"DO THIS Everyday For 30 Days To Find Your PURPOSE!" | Jay Shetty

We confuse inexperience with being unqualified. So the best method I can share.

With someone is 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 every desire I had.

No one's ever been taught how to deal with failure or success.

And the things we're most afraid of are failure and success.

But the funny thing is those are the two most extreme things that we all experience.

Finding your purpose is one of the most important yet difficult things you can do in your life. That's why in this video, I've put together some of the best lessons from former monk Jay Shetty on finding your purpose. Make sure to subscribe to this channel, drop a like and comment your key takeaways below. What would you say are the three questions we should ask ourselves every single day that would help us improve our life?

What a beautiful question. Yeah, I'd say One of the first questions that always comes to my mind is, how can I be of service today? How can I be an, and this is extended from that first question, how can I be an instrument of love, compassion and kindness? And that's what I count as service in my own definition. And so what I would say to anyone listening is define the words yourself, because what service means to you, me, may be different to you. And so it's important, but for me, it's like, How can I be of service today? And the reason why I love that is, we've talked about this before, when you're wired for service, you're set up, right? We talked about in the last podcast, like service sets you up to feel satisfaction, to build bonds and create connections and does so much. So being of service is one of the first questions I would ask. The second question I was asked myself is, what do I love about myself?

Right?

What do I actually love about myself?

That is probably the most powerful question anyone could ask because most people never.

Learn to love themselves.

Totally. And we always find the things that we don't love about ourselves and we fixate on those things and that's one of the repeating thoughts in our head that keeps us playing small every day.

All the time. All the time. And we talk a lot about today self-love and self-care but I think, you know, a lot of that starts with self-awareness which we know about self-knowledge but self-knowledge creates self-trust and a lot of it's like learning to trust ourselves and it's like if I don't know what I love about myself, how am I ever gonna trust myself? How am I gonna trust that I have my best interest at heart? And so asking yourself, what do you love? And then the third and final question I think I would ask myself is, who do I want to be? Who is the person that I need to be that I can love, that I want to love, that I wanna give more love to? What parts of growth are there still available? and there's one thing I want to add, which isn't a question, but it has been a really reaffirming or deepening affirmation for me that I keep reminding myself, and I think it's helped a lot of people that I've shared it with is literally some days I'll just put my hand on my heart and I'll just repeat to myself, I'm exactly where I need to be. And it's just such a great reminder. Like, if you literally put your hand on your heart and you just go, I I'm exactly where I need to be. You stop getting lost in the future, you stop worrying about the past, and you realize that everything you need to learn, everything you read right now to make a change, it's all right now. It's all right here. And so that's one of my favorite things to repeat. It's not a question, but it's more.

Of a mantra saying, Correct, yeah. Because I find it so hard for people today who compare themselves to everyone online about not being where they want to be or not having the career or the relationship or the body or whatever, the following or the attention. A lot of people compare themselves to other people in their space.

Yeah.

Friends, family, and they don't feel enough. And so when we say to ourselves, I'm exactly where I need to be, does that help us eliminate the feeling of not being enough?

Yeah, absolutely. You're spot on because we're always feeling like we're, we either feel like we're ahead, we feel like, oh, I'm doing better than everyone. I'm kind of like winning the game. Or more often we feel behind where we feel like, They just got promoted, they got proposed to, whatever it is. We always feel like they have their.

First child or whatever.

They have their first child, they bought their first house, whatever it is. And we're always feeling ahead or behind. And so when you say to yourself, I'm exactly where I need to be, you realize you're not ahead or behind. And the problem is if you always think you're ahead or behind, then you're always comparing yourself to others. Whereas if you're where you need to be, you now just need to get to the next place of where you want to be. And also you only get ahead of yourself by first being present with yourself.

I think it's really hard to say that when you're in a challenging place in your life, I'm exactly where I need to be. I'm broke, my dog died, my girlfriend broke up with me. It's hard to accept that. And I've been there, I know you've been there. It's really challenging to say, my life is perfect right now when you don't feel that way. But I think when you can learn to accept timing of life and know that, you know, a mentor of mine early on, when I was broke and I was an intern working for free for six months for someone, I was living on my sister's couch. I remember saying, I would do walks with him every day. And I was like, man, I could really use some money, like in my life. I'm just sick of being broke. And he said something I'll never forget. He said, money comes to you when you're ready for it. and I was like, I feel pretty ready right now. Like, I feel like I could have some money.

Yeah.

And I wasn't ready for it mentally, emotionally. My life wasn't set up. I didn't have systems set up in place to really receive the money and be able to do good with it and be able to use it for good in my life and put it to good use. And later, when I started to make money, I realized, like, oh, I probably would have blown that money. I would have spent it poorly. I would have made the wrong investments, whatever it may be. It's hard to hear when things aren't going well, but I think trusting the timing of your life, like if you would have built your empire seven years ago, you probably wouldn't have been ready for maybe it would have been, but you wouldn't have been ready or social media wasn't the right timing for your message to be out there, is that right?

Yeah, I think that if I wouldn't have gone to Monk School, then I think you can become successful but still feel extremely dissatisfied or misuse the success.

Yes.

And I don't think that that can be blamed on anyone because no one's ever been taught how to deal with failure or success. There's no class on here's how you deal with failure or here's how you deal with success. But the funny thing is those are the two most extreme things that we all experience.

And the things we're most afraid of are failure and success.

And success.

So how do we deal with failure? If you could give a mini masterclass right now, what would you suggest to people who are afraid to fail? How to deal with it.

Yeah, I think one of my first things in failure is don't take it more personally than it actually is. And I'll give an example of that. When I was applying to 40 companies that all rejected me before an interview, all I was getting was an automated response. saying your application will not go any further. I can't take that personally because they didn't meet me in person. They didn't have a interaction with me. They just saw my name. They saw I'd been a monk for three years. That resume is useless. I mean, what's your transferable skills? Like sitting in silence and stillness. Surprise, surprise, no one wants to hire a monk. And so they rejected you. But that's not personal because they didn't.

Meet me in person.

But what if they had met me? Right, so that's the first step. The first step is don't take all fear failure I'll give an example. Me and you, we reach out to countless guests to be on our podcast. Who say no all the time. Who say no all the time. But if I don't hear a no from the guest directly, that's not a no. Like someone's team can say no, someone's assistant can say no, someone's PR team can say no. But until they say no personally, it's not a no. Okay, but when they do say no.

Then that's a no.

Yeah, so then let's move on to the next one. So how do you deal with that type of failure?

Yes. So if I deal with a failure where someone meets me in person and gets to know me. You know, Jay, you're horrible, you suck. Like I don't want to deal with.

A monk ever in my life.

Yeah.

On your show, I'm never listening to you, never.

Yeah.

Then how do you deal with that type of person?

So I've heard you say this, I've said it a couple of times and I'm sure it's been repeated a bunch of times around how I genuinely believe failure has feedback.

Feedback.

And so for me, it's like failure has the ability to actually tell you what you need to improve. Now, not to improve to get their attention, improving to get the actions that you want to take.

Yeah, the results you want.

The results you want. And don't make that result about the person who said no. Don't try use failure as a way to prove someone else wrong.

Because what happens when we prove others wrong?

When you prove others wrong, you end up trying to get validation and approval for them and now if they're not impressed when you're right, you lose again.

So you end up losing twice. And you spend all this time and energy years maybe to prove someone wrong. I've been there many times.

