Jay Shetty’s Path to Success | How Passion Fuels Personal Growth

Hey Evan and everyone watching, thank you so much for featuring my ideas and my thoughts. I've been following you for a long, long time, so I'm really excited to see this come together. 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. You can take a fish out of water and give it a beautiful mansion and a Bentley and all the money in the world, but it would die. And that's what we are like our environment. I realized that if you really want to be good at something, you have to invest in it with all your life. You have to become addicted and absorbed to improvement and growth.

Need motivation? Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation. What's up, it's Evan. My one word is believe and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see exploded onto the world. So let's get your motivation to a 10 and get you believing in you. Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a man who went from being bullied as a child for being overweight and nerdy to traveling and living as a monk in India and across Europe and being one of the most viewed people on the internet. He's Jay Shetty, and here's my take on his top 10 rules of success. Enjoy. All right, let's kick things off with rule number 1: be exposed to new experiences.

At 18, I was really fortunate when I met a monk, and this monk was invited to speak, and I kind of just went because one of my friends forced me to. At that time, I was listening to CEOs and entrepreneurs and business people and marketers who, who I thought that's what I was aspiring to be like. And then I hear this monk and And he captivated me like no one had ever captivated me before. It was like staring at the most beautiful woman on the planet. You know, I was completely fixated on him and his message. See, we live in echo chambers. We're just surrounded by the same thinking. How often do you bump into a monk? You know, it just doesn't happen. You don't have— no one has a dinner party and goes, oh yeah, we just invited the monk, you know, from town, like the local monk. Like, no one ever does that. And so We meet people who are just like us most of the time, and we talk about this in business all the time. If you want to be a billionaire, spend time with billionaires. If you want to be a millionaire, spend time with millionaires. If you want to be a tech startup, spend time with— you know, that's, that's the common rhetoric that we hear all the time. But what if you want to find purpose and master the mind? There's no one better than a monk who's mastered the mind. So, so for me, the first step is just opening yourself up and to new experiences and new role models. Because most of us can't see ourselves in people, so then we try and fit ourselves into the boxes that we do see. And, and I mean, there's this beautiful quote that I, I've been saying it everywhere, and I wish I wrote it, but I didn't. So it's by a philosopher and writer named Cooley, and he said that today I'm not what I think I am, I'm not what you think I am, I am what I think you think I am. Right? And just let that blow your mind for a moment. It's so powerful. I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. So we live in this perception of a perception of ourselves. Hence, my identity is made by what my parents think I should be. My identity is made up by what my college or university thinks I should achieve. While you're living in that bubble and that echo chamber, getting to what you really want to do is impossible because maybe that just doesn't fit. And I think so many people feel that way today, that they don't fit into the current education system. They don't fit with the 3 or 4 or 5 careers that you're taught exist. So that process of self-excavation and actualization first requires being exposed. You can't be what you can't see. If I never saw a monk, I would never have wanted to be a monk. If I never meet a billionaire, I wouldn't want to be one because I wouldn't know what that feels like. I don't know what it looks like. I don't know what it takes. And I think that's the biggest challenge of our society, that we're not exposed. So that's the first step, being exposed to unique experiences and role models. Second step is finding that experience or role model that you're passionate about, and exactly like you said, taking it seriously. Shadow them, network with them, spend time with them, observe them even from afar. It takes that observation, being addicted to observing that person's lifestyle. And then the third step is going, yes or no, does that work for me? Not everyone who's gonna go off and become a monk is gonna feel like the way I did, and that's cool. But not everyone is gonna go and follow and shadow a billionaire and go, that's exactly the lifestyle I want. They may want the result, but do they want the hard work that goes with it? And so for me, that's the third step. It's observing, focusing, shadowing, getting as close to the process of that individual, and then going yes or no. Do I want that process? Not do I want the result. Everyone wants to be that monk who's fully enlightened, you know, can walk through, has an incredible aura that people just gravitate towards. But when you realize he has to wake up at 2 AM every day and sleeps about 4 to 6 hours, you're like, ah, you know, I don't want to do that. That doesn't sound like me.

