw you had the realization that you wanted to do something greater than just steal cars or chase girls or whatever it was and you learned some important principles that now you're able to simplify and share with the world so the things that you talked about your three truths you've gone through the work you've given up a lot so that you can give a lot to so many people someone acknowledge you for showing up beautifully man you've got a huge heart of gold and your discipline uh your patience with people who may maybe don't think the way that you do to just love and give is really powerful and inspiring so i acknowledge you for that man thank you man it's a reflection of you i i i definitely feel a lot of love for you and and i genuinely feel that we were connected beautifully last year yeah it was fun and and i feel you're one of the most genuine people i've met in a long long time and so i feel really really touched to even know you man because the gratitude mutual yeah i appreciate it uh final question what's your definition of greatness oh oh god leave that one till the end oh yeah okay i i have a definition of greatness you spark something so uh i said this in a class as a monk eight years ago no no that wouldn't be true six years ago i said this in a class it came out spontaneously since then i've repeated it so i said that it's easy to be great to be personally great to do something big yourself build a big business have a good relationship have a nice house have a nice car it's easy to be great it's harder to be great and teach others to be great to actually then go a step further and say i'm going to help other people be great that's greater it's easy to be great it's harder to be great and teach others to be great it's even harder to be great teach others to be great and then teach them to be great and then they can teach others and pass it on to be great but real greatness is when you're great yourself when you teach others to be great when they learn how to teach others to be great but you don't feel that you're great at all that's my definition of greatness it's where you start and come back to humility and insignificance and you embrace your insignificance that's the greatest thing in the world the most powerful most admirable most captivating quality in a human is when they've achieved everything that looks great in every arena but they don't consider themselves great that that's my definition of greatness jake thanks brother thank you thank you man thank you man it's beautiful you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 951,791

Keywords: lewis howes, the school of greatness, cultivate amonk mindset, interview, jay shetty 2018, audio podcast, 608, entreprenuer, motivation, success, football, viral videos, social media, how to, guru, monk, culture, america, los angeles, ny, new york, nasqaq, relationships, advice, everyone needs to hear this, happiness, love, letting go, before you take someone for granted, jay shetty, jay shetty interview, self help, jay shetty motivation, jay shetty inspiration, jay shetty happiness, purpose

Id: xmk3F57HMWM

Length: 85min 27sec (5127 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2018