And then you're like, I felt good for a moment.

Yeah.

And then I feel empty again. Totally. And so that's the thing about failure in the second half is you have to see failure as an improvement. If I'm completely honest, Everyone who rejected me in my life up until now has made me more hungry, taught me so much more about myself, and made me up my game.

Yeah.

And I think if failure doesn't make you up your game, it's the same as losing in a sport, right? When you fail and you've lost games and you've won games on the big stages.

You didn't have the skills, you didn't have the teamwork, you guys weren't hungry enough.

You were never in it.

There was something you were missing.

Yeah.

So you go review the game film, you check the stats, you see what could I have done better. and you try to improve that for the next game. And I think a lot of people can do that in life, but we're so afraid to go on the next game of life. Like, I got rejected once and it hurts so bad. How do people learn to overcome that pain of rejection? To keep going. In sports, luckily, there's a season, which is like, you might have 30 basketball games. After you lose the first two, you don't say, I'm just gonna give up the rest of the season.

You keep playing.

But in life, a lot of people stop playing.

Yeah.

Why?

Yeah, I think that's great mental training too. I think sports is great mental training because you have to show up to the next game even if you lost and you don't feel bad. Exactly. That you don't feel good, sorry. And one of the things, before I dive into that question, one of the things that you reminded me of was that the Last Dance documentary. So there's that season that Michael Jordan, everyone is in agreement that he is one of the best players to be playing and they keep losing.

They didn't make the finals.

They didn't make the finals, they lost. And then they realized they need to get the team and they need to find, I think they bring in Dennis Rodman and then they start bringing in all these other players that strengthen. Whereas if they would have just said, oh, we've got the best player in the world, we just keep doing this, I'm not sure they would have got there, right? But the coach, Phil Jackson and the team, they had to adapt. And so you're saying, why do we feel that pain in rejection and how do we deal with that? I think we feel that pain because we look at a failure, right? We look at it as a complete definition of us, right? We're looking at it as, there's that famous statement of like, you know, failure is an event, not a person. And I don't know who said it, but it's one of those statements that really clicks. Like, failure is an event, not a person. Whereas we start thinking we are the failure. Like we say, I am a failure. Exactly, right? Those are the words. I am a failure. I got rejected. And it's like, no, your application got rejected.

Your effort.

Your effort, your specific effort at this moment in time got rejected. Your specific exam at this point got failed. You are not a failure. And so you have to disconnect and distance yourself from the event.

You know what's interesting is like, No one who was successful at everything they did ever told a good story. Like, the greatest stories are the ones who overcame failure in adversity. It's not the ones who were like, everything was easy for me. Everyone loved me. Everyone accepted my actions. I didn't have to work hard. And it just came to me effortlessly. Like, people don't care about that. That's not a good story. That's not an inspirational human being. It's a human that had to deal with adversity that we really admire and we look up to. Even if they had some low moments, it's a much better story of hearing about someone's failure than hearing how they succeeded.

Totally. And that's a beautiful lesson that one of the biggest mistakes we make is we don't study the stories of the greats. So how many people's lives have you studied from start to finish? If you've studied someone's life from start to finish, I genuinely believe this is like the core skill that's needed. I would say that the people I admire, I have studied their lives from start to finish. I know why they made bad decisions, what they consider to be good decisions. Like, there's autobiographies and biographies out there. There's podcasts like ours where people come and listen to people's stories. If you've not studied someone's story, then you can't follow that path because every time you hit a rejection, so every time I get rejected, I think of Steve Jobs getting kicked out of his own company. Crazy, isn't it? Every time I fail, I think about Michael Jordan losing a game. Every time I get tired of training, I think about Cristiano Ronaldo putting in that extra rep. Those are the visual cues that we need, but you only get those visual cues if you've done the research and the study. And then you go, oh, if Steve Jobs was kicked out of his own company, but then still had the audacity at one point to go and build Pixar, then I think I'm all right.

If I just didn't get this job. Yeah, and Apple wouldn't be where it is today without him getting kicked out, learning the lessons, having humility, like gaining some compassion, all the things that people say he didn't have Foolie at that time. He learned by having to be kicked out, start something else, bring a new perspective. What did you call it? The association?

Yeah, associating.

Yeah.

Like he was able to then go somewhere else and spot different trends, and then he came back to Apple and built it to where it is today. Well, it helped build it to where it is today. And he probably, Apple wouldn't be where it is today without him being a rejection.

Which is crazy to just think of that.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So if he would have kept saying, I'm going to keep doing it my way and this is the way it.

Is, it probably would have had some challenges. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the, the more you study the lives of inspirational people, and that's what I'd say is everyone should pick their top three inspirational people and go and study their life. The full life.

Yeah.

The full life. And read the biography, the autobiography, listen to every podcast. I mean, like seriously get immersed in that person. or the journey in the industry you're trying to make it in. And when you do that, you'll realize that your journey actually doesn't look that different from theirs.

It actually probably looks similar. So how do we go inside our minds and say, okay, I'm getting rejected over and over again. I'm trying really hard. It's not working. How do we still deal with that emotional pain? Is it just the self-awareness that every great person had to go through this and this is just a timing thing? Like how do we eventually just Ease that or should we not try to ease that pain?

I don't think it's about easing it. I think it's about engaging it. You know, it's, and I believe that the engaging does the easing in my opinion at least. So what I mean by that is behind that pain is a understanding that I don't have this skill.

Yes.

Or is an understanding of I didn't try hard enough or is an understanding of oh, maybe there's just another option because guess what? Sometimes you may have done the best pitch in the world and you just had an executive that didn't like your vibe.

Keep going.

Keep asking different people. Keep going. You've just got to realize that there's one, there's a, you have to engage that pain in discovery and that eases it because when you discover, like, oh, like, for example, let's take my podcast. My podcast producer, the team that was meant to produce my podcast pulled out two weeks before we launched my podcast and I thought I had this big deal lined up I was really excited. I'd never launched a podcast before and I thought, oh yeah, this can be amazing. And I was in India meditating for my annual trip that I take. I come back and the first news I remember receiving is, by the way, this isn't happening anymore. And I'd said that I was gonna launch my podcast on Valentine's Day 2019. And I had my episodes recorded with my wife and I'd already gone out and made the content. So just to tee up how bad that two week notice was, I'd already gone to Monaco, interviewed Novak. I'd already interviewed Lily, I'd interviewed Russell Brand in London, I'd interviewed my wife, and obviously those people are all close friends and people I know, so they were very happy to be on the podcast even when it was new. So I'd already done all that effort, I'd already created all the content myself, all this podcast company was gonna do was put it out there and help me market it a bit, and then they pull out two weeks before it comes out. And I'm going to myself, wow, okay, I can either sit here and be really sad or I can scrap together and figure it out. And so the only thing I realized was it actually turned out perfectly because now I own my podcast. And I'm completely aware of every part of the journey and it gave me more confidence in myself that I could scrap together when I had to. And I think that's what it is, that we lack confidence. We're waiting for someone else to tell us how we should feel about ourself.

How do we deal with success? Because this is actually, when I ask most people, 50-50 of people are failure and success is their biggest fear. And some people say, why would you be afraid of success? But a lot of people are afraid to succeed because of the weight, the pressure, can I maintain it? My family and friends aren't gonna support me and they're gonna try to pull me back down, all this stuff. How do we deal with success? Because we're not taught this growing up. So how do you think we should deal with it?