Rule number 2, my personal favorite, believe.

The second thing we usually get wrong is that we don't believe in what we're sharing. I've realized that I've grown much more confident about speaking in front of people and even in front of you right now on video because I talk about stuff that's really meaningful to me, that's really purposeful to me. I only choose to share messages that truly resonate with my heart and my head and my intelligence and things that I've immersed myself in for a number of years. Everything I'm sharing, these stories, these ideas, they aren't just made up to sound good. These are things that I really truly try and live and practice and embody in my own day-to-day life. And therefore, if you don't really believe in what you're speaking about, if you don't really understand it, if you haven't tried to live it, then you're always going to struggle trying to articulate it. And even if you get away with articulating something perfectly that you don't believe in, you'll feel empty inside. And that's why sales roles usually end up making people feel quite empty, because they're selling stuff and products that they don't think will change your life. Make sure if you're trying to communicate a message for your brand, if you're trying to sell a product, if you're sharing insights and ideas, they have to be things that genuinely connect with you internally. This feels weird. Are you sure this is legal?

Rule number 3: Refine your intention.

My daily practice is to refine my intention. The biggest weeds that we all get is in 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. I hear that voice, right? Do it for the fame. Just do it for the fame. Do it for the followers. Do it all these weeds are 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.

Rule number 4: know your element, environment, and energy.

So for me, my 3 E's are element, environment, and energy. Everyone has an element that they thrive in. If you take someone out of it, their element, they won't be the same. A modern-day example would be Michael Jordan. He was incredible at basketball. You took him out of basketball, put him into baseball, no one remembers his career. We're talking about one of the best athletes of all time. Your environment is the environment around you. You can take a fish out of water and give it a beautiful mansion and a Bentley and all the money in the world, but it would die. And that's what we are, like our environment. Everyone needs an environment which they thrive, which we have to craft. Your boss, if you're at work, is never gonna ask you, hey, what environment do you succeed in? Right? Like, that never happens. So we have to create an environment where we thrive. And then finally, it's energy. We— some of us love high-energy environments, high pressure. Some of us succeed in low-energy environments and low pressure. Figuring out your energy and the frequency on which you operate best will help you thrive as well. So for me, those are the 3 E's to really create a thriving environment: know your element, know your environment, and know your energy. And so at all times, if I see anything going wrong, I'm going, is my element out of alignment? Is my environment out of alignment? Or is my energy out of alignment? And that's a great 3-question test you can do to yourself when you don't think things are going right. And all you have to do is bring that back. Into alignment.

Rule number 5: Practice.

We usually don't practice enough. I realized that if you really want to be good at something, you have to invest in it with all your life. You have to become addicted and absorbed to improvement and growth. That means being open to feedback. That means being open to what the experts have to say about you. It means not being attached to your ego and how you feel about yourself, but opening up yourself to an expert group group of people to give you insights on how you can grow, evolve, and perform at a higher rate. And linked to that is practice, practice, practice. It's literally impossible to do something perfectly the first time you do it. The more you do it, the better you get. And we think practice is a cliché that we hear all the time, but actually it's that truth. It's so simple you might miss it.

Did I miss something here? Rule number 6: Make it happen right now.

I'd like you to fast forward to 70, 80, 90 years old. Right? Fast forward in your mind to that age. 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 if you're really optimistic, whichever one it is. And I'd like you to write down what will be the things that you'll regret that you didn't do. Imagine you're that age. Ask yourself the question, what will I regret that I didn't do? Not what you did do, but what you didn't do? Write it down. Make a long list right now. Get a pen and paper out and write it down. Don't do it on your phone. Don't do it on your laptop. Actually get a pen and paper and write down your answers. What will be the things that you regret that you didn't do? Right? Really think about it. Will it be, you know, learning a new language? Will it be moving home? Will it be telling someone you love them? What will it be? What would it have been? Write it down right now. Now the incredible thing about this question is that You're using the future to empower the past. Whatever answer you have in that question, whatever your answer is, you can do it right now, today, starting today, because you're not that age yet. And if you're— even if you're 64 and you're tuning in, 70, 80, 90, you're still there, right? It's still possible. You can start doing that right now. It's empowering the present with the future. There is nothing stopping you for making it happen right now. You don't have to feel that way when you're 70. You don't have to feel that way when you're 80. You never ever have to feel that way if you start doing it right now. And you can do it right now. Even if it feels impossible, you can start working on it right now. You can start trying right now. You can start making plans right now because you're not there yet. And this is where you start. This is where you start making it happen. It's all in than now.