One of my favorite ways to deal with success is continue trying to be the least successful person in the room that you're in. I think there's those statements of like, you know, never be the dumbest person. Yeah, never be the smartest person in the room, et cetera. And I think it's the same with if you become successful, don't just stand at the top of the mountain. Don't just stand at the top of the building. Go back down the stairs and keep building and keep living as that person that got you there because you only got there because you started from the bottom. Right, no one starts at the top. And so you started at the bottom and you built it up. And it was that mindset that you started with that got you there. And so you wanna keep rediscovering that mindset and new parts of it. There are new parts of that mindset too, where you're always trying to challenge yourself. And so for me, one of the best ways of dealing with success is keep expanding the goal posts, right? Keep widening the goal posts, keep making them harder to reach and challenging yourself. Because when you challenge yourself, and you push yourself out of your comfort zone, you're naturally humbled. Because you're naturally humbled when you're walking into spaces. I'm sure you feel this sometimes. Sometimes I walk into a room and.

I'm like, how did I even get here?

Sitting at a table, I'm like, why should I be here? Yeah, and there's part of it that's imposter syndrome and that can have its own negativity, but part of that just lets me feel like a beginner again. And I appreciate that feeling and I go, this is amazing because learning to be grateful and stop just thinking that, oh, I earned all of this and I did it all myself and I'm self-made. You start recognizing gratitude for all the people that got you there. So for me in success, first thing is be grateful for all your teachers, mentors, guides, people that got you there. The second thing is always keep challenging yourself because the more you're out of your comfort zone, the more naturally you stay humble. You don't stay humble by trying to be humble. you become humbled constantly by trying to do stuff that's out of your league, which constantly makes you prepare, work, deepen, all that stuff. All of that stuff that makes you go there again. And then the third thing you do with success is I think you try and share it with others. You try and use your platforms as an opportunity to give other people a platform so that they can come up as well because you're reminded of what a beautiful gift you have.

Yeah, and how the people supported you or gave you an opportunity or gave you an interview or something.

Yeah, definitely. There was someone successful who had to give you piece of wisdom. Coming on your podcast. Exactly. Giving you an insight.

A quote or whatever.

Yeah. Or even rejecting you.

Like, what? Even indirectly, someone had to do something.

That's true. You know, it's funny because I love this approach to having humility when you succeed. And I also think, let me know if you think I'm off here. I also feel like sometimes we get into a place where we're always putting it on other people, like, you know, it's not about me, it's about the team, it's about this. Like, I see that a lot as well, where some people are more extreme, like, I'm the man, and then other people are like, you know what? It wasn't me at all, it was God, it was the team. Like, I just showed up, you know? So I think there's a balance of, I love this speech that Snoop Dogg gave, where he's, I think it was like on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He's got his stuff. And he says, like, I want to thank me for me. I want to thank me for all those late nights I put in, for all the hard work, for like overcoming the rejection. Like he went on this thing and I want to thank me for like showing up. And I think we also should acknowledge ourselves for, yes, people helped us.

For sure.

We got guidance. We had all this access, but Snoop Dogg still had to show up. He still had to put in the hours and the time to make the results. And I think it's, correct me if I'm wrong, is it good to also acknowledge ourselves for the work we put in, the wins, the things we do. Yeah.

Or is it all about being humble.

And acknowledging everything else?

I think it's about being honest.

Yeah.

It's honesty, right? Like humility means to be honest. It's like the ability to say, this is what this person deserves credit for, and this is what I deserve credit for, and this is what this person, it's like, it's kind of like when you write the acknowledgments of your book, right? You write, I mean, you, and I, and I remember doing that process and really thinking about like, who's helped this book in different ways and everyone gets their line in the acknowledgement who's made a difference. Now, your name goes on the front cover because you wrote the book. Yeah, yeah. Like you want everyone to receive the credit to the degree they merit it. Yes. And so you never want someone to feel like they didn't receive as much credit as they deserve. And at the same time, you don't want to give someone more credit than they deserve. The point of credit is to give it where credit's due. Right. And so for me, that's honesty, that's humility. arrogance and pride is when you start to feel like only you did it on your own. And we all know that's just not true. Like, I can't say I did it all on my own. I just, I can't anyway. I definitely can't say that. And I can't say it was all other people. And so that is the, that's where honesty and humility, I think, live together.

Yeah.

Acknowledging everything about it.

Yeah.

I'm curious about, you know, a lot of people haven't learned about how to deal with failure or success. And I don't think people have been trained how to believe in themselves. And for me, self-doubt is a big thing. I think it keeps people back from their dreams. And I'm curious, I'm gonna share five words with you: beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, and intentions. How should we be thinking about beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, and intentions within our life? Because I think those five things dictate the results, the outcome, our feelings, all of this in our life based on beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, intentions. How should we be thinking about these things? How should we be speaking to help us build our self-confidence? What's your thoughts? I'm throwing a lot at you here.

But... No, let's go down each of them. So let's start with beliefs.

So.

I think the first thing we have to do with beliefs is you have to realize everyone has them. It's not like you don't have beliefs just because you don't know what they are. Everyone has beliefs that they're currently living with. And I think life is about unlearning the beliefs you have and questioning the beliefs you have and then creating new ones. So the first thing I do with beliefs- Unlearning.

Yeah.

From the beginning. From the beginning. What if your parents had their answers.

And the way and the religion and this, should we be questioning it all? I think we should question it because questioning, okay, questions, are the most powerful invention in the world. Because questions either strengthen or weaken a belief based on the information. So questions aren't always from a place of doubt and cynicism and trying to find a weakness. Questions are a sincere request to figure out something. Like when we're sitting in these interviews, you're not sitting there trying to like be cynical or be you want to help yourself and people who are listening and watching And so that's a question, first of all. A question is not to catch someone off guard. A question is not to put someone down. A question is not to mislead people. A question is to uplift yourself and others. And when you ask a question in that way, the answer can either strengthen a belief you already have or weaken it or introduce you to a new one.

Why do we get so frustrated when our beliefs get questioned. When we have a belief that we put out in the world or we question someone's belief, why do people, when they get shaken in their beliefs, they attack, they break down, they whatever. Why is that? Why don't people just say, okay, that's interesting. Let me look at that more.

Yeah, because we've defined our identity by our belief. So imagine you're on one of these assault courses and you're on this rope and you're being told to swing to the next rope. But in order to catch the next rope, you need to let go of this rope, but you're scared because this rope is currently your safety. So your current belief is your safety. And when you have to consider holding on to another belief and to entertain both together, you're scared that if that one doesn't hold, I'm basically going to fall. So people are scared that their belief is currently their safety net. And so even if it's wrong, it still makes them feel safe and they feel comfortable. And we don't want to feel uncomfortable. So we'd rather hold on to that safety net.

Right?

So the only way to do it-.

How do we get comfortable with questioning our beliefs but not being like holding on to nothing?

Well, realizing that you don't have to change your mind or you don't have to leave what you think in order to entertain or be curious. Explore anything and explore like explore and experimenting and experiencing can either strengthen the belief you have or help you find a new one. But you have to do that middle three E's of exploring, experimenting, and experiencing. And the problem is that we are just theoretically thinking, we're not experiencing the benefit.

And this is what I love about what you've done in your past. We've talked about this, how you grew up in a certain religion and then you started studying different religions to see, okay, let me just try this on. And let me see what I like about this religion. And does that apply? Can I let something go in what I grew up in? Not making anything right or wrong, but just saying what works for you.

Correct. Right?

Yeah.

Taking that experiential journey of asking questions from different beliefs allows you to just say, okay, yeah, this is working for me already. I don't need to change. Exactly. And I like this and I'm gonna keep growing and go from there, right?

Yeah, definitely. I desire for safety and security. So what you're speaking about was when I was around 16, maybe 15, we used to celebrate Christmas every year. And Christmas is probably my favorite time of year. We were talking about it. I love listening to Christmas songs. I love Christmas songs and I love Christmas decoration and for me Christmas is presents. Presents. And so I grew up in a culture where we celebrated Christmas but Christmas was presents and a family dinner. And because I went to my school in England we'd celebrate all the religious holidays. So we knew about all the main stories behind every major world religion. And so I remember celebrating Christmas at home but thinking I don't know that much about Jesus. and should I not be connecting with Jesus because that's why we even have this day. And so I started going to church in my local area just out of curiosity. I wasn't trying to be a Christian or trying to be a Hindu or trying to be anything. I was just interested and curious to be like, what is it about Christ that created a day that has lasted thousands of years that people all over the world celebrate? There must be something here. And so I feel like we get so scared because we want clear designations. We want like a clear title of I am this or I am that. And that gives us a sense of safety and security. But really answers come in the curiosity, not in the security.

Yeah. Right?

What does that identity do to us in a good way or in a negative way?

In a good way, it creates a.

And this isn't just about religious identity, it's any identity. Just any identity. Any identity.

Or whatever, yeah, it's not about that. Holding on to this, identity of yourself.

Yeah. So in the good sense, it surrounds you with more people like that. So if I'm a podcaster, I hang out with more podcasters. We learn more about podcasting, and that's a great thing because we will become better podcasters. The mistake is I go, oh, I can only be a podcaster, but I can't write a book. I can't make a video. I can't do that now. And that's the mistake that it makes. So it should be evolving these titles that we give ourselves, these communities should help us evolve, not devolve. Yeah. And, and not stop us from expanding and growing.

Okay.

And so you want to be around people that are always curious and insightful.

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.

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 loved design, I loved graphics, I loved video and art when I was growing up. I loved philosophy and I loved economics. Those are 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 grow up in an 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 are 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 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, right? 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 been watching entrepreneur after entrepreneur, loved hearing from CEOs, their success stories, I was a huge fan of rags to riches stories. 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 think I remember reading the Rock's 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 monk's 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 gonna teach me? Who cares? Like, never seen a monk in my life, don't really know what they do. I 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 loved 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 stood above everything. And he spoke about this principle about plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit. 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 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.

Yeah, yeah, basically 18, 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, 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. Wow. 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 at, like, the big. I'd work at some of these biggest companies in the world, and then I'd go to living as monk, like, polar opposites, we'd be out at night drinking, networking after this.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Work, right? The stuff you do, bars, clubs, et cetera, and then like for the rest of the months, I'm like meditating and spending time with these enlightened beings. 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 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.

Everything and nothing, 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's my journey to why it started. Why did I decide 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 experienced.

So you haven't met someone who started a non-profit or something like that?

I had, I had, but I had.

Met people who've done NGOs and not-for-profits but I always found that they were still looking for funding. And I didn't necessarily fall in love with their character. And I think that's a big part of it. When I was with the monks, I felt completely in love with their character, the way they behaved, the purity, the way they spoke, their purity, their whole.

Demeanor was just so attractive.

And I was like, that's what I want to be when I grow up. So while everyone else wanted to be other stuff, when I was 18, I wanted to be a monk.

Wow.

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 mum's still upset that she doesn't have a picture of me holding this scroll, wearing the hat. And I left for India straight away. Why didn't you complete it then?

I finished as an I graduated in.

The sense of I had my degree. But why don't you go all the way, see it all the way through? 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. What does it even mean? And I left.

I don't care, I want nothing in my life.

Yeah, yeah. And then I went.

Wow.

Yeah, so I left and I was 22 years old 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 and a half the day 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 love 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 you wake up on like a concrete floor with like a little yoga.

Mat type of thing. Literally, yeah, so we'd sleep on the floor. The floor was wood, it was like this, this nice wood that you have. It was decent wood. So it was wood, you have thin yoga mats, so anyone who does yoga knows those thin yoga mats, not the posh ones, and then your sleeping bag, literally. She had a sleeping bag. Yeah, you get a sleeping bag, right? A pillow or no pillow? Most people didn't use their pillows, but my sleeping, I had a nice sleeping bag, you know. I was still that monk from London, everyone could tell, right? -Yeah, his real bag looks a bit too premium, but I was like, you know, this is the least I can do. -Of course. -So I still had the premium sleeping bag.

We'd wake up at about 4 a.m. every day.

Every single day, 4 a.m. -So the.

First week must have been a little rough to get into the. -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. So I was kind of aware of what it was like, but I pumped myself so much. 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.

I wanted to do a workout before everyone.

Literally, like, I was like, I'm gonna 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 was like, I'm gonna be it for the rest of my life.

So.

Wow. So I was like, I'm gonna be it for the rest of my life. So I'm just gonna do this properly, you know? So I ended up, yeah, waking up at 4:00 a.m. from 4 Till 5:15 you have collective meditation, collective prayers, collective chant, yeah, group.

Chanting.

Chanting. Yeah, group chanting.

It must have been very like healing almost at the same time, just like chanting together. Yes. The symphony that you create with the melodies.

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'd 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. Like that legendary monk. Yeah, the legend of meditation. Like everything you expect a spiritual atmosphere to contain, you're getting that because it's amazing. So yeah, it was 4-5:15 is group meditation. Then 5:15-7 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, group chanting again. And then 7:30 to 8:30 is a wisdom class on the Vedas. So the Vedas are 5,000 years old, linguistically and philosophically the oldest books on the planet. And so you're training the Vedas for an hour, 7:30 to 8:30.

And then 5,000 year old book?

Yeah.

Wow.

It's the oldest book, yeah, oldest dated book I've heard of. So, Wow. Over 5,000 years old.

Holy cow.

Yeah, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. It was funny actually. I was sharing this and I share this all the time, but then I'm gonna throw this in there. But when I was at Tha's house, he said this to me. He said that, I was telling him about the Bhagavad Gita, which is 5,000 years old. And he said to me, 5,000 years, just like you did.

And I was just like, yeah, 5,000 years.

He goes, if it lasted 5,000 years.

That must be a really good book.

And it's true. If you think about it, how many- you- keep using it, yeah. Yeah, how many things still matter and change lives today that did 5,000 years ago? Will the Beatles be around in 5,000 years? Will Elvis, will me, will you? You know, will any of this? But the fact that a book has withstood 5,000 years. Pretty impressive. That's pretty impressive. Anyway, so we do that from 7:30 to 8:30 and then at 8:30 you get breakfast, right? You finally get breakfast and from 8:30 to 9:00 whatever 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'd 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 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 schedule. 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. It's kind of like that, you know? It's just like Woodlands, like green. Really?

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. expensive 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.

So the. What's it called?

The place you're at. Ashram.

So monastery is an ashram.

Ashram is just a Sanskrit word for a monastery. 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 a 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.

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 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 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 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, then I'd come and see them, et cetera, 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 monk life should, the way we were 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 much ingrained in us that you're not here because you can't do anything else. 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 have sex as a monk?

No, you're a celibate monk.

So why do you detach from that then? Yeah, why question?

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 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 can't, I mean, 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. 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 life.