Rule number 7: find your passion.

So how do I find my passion? My simple model, which is the Dharma model— it also— Dharma means eternal duty in the Vedic tradition. It's very similar to what ikigai is being spoken about today, which is a Japanese version of reason for being. Why do we live? Where is meaning coming from? And it talks about an intersect of 4 areas. What am I good at? What do I love? What does the world need? And how do I get paid for it? To me, those 4 help you unlock your passion. When you find the intersect across all of those 4, you're making your passion your purpose. You'll unlock your passion, you'll find your purpose. This is path 1. There's 2 paths. Path 1: I find my skill set and I engage it to help other people and become better at it. So I'm becoming better at what I'm good at, and I'm using it to help other people. Because I'm aware of what I'm quite good at, and I know what, what knowledge I have, what skills I have. I have some self-awareness. The other path that people often miss is actually I just start serving people. I just start helping people, and I start to notice what I enjoy about that and what I'm good at helping people with. So that's Gandhi's part. Gandhi said that you find yourself when you lose yourself in the service of others. So for me, those are the two paths of how do I find my passion. And finding the intersect between those 4 areas.

Rule number 8: Overcome challenges.

You have to remind yourself that it's okay to feel the way you feel when you're going through a difficult time. It's okay to feel weak. It's okay to want to cry. It's okay to feel overwhelmed. Just reminding yourself that it's okay— this is my number 1 way of how to find strength in difficult times— is reminding yourself that the way you feel is okay. To honor that feeling, to accept that feeling, to actually be okay with that. What we see or what we perceive to be a weakness, or what we perceive to let us down, or what we perceive is a sign of, you know, instability or insecurity. We've got to remind ourselves that when things are tough, it's okay to feel that way. There's nothing wrong with that. Any difficulty I go to, I look to moments in history where people have endured the same pain, if not more extreme, and analyze, absorb, and connect with how they got through it. I like to see what they were thinking. I like to see what they did. I like to see how they structured themselves. I like to look at how they organized. I like to look at who they were speaking to. I like to look at what was going through their mind at that time. Because you've got to remember that any challenge we're facing today, we've faced it before as humanity, right? Beyond ethnicities, beyond color, race, creed, beyond backgrounds, beyond all walks of life, as human beings, we've been through challenges before and we've got through them. And therefore, reconnecting with how that's been done before is a beautiful way of learning how to overcome current challenges. So you can either look at your past, But real wisdom lies in looking at the past of people who made a difference. You look at people like Martin Luther King, you look at people like Gandhi, you look at people who made world-changing differences, not single-handedly, but influenced from a single perspective, from a single point of view, and really connecting with the powerful moments in history. I've said this quote many times, I've read it many times, and this quote actually is unbelievable. And the quote says that, "They thought they buried us, they didn't know we were seeds." Right? It's a Mexican proverb. "They thought they buried us, they didn't know we were seeds." And I was thinking, when you tell yourself that story, you start thinking much more differently. Right? A seed is buried too. It's incredible that the seed goes through the same process as anything else. It's put deep underground. Right? All of this mud is put on top of it. It gets rained on, it gets snowed on, all these kind of things, but it knows that it's a seed. So it knows that it can grow, so that anything's possible, and it grows through. And you see even plants growing through concrete sometimes, right? It's unbelievable how much power a seed has. So changing the stories we tell ourselves, we can either look at challenging situations as opportunities for growth, as an opportunity to learn, as an opportunity to change, be see the change, or we can look at them and, and really feel down. Now, that, that second part is okay. We can even feel like that, right? But we have to recognize it's not permanent. We've got to accept that none of our feelings are permanent. They don't need to be permanent. It's a choice. So if you need to vent, vent. I was saying to someone yesterday, if you need to vent, vent. If you need to rant, rant. If you need to complain, complain. If you need to share how you feel, do that. But recognize that those feelings are not permanent. and it will be amazing when we realize we are seeds, right? That is the most powerful way of finding strength.