This impersonal 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.

Monk life actually begins at like five years old. 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. You talk about this.

Right, right.

Like you were told at school that you weren't very good and you weren't good at English and now you have a New York Times bestseller, right? And it's like, no one noticed that potential inside you. No one noticed that, oh, Lewis was really creative. 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 is such a big thing now. And when people don't figure out, yeah, it's like a huge trend now. 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. 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 Rich List 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. Oh my, yeah. 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 it's not that you're not getting both. You are getting both. Just the relationship aspect of a female partner or a male partner if you're a female monk 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.

You talked about the fear of fear and how you had to learn to let go of your fear of fear. What does actually letting go of the fear of fear.

Yeah, so I talk about how we fear the wrong things. What do we fear? So most of us are fearful of how our friends are reacting, what's happening on social media, and what's the random bit of news that we heard? None of it is fact-based. That's one of the biggest issues that we have. It's worry-based. It's worry-based and it's also imagination-based. So we become fiction writers. We've all watched too many movies. Now we start writing these beautiful movies Movies in our head were not beautiful, scary movies in our head of what may happen. So our imagination and Seneca said it best, we suffer twice, one in reality and one in imagination. But we suffer twice. And this is the book. What actually happens to us?

Totally. And then the story we continue to tell ourselves.

Totally. Now there's this incredible study in the book that I have to talk about. So they took monks and they took.

Non-Monks and they said, They competed against each other.

They competed against each other, literally. So they put this plate where you experience heat. And so what happens is the non-monks touch this plate. Now this plate heats up gradually, softly, and then at one point it gets really hot for 10 seconds and it cools down. And so what happened is that when the non-monks touched it, the anxiety and pressure and stress in their brain just triggered straight away, even though it wasn't that hot. It wasn't hot. It was heating, but it wasn't hot to do anything major to you. But the anxiety and stress in imagination or in anticipation went through the roof in the non-monks. Now this is what's fascinating. When the monks touched it, they showed that it didn't feel anything as it rose, but as it got to its highest, they felt physical pain, but they showed no trigger of emotional pain because they did not assign any emotional element to that pain. So my point with that is you can look at the news right now and you can get scared straight away and get in complete freeze mode, feeling stuck, paralyzed, whatever it is, because what you're now doing is you're creating a story of what's going to happen.

And that story-- and you can cause sickness in yourself.

You can cause sickness in your body. Just by the story.

Not actually-- the reality. The facts of the disease hitting you or something happening physically to you.

Totally. And that story, again, can be used positively. So your story may actually be true. But if it's going to be true, now you can prepare. And that shifts you away from being scared because now you're preparing. And so the real- you- can be.

Confident because you prepared.

Exactly. And so we should be shifting our fear energy into preparation energy. Because what fear does is it keeps you locked there, right? We just feel stuck. I'll give you an example. When you were preparing for big games, when you used to play in the NFL, right? And you're playing American football against some of the biggest athletes in the world, it's like you can either sit there and be scared that you're gonna play this game on the weekend or you can prepare and your confidence is in the preparation. So when people go, how do I feel confident right now? Are you preparing? Are you putting the reps? Are you putting the reps?

Are you building your immunity?

Are you taking your vitamins? Are you drinking lots of water? Are you drinking lots of water? Are you taking the steps that are.

Needed to prepare for whatever's coming? You will feel more confident that way. So how do we learn to let go of the fear of fear though? How do we say, okay, we're only going to allow it to hurt us when it actually hurts us and not the fear of it? Is there a process? Is there just an awareness of this that when you're in anxiety, worry, stress, fear, you just breathe and meditate then what's the process of letting go of.

The fear of fear?

Yeah, so meditation mindfulness powerful tools, but I'd say the process and I want to be as tactical and strategic as we can the thing is to get really close to that fear. So what we usually do is- Embrace it. Embrace it, get close to get intimate with it.

We- Become the bat. Sit in the bat cage.

Literally, yeah.

Embrace the fear.

Totally. We run away from fear. We like to run away and go, oh, it's not coming with me. Or what we do is we hear one thing and we define the whole understanding of our fear based on that one thing. So it's like someone, and I'll give you a normal example in a normal life situation. someone says to you in the office, you know that they're gonna cut a few people, and you don't even check, you don't even know, and now you just made it real and now you're running with it and you're trying to run away from it, so you're trying to avoid conversations with your boss, you're trying to avoid any conflict, you're trying to, you know, you're just trying to avoid it. And so actually what you need to do is go, okay, let me actually discover that fear, let me go intimate with that fear, let me ask myself, Where's that fear coming from? What am I really scared of? What am I really scared of? Am I really scared of losing my job? Am I scared of not having any money? What am I really scared of? And when you get to the root and I call it the why ladder in the book. So it's asking yourself, what am I scared of? And then go, why am I scared of this? Why am I scared of this? Why am I scared of this? And when you can't ask why any longer, you've got to the answer and that's what you have to deal with. Most of us are not dealing with what we're actually scared of. so that's how you let go. You let go by keep asking yourself. So I'll give you an example of mine. Like if I heard that or if you hear that in your office that people are getting cut, it's like you just get scared and panicked. But the question is, why am I scared of that? Am I scared of that because I haven't been working hard for six months? Am I scared of that because I've been skipping meetings? Am I scared of that because I know my boss will probably fire me first? Or am I scared because I've been performing really well and I'm expecting a promotion? Knowing which one it is, it sets you up to build the path forward. Not knowing that just puts you in this panic frenzy. I think also like doing all the.

Things you talked about which is discovering within yourself, being aware of it but then also just have the conversation.

100%.

Run it with your manager, your boss and say, Hey, listen. I heard some rumors that there might be some cuts. And I want to let you know.

That I'm 100% committed to doing whatever.

It takes to help this company grow. Yes.

100%.

I believe in this mission more than anything. Here's what I've been doing the last three months and here's what I want to continue to do.

Is there anything else I can do? Totally.

Show them the why you shouldn't get cut.

Exactly. You know how to approach that discussion when you know which side you're on.

What your fear is.

I remember as a freshman playing football.

I was playing Division II football in Minnesota. They usually red shirted all the freshmen. I went into this with a big ego thinking I'm gonna start, or at least I want to play. Right? So I went into it with an ego in the first place. But I also, which wasn't good, but I also went into it with some things that were good from this conversation. I tell the coach straight up, like, I know you don't play freshman, but my intention is to play. What is it going to take for me in order to get on the field? You know, do I need to get here early? Do I need to stay late? Can I sit here in the office with you after the before practice and go over game film? whatever it was. And he told me, yeah, I need you to come in the office every single day and watch game film with me. I need to be with your receiver coach every single day beforehand and doing reps. And I just did it. And I eventually started to play my freshman year. I didn't start in the beginning, but I started to start at the end. And that for me was powerful. It's like I dressed in it because I wanted to play and I was afraid I wasn't gonna play at all and just waste a year of practicing like every other freshman would do there. That was my ego going, I need to play. But I was also like, I'll do whatever it takes and I'll practice and I'll confront it with conversation and say, this is my intention, this is my vision, and I'm going to do whatever it takes for you. And so I think that, that's a perfect example. If you're in a workplace, you've got.

To be confronting it and be proactive in your company. Correct. And that's a perfect example of getting.

Close to fear rather than running away from it. Spot on, man. For me, my whole mission in the last year in moving forward, the next projects I'm working on are all about belief in yourself. I believe self-doubt is the killer of dreams. And I believe that, and you have this amazing graph in here, it's about ego versus self-esteem. How do we build self-belief, self-esteem, self-confidence, while also not allowing our ego to be so big and think we can just do anything? How do we balance ego and self-confidence so they don't hurt each other.

Yeah, absolutely. And what we experience most of the time is extremes. So the two extremes that most of us experience are either I have to think I'm the best, I'm the best in the world, I can crush anyone. I'm gonna show everyone what I'm like. Or most of us experience the other extreme, which is I'm the worst. I'm the stupidest, I'm the dumbest, I'm the most worthless, I'm the biggest loser. Notice how that's both ego. Really?

Yes. Why is it negative?

So, ego wants to be the best of the best or the ego wants to be the worst of the worst. The ego won't accept being in the middle.

Really?

The ego wants to feel the deepest sense of being the lowest. And that's why victim mentality is actually a subsequence of ego.

Really?

Yeah, that's how it's explained in the Bhagavad Gita because the point is that you can't deal with just being bad You have to be the worst.

My pain is the worst. I think Jada talked about this on your podcast where she was like, I had to tell people why my hurt was more painful than their hurt and they could never understand how bad it was.

Exactly, exactly.

That's ego, right?

Yeah, that's ego as well.

So you see these two sides of ego keeping us locked away. And so the only way to get with that and the only way to balance it and bring it all into one is genuine self-honesty. Honesty is the best place to be. And the best thing about honesty is I'm really good at this, I'm really average at that, and I'm really bad at that. And the challenge we have with that is most of us have no idea. We just have zero self-awareness about what we are good at, what we are bad at, and what we're average at. So we think, I'm pretty average at everything, I'm pretty good at everything. And when I hear those answers, I'm.

Like simple things, just go and talk.

To people that know you. What am I great at? Ask them, what's my superpower? What do I do differently? What do you think I do that is different than no one else does? And guess what? I guarantee you, if you ask a colleague, if you ask a friend, if you ask a family member, if you ask a people- They'll say different things. They'll say different things. But you get to learn about yourself. So real confidence comes from knowing your strengths and going all in on them. Your confidence does not come from just standing up the right way or just saying the right stuff to yourself.

Speak your language all day.

Yeah, and that's important. I'm a big believer in all of that. So what I'm saying is that that doesn't build real confidence. Real confidence comes from thinking, I'm really good at this. I know I can do this and I love doing it. And really, this is the most important bit. Confidence comes from serving other people. When you see the impact you have on others, and this is the biggest issue, the reason why we have such low self-esteem today in the world is because people are not serving others. So they don't see the profound impact they have on others. When you put out a video or a podcast and people tag you on Instagram and they say, Louis, you stopped me from depression or you helped me out of a divorce. Or people, when they watch my content, they'll be like, that stopped me from committing suicide or whatever it is. When you see that, you get such a deep sense of self-worth that you matter. And guess what? Everyone matters. Whether you matter to one people or one million people, everyone matters. But if you see your impact on someone's life, you will feel such a deep sense of self-worth. And so whether you're serving at a, giving out free food or whether you're serving at a local charity place or whether you're serving through your work, serve, serve, serve, because when you take that step, you get a boost of self-esteem.

But why do so many of us live in fear and desire mode as opposed to duty and love mode? Why is that? Like, why are we still focused on self as opposed to service?

It's conditioned. It's conditioned, right? I've said this before that we're wired for generosity, but we're educated for greed. I think I just said it to you two years ago when I was on the podcast. And it's like, and when I said that, and the statement, it was, yeah, and it's so true. We're wired for generosity, but we're educated for greed. Because what happens is when we're kids.

You see kids, you wanna share.

You wanna share. Go out their way. They wanna share. In front of my candy bar, whatever, right? Tell me. Yeah, and then as we get older, We're told that there's less, and this is what the key is. As we get older, we're told there are finite numbers of how many kids get made on the basketball or baseball team. We're told there's a finite number of college spaces. We're told there's a finite number of how many tickets there are. We're told there's a finite number of.

People that are successful.

Guess what? In the theater of happiness, there are infinite and unlimited seats. And there is a seat with your name on it. That's okay. There is a seat with your name on it in the theater of dreams, the pursuit of happiness. But you think that because you think that there are only a hundred people allowed in, that if someone else makes it before you, that you don't get in. And guess what? Is there a cap on how many billionaires there are in the world?

No. No.

Is there a cap on how many millionaires there are in the world? No.

No.

Is there a cap on how many happy people there are in the world?

No.

And that's why I really am encouraging Forbes. I want Forbes.

Forget printing a rich list.

Print a happy list.

Print a service list.

Print a list of who is serving the most. We should do that. We should do that. Serving the most in the world.

Wow.

That'll be competition based.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.

I gave more than you.

And that's why it should be service based on time, energy and money, because we should start showing how much time people give, how much energy people give. Mother Teresa, I don't think she gave any money to her charities.

Right.

But you get a lot of time and energy.

Yeah.

You know, you look at all the people who made a change in the world, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, like, they may not have given a lot of money to stuff. Yeah.

They gave time and energy. You don't have to give resources. but your resourcefulness, your love, your time, your focus, your attention, your compassion. Love that. You know, resourcefulness of the heart, not of the wallet, I think is key.

Love that.

And you don't need to have a lot of money to make a big impact. You don't.

And this is the training. See, we've been educated for greed because we've been told everything's limited. There's limited number of this, limited number of this, number. And every time you play in numbers, and I think it was Bob Marley who said it, Every time you play in numbers, you'd always be dissatisfied because guess what?

Someone's always gonna have more.

Someone's always gonna have more. I was speaking to a friend recently and this friend was telling me that he bought a home, which is very expensive.

Yes.

Very, very expensive. And he went to a party at someone else's house and he told me that when he was getting a tour of this party, he found out that this person had a painting on his wall which cost the amount his house cost. And so he was joking when he was like that guy's painting.

Painting in the house.

He's got my house on his wall. And that just puts things into perspective. And you think about that, and then you look at someone like Jeff Bezos and you think, oh well he's the richest man in the world, but does he have the most fame? No, he doesn't. Does he have the most beauty, subjective decision? Does he have the most strength or power? Maybe not. And so no one has the most of everything. So when you measure yourself by numbers, you'll always be second, third, fourth, fifth in something.

And I think by measuring yourself by needing to have the most of anything is probably a recipe for unhappiness. I'm like, well, okay, I'm not gonna have the most of anything, but I'm gonna have the most money. You're still gonna be unhappy.

Totally.

Even if you have the most of something doesn't mean you're gonna be happy.

Totally. I think it was Albert Einstein who said it best that Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted. And I love that because it removes this belief that things are finite and limited and they're not. If you want to be happy and successful, no matter that there are 700,000 podcasts, if that is your dharma, if that's your calling, if that's your purpose, like you can do that. There's no cap. on how many successful soccer players that can exist at the same time.

Or how many books are out in the world.

There's no cap. There's no one stopping you and that's the mindset that we're educated.

So can you share what that means to hear in between the lines through prayer, meditation, mindfulness and kind of what this all means? How can we understand this? There's a a lot of noise about it, but what does it really mean?