Rule number 9: Redefine failure.

In the middle of 2009, he was the software engineer that no one wanted to hire. He had 12 years of experience at Yahoo, but he was rejected by Facebook and then rejected by Twitter. He'd been to a great university, he had a great CV, But he decided to team up with one of his alumni members at Yahoo and started to create an app and focus on the startup space. In 5 years' time, he sold that app for $19 billion to Facebook. Believe it or not, that was Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp. When he was rejected from Facebook, he said it was a great opportunity to connect with some fantastic people. I look forward to life's next adventure. When he was rejected by Twitter, he responded by saying, "Worked out. It was quite a long commute." It's so interesting to see that someone rejected from two of the top internet companies actually responded with humor and actually responded with positivity. This lady was diagnosed with clinical depression. Her marriage had failed and she was jobless with a dependent child. She was on a 4-hour delayed train journey from Manchester to London when she came up with this idea, and she started to write this book about this wizard. And as she started writing, she then finished her manuscript, took it to 12 publishers, and was rejected by all 12. Believe it or not, that's J.K. Rowling. This man watched his first company crumble. He was a Harvard University dropout, and his first company's demo didn't even work. He went on to build Microsoft, His name's Bill Gates. Therefore, failure is just a sign that we need to widen our scope. We need to be ready and build ourselves up for the next level. Actually, what we end up achieving is far greater than what we'd envisioned for ourselves. And this divine plan, this orchestration, can't be happening without this intervention that occurs. Because if we had it our way, we'd just settle. We'd just accept. What we thought was our goal, what we thought we were chasing. But actually, I've noticed that when you don't get that, later down the line you look back and you reflect and realize that what you've gained is so much greater. Failures are only failures when we don't learn from them, because when we learn from them, they become lessons, and we actually extrapolate all of these teachings and actually get more insight into how we can improve the way we work and how we can actually drive with a different energy. The challenge we have is that we only talk about people's failures when they succeed, and that's why they become this taboo, or we feel like their failures never happened. We need to share these stories earlier. We need to bring out these stories and experiences on the journey so that people who are on the journey can actually follow in those footsteps. And that's why Steve Jobs said, you can't connect connect the dots moving forward. You only can when you're looking backwards.

And rule number 10, the last one before the bonus clips, is decide to be a pilot.

In life, you're either a passenger or a pilot. You've got that choice. This is one of the biggest choices you'll ever make. Are you defining what direction you're moving in, or are you letting other people make the biggest decisions of where going. See, at first it's more comfortable being the passenger. You sit back, relax, have people serve you. It feels easier, it feels more natural. But then as time goes by, you look outside the window and you realize you've ended up somewhere that you didn't want to be. Then you start blaming people around you, blaming people who made those decisions for you, blaming people who should take responsibility for where you've ended up. Sometimes you feel lost, confused, and wonder how you ever got there. And in that moment, at that time, you've got this important choice to make. You can either switch seats, grab a hold of the steering wheel, and start guiding your life, or remain a passenger. You can't be both. Which one are you? Hey Evan and everyone watching, thank you so much for featuring my ideas and my thoughts. I've been following you for a long, long time, so I'm really excited to see this come together. And for every one of you watching, he's picked some incredible clips, and I'm really grateful for that. And I hope that these bites of wisdom, these insights truly transform and touch your lives. I can't wait for you to see them. Thank you so much. See you soon.