Yeah, beautiful. First of all, I'm glad to be back, man. The School of Greatness is... Excited, man. A special place. And the fact that this is... So everyone who's listening or watching, this is how you test whether your friend really knows you. Lewis just told my life story in 30 seconds. Which means that we're real friends. Lewis was able to summarize everything that I've been through in the last 10 years in 30 seconds. I appreciate you, man. Of course, man. And I'm really happy to and yeah, I think, yeah, let's talk about the term and let's talk about that specific answer. So when I hear the word mindfulness, to me, what it really means is intentionality. What I mean by that is, are you crafting, designing, and intentionally creating your life, or are you just coasting in the passenger seat of your life, which is just dragging you and driving you wherever it's taking you. And so it's the difference between being the driver or being in the passenger seat. And so to me, living intentionally is what allows you to live a life of by design. And so I'll give you an example of what mindfulness can look like. There's something in the book that I talk about called the three S's, which are sights, scents, and sounds. Now, if you think about that, we're exposed to sights, scent and sounds every single day. Every single day. But how many of us have crafted those to be scent-sensing sounds that we want in our life?

So this is what I realized when.

We were monks, one of the most important things was what was the first thing you saw, the sight, when you woke up?

And right now, most people are probably seeing their screen.

Yeah, I think 80% of people look at their screens first thing in the morning and the last thing of the night. So you've seen your screen first thing in in the morning. But what are you really seeing? You're seeing everyone else's priorities. You're seeing everyone else's issues and challenges. You're seeing everyone else's messages to you, which means you're already starting your day off reactively. But what if you started your morning looking at a painting that inspired you, or a picture of a loved one that brought joy in your heart, or your favorite quote by Lewis or by anyone else that when you read that in the morning, you were like, oh, yeah, I feel in charge today to to make a difference in the world. So imagine the first thing you saw in the morning was something inspiring. How much would your day change? That's mindfulness. Mindfulness is being intentional and mindful about what you are exposing yourself to. Let's talk about sounds next. So sounds were something that I started to study actually much later from a modern life perspective. But when we were monks, we would wake up to birds, we would wake up to water, we'd wake up to gongs or cymbals. Chants, exactly, which are all beautiful sounds. Now, the crazy thing is all of us wake up to something called an alarm. Now, I don't know why anyone would want to wake up to an alarm. Why would you want to wake up alarmed? It means now your system is alarming. Like, why would you want to do that? Why would you want to wake up in shock in a state of like a jolt? I don't think that's a positive way to wake up. So changing the sound that you wake up to, Now, I'm not saying that everyone can wake up to nature sounds. Maybe you're one of those people who just hit the snooze button again. But what if you woke up to a sound or a song that brought you joy? Now, when I lived in New York for two years between 2016 and 2018, I started to feel quite exhausted by the end of the day. And I was really looking into like, why is it that I feel tired? And I started to realize I came across this term called cognitive load. And what it means is that A lot of the sounds that you hear in New York City are sounds that are insignificant for your mind to process. Drilling, construction work, taxis honking, driving, cars screeching, scratching, people yelling at each other. People yelling at each other on the streets. All of that sound is called cognitive load, where your brain is now trying to make sense of meaningless sound.

It's also just like, should I be afraid? this is a loud sound. It was my brain going to fight or flight, like I need to protect myself. So you're always being alarmed.

Yeah, exactly. And you hear sirens, the amount of sirens that I remember hearing on the streets. Now, when you hear sirens, sirens have an emotional trigger and they have an emotional response to them. So think about your day. Think about when you come home from work. Well, now you're working from home. What sound do you want to hear when you're working? What sound do you want to hear at the end of the every day. When you sound design your life, that's called mindfulness. That's being intentional. And then finally, scent. Scent is such a powerful sense that we're not even aware. How many of you, when you smell your favorite food, can't already wait to eat it? Like, you can almost taste it. Yeah, you can taste it already without just through scent. Why is it that every time you walk into.

Yeah, my favorite.

Yeah, I think pizza has one of the best sets.

Well, your wife, Roddy's got some amazing food. That was amazing set.

When I walked into the kitchen last week, I was like, mmm, this is amazing.

That was for you.

That was special. That was for you. That was a good meal. That was a really good meal. She really appreciated that you love to eat too.

She was happy. Her heart was full.

Exactly. Bring a former jock into your house and you'll clear all the food out. She was like, I've never seen someone eat that much. He's like, big American dude. I was like, Louis is like, you know, he can eat. And so, no, it was great. She was so happy that you appreciated it so much.

For sure.

She really appreciated that.

But the scent is important in your life.

When you walk into a massage spa, it's the scent, the eucalyptus, the lavender, the sandalwood, it calms.

Puts you in a peaceful state.

Dude, scent puts you in zen without trying. And so mindfulness is intentionally creating a life that makes you feel what you want to feel without having to just create the feeling from inside. You may say, Jay, you know, I really struggle trying to be positive. I struggle trying to deal with anxiety. I struggle trying to be focused. Your sight, sense and sounds can help you do that. Yeah. And you start creating an environment where you naturally feel that. Like today, when I walked into your studio, I saw your books, I saw these motivational quotes, I saw a boxing glove, and it's like all of a sudden you're like, Oh, I mean a uplifting environment, right? So you already get triggered.

Exactly. Yeah, I think a friend of mine mentioned one time on the podcast, Chris Lee said, you, want to create an environment like a rainforest where things can thrive and grow as opposed to having an environment like a desert where things go to die.

That's beautiful.

And if you have sights, scents, and sounds that are like a desert for your life or your heart, then it's going to be hard to grow those things from your heart. But if you created an environment of a rainforest where things can grow, water, nature, cool air, things like that, then you can really start to cultivate that growth. You mentioned about creating and designing your life. How much of the world do you think we receive by being here? And how much of the world do we create ourselves?

Yeah, that's a beautiful question. It's a complete dynamic dance between what the Vedic tradition would called fate and free will. So fate is what is already created for you. And a good example would be the place you were born, the type of family you grew up in, the socioeconomic background you had. It was already there when you walked into the world. But within that, you had choices where your free will came about. You had the choice. to either do what everyone in your neighborhood did or to do something different. You had the choice to have a relationship with a particular person or not. So what happens is that we're constantly creating new spaces from which we have another choice.

Right.

And so you kind of see as this dynamic dance between, okay, now I'm in this situation and now what is my choice in this situation? So I would say, I'm not saying it's equal, I'm saying it's a dynamic balance and a switching process where you're constantly creating a new level and then now in that level you have a next choice.

Because we didn't have the choice to be created here. We were here and that wasn't our choice. Now everything after that is our choice, right? Yeah.

And there are some, obviously there are some traditions and I'm a big diver into like reincarnation and past lives. So according to the beliefs of reincarnation past lives, you have at some point made a choice to be here. But taking it more simplistically, the truth is that when you're brought into a situation, it's the best analogy that I've heard and it's been told for years is of a father is an alcoholic. One of the sons that he has decides to become an alcoholic because his father's an alcoholic. The other son decides to never drink alcohol because his father's an alcoholic. So they were exposed to the same situation in the same scenario same environment. Same environment, but they both made different choices based on their experience. And that's the choice element. That's the element that we should be trying to empower in our lives because we can constantly say, I'm limited by my environment or I've been restricted by my environment. And hey, it's true. There are so many of us that have been limited and restricted, but by now you repeating that, you are going to repeat that restriction in your life.

How much of a positive environment supports us in our growth or holds us back? There are some people who have the perfect family situation, resources, beautiful backyards in nature who are lazy. And there are others who have divorced parents, abusive parents, abusive friends, an environment of a desert, and they figure out a way to thrive.

Totally.