Now I've got 3 very special Jay Shetty bonus clips on how to use your head and your heart, how to use regret to fuel you, and how to find happiness. But before that, I want to get to the commitment of the day. You watch this video, I don't want you to just watch another video and not take action. After watching all of these clips, what commitment are you making to improve in your business or your life? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm excited to see your commitment. Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon and enjoy the bonus clips.

So an ideal life for me is a life— and this applies to a company, an organization, an institution— for me is an ideal life is when we all have a head, a heart, and a hand, all three elements together working in alignment. Without one or the other, we start to lose something. If you only have a head and a heart, you'll find that life is stable and defined. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. So a head is the clarity of vision, what you want, what you want, knowing what you want, the way you picture life, and being able to navigate and make the decisions to get there. That's a good head. A good heart is being able to understand what your intuition and heart wants, being able to connect and tap into that understanding deeper and beyond the vision you may have painted for yourself. So I often say to people that you'll get to where you want in life, just not in the way you imagined. And that's because the path that's paved up and down is far different to the path we pave. So you can have a great head and a great vision and a great mission and know where you want to go, but if your heart's not able to have that resilience and be able to adapt and have compassion and care and all of that, then you're not going to be able to make the toughest decisions without your heart. But to be able to realize that we need to care and be sustainable and long-lasting requires a heart. And a hand is that service, wanting to pass that on, that which you have, wanting to give it forward, pay it forward. The idea of serving with what you have— I often say to people, your passion is for you. Your purpose is for others. Your passion makes you happy, but when you use your passion to make a difference in someone else's life, that's a service, that's a purpose, and that's the hand. So those are my three elements of an ideal life. One of the things that— when things don't work out, one of the things I've been telling myself and also thinking about a lot is, apart from the fact of learning, which we'll go into, is just that space of actually understanding that there may be a different route. See, we get so attached to having one route, one method, one way of working. We believe that there's only one pathway to where we want to be. There's this conveyor belt of things we have to do, whether it's, you know, get a degree, find a partner, buy a house, you know, play golf, whatever it is. Like this conveyor belt of efficiency and productivity that we hear that becomes a a part of our natural progression. And when that breaks apart, that's when we start to worry. That's when we start to think. But notice that, that actually it's a lot better when that happens earlier in life. See, regret has some really important roles. The first one is that it helps us make sense of the world from our perspective for one of the first times. See, most of us have spent our lives learning what's important to us based on maybe what families or what communities or what parents or what education taught, whatever it is. When you start regretting something, when you think you did something wrong, when you start thinking that I could have done something differently, you're making sense of the world from your perspective. It's crazy how powerful this is, right? You're starting to make sense of the world from your perspective. The second thing is it allows you to avoid future negative behavior. If you knew you regretted I guarantee you, write it down right now, right? If you regret something, write it down right now because it will teach you so much in the future. And you've got to write down the lesson you learn now, otherwise next time when you think you're making another tough decision, you're gonna say to yourself, "Oh, what did I do last time? How did I not make myself regret that?" And then you're gonna be upset. You're gonna regret that you didn't write it down. So write it down right now. We need to define what success means for us. We need to redefine what what success means. Let's not make happiness and success about the size of our homes but about the size of our heart. Let's not make it about gratification but gratitude. We speak about being healthy and our well-being, but we act more like human doings than we do like human beings. And therefore, instead of to-do lists, we need to-be lists. Instead of thinking about what you want to do, think about who you want to be. Do you want to be more self-aware? Do you want to be more conscious? Do you want to be a better person? Do you want to be a difference in the world? We need to move away from what we want to do in situations to who we want to be in situations. The 3 most common things that we forget when we're rushing out of our homes is our keys, our wallet, or our mobile phone. And it's absolutely hilarious how you run back inside, you You look in all your drawers, you look in your desk, you make a mess sometimes, and then how many times have you had it that you realize it was actually in your back pocket, sometimes even in your hand? And it's funny that our experience of happiness is so similar to this. We run around trying to find it in absolutely every place, but actually when we come back home, we find out that it's within. So let me give you the one, one secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy.

The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you, or that sums you up, or that would be kind of like a little beacon.

Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.