How much importance does our environment play in our overall success?

If you look at the examples that you just shared and you really analyzed life, you'd see very little because you see people craft their own life. So a good example for me is that when I came back from living in the ashram and there were other people who may have been monks who'd also left the path and I came back to a not financially successful or supportive family. So my family doesn't have abundant wealth and couldn't necessarily have taken care of me or paid for me forever. And I had to figure out my own life. And that to me was a great sense of impetus and incentive to go and figure it out and learn new skills and network and meet people. And I saw other friends who'd parents had like a property portfolio with like ten properties ready to hand them over. They had a BMW the second that they came out, whatever, you know, from their own life.

Yeah.

Or I even have friends that had all of that and didn't become monks and didn't even find careers. So I've also got friends that I went to school with that today don't even have careers, even though their parents were really well established.

Right.

Which has all of these examples have continued me to believe that we truly have influence in our more than our environment. Our environment affects us for sure. It plants seeds and weeds into our life, but there is still a choice. And I think even if you feel there isn't a choice, simply by accepting that there is, it means you have a chance to get out of there. And I think that's what-- Because if.

You don't accept that there is, then.

You'Re just gonna stay stuck. Correct. There have been so many times in my life, and there's a beautiful quote from Edison. I don't think I said this last time, but if I did, it's worth repeating. He said that, when you believe you've exhausted all options, remember this, you haven't. And the reason why I love that is your mind continuously feels stuck when it's tried the obvious. And that's why a lot of creativity and focus studies say that the first 10 ideas that come to your mind are never the most interesting. It's when you get into the 11th idea that you start breaking the pattern. And so if someone asks you, oh, what's your best business idea? Your first 10 ideas are probably not that innovative. And so the mind constantly gets stuck on that train and you've got to keep keep reminding yourself that there is another door. There could be another pathway. I was thinking about a piece of advice that. So one of my closest spiritual mentors, who was in London, I knew him since I was probably like 12 and properly, but since I was 18, he passed away this year from stage four brain cancer. And he'd had brain cancer for about, I think, like three, three, four years now. And so I hadn't really had a real interaction with him for the past few years, because every time I saw him, he wasn't fully functioning in his short-term memory. His long-term memory was there, but his short-term memory wasn't. And I remember speaking to him probably about seven, eight years ago and asking him the question. I said to him, you know what? I've got so many ideas. There's so many things I could do. Where do I start? And he said this beautiful thing to me. He said, you, know what? Your role should be to open up every door possible. And he said, let the world close the doors you're not meant to walk through and walk through the ones that remain open. Ooh. And what I realize is most of us are just not opening up enough doors because we think we only have the option of two doors. We look at life as binary, zero and one, zero and one, right?

It's just this or that.

A or B, this or that. And I mean, I think you'd say this too about you and every guest you've ever had on. I don't think life is ever this or that. It's like this, that, and that, and maybe that and that. And there's always a gap.

Of course. The challenge that people have that I've sensed a lot is the fear of criticism when you go after something that you weren't supposed to do or that people don't think you're supposed to do. Why do so many people fear criticism from peers, family, friends, the media? Why is that such a big fear and how do we overcome criticism from others?

Psychologically, we feel a sense of safety and security when we think people agree with us. Right, that is just psychologically true that we would rather avoid conflict and sit in a space where we agree and therefore we have something called confirmation bias and the echo chamber where we keep surrounding ourselves with thoughts and ideas that are similar and reaffirm our beliefs. Now, I think that you can have that and at the same time entertain ideas that you're not sure about yet. and so one of my favorite examples was MIT did this study where they asked people which person was more creative and innovative and they showed two charts. One chart was employee A and the other chart was employee B. The chart for employee A, all of the people they knew knew each other and knew them back. So it was almost like a closed loop. And employee B, they knew lots of people who didn't know each other and they found that people who have more people in their network who don't know each other are more likely to be creative and productive.

Really?

Why is that? Because they expose you to opposing ideas and they may counteract how you think. So one of my favorite examples of this is a conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and one of his mentors. So Mark Zuckerberg told this story at the Facebook headquarters a few years back. I wasn't there. I've seen it on video. I'm sure it's a available. And he talks about how when he was struggling with the direction of Facebook in 2009, he approached his mentor, and his Mentor happened to be Steve Jobs. Wow. Pretty cool. Wow. Pretty cool. I wish.

Really? Yeah.

It's so cool, man. And so, anyway, so Mark Zuckerberg goes to Steve Jobs and he says, I'm.

Struggling with the direction of Facebook.

Remember at that time, Facebook was five years old. There was no fan pages. I don't think. I don't, I don't think it was, there was no creators. There was, I don't think there were fan pages. It was very much by university students at that stage. Like, I think it was mainly like Ivy Leagues and college kids. And I don't even think it was international in a massive way, very early days. And now we can't even think of that. But 2009, I mean, you know, you just about had the iPhone and just about had Instagram and YouTube. So he went up to Steve Jobs and he said, you know, I'm struggling with the direction of Facebook. What do I do? Now, Steve Jobs at that time obviously was already the founder of one of the biggest brands on the planet, and obviously the brand still is, he had access to investors, he had access to business coaches, I'm sure he had access to life coaches, he had access to health experts, he had access to anything. Like I don't think there was anyone, scientists, PhDs, I don't think there's anyone in the world who Steve Jobs couldn't have called up at the time. And Steve Jobs said something amazing, he said, you know what, Mark, I think you should go and live in an ashram in India. He did not.

He did.

Oh, yeah. He goes. And when you go to live in the ashram in India, that's where, if you spend some time there, that's where you'll find your answer. Shut up. And Mark did it. No way. Went to the ashram. It's a true story. For how long? I, I believe he was there for, I believe I've seen two online. I've seen two versions of the exact time he was there. I've seen some people said it was a couple of days or a week or some people said it's a month. So I think it's, it's hazy how time he actually spent there. But he went. And he says that based on that experience, that's where he found the direction of Facebook, to be connecting people. Now, the reason why I love that story is because it's the unobvious, alternative, random connection. And when Harvard did a study of 3,000 executives, they looked at and asked them, what's the number one skill for being a good leader? And a lot of people would say communication. A lot of people would say, Vision, strategy, humility. And the number one answer that they got from 3000 executives was the one word, which is called associating. And what that means is the ability to spot patterns where everyone else doesn't see them. And that's the connect that real leaders can spot patterns and connections in anomalies. So most people be like, what is an ashram got to do with a tech platform?

Right.

But that is where you expand your mind to find answers that you never expected.

How important is creating alone time.

With.

Noises, people, busy work to allow your mind to expand? Is that the only time in that silence? I think you mentioned it. Silence to hear in between the lines.

Yeah.

Is that where we start to hear what we're supposed to be creating, where we're supposed to be heading, our mission?

That's. Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that back. I wanted to get back to that, so. When we talk about, there's a beautiful statement by David Lynch, who's movie producer and deep meditator, and he says that prayer is how you talk to God and meditation is how God talks to you. And whether you believe in God or the universe or spirit or divine, whatever it means, the point is that there is a dialogue and a conversation.

So, prayer is like you're speaking, you're saying, Here's what I want.

I feel it.

Help me.

Help me, yeah. And meditation is more receiving.

Receiving, yeah. And so I love that statement because I think it makes it very clear that we have to have a dialogue with the universe. We have to have a dialogue with people in our lives. We have to have a dialogue and there's both giving and receiving. So when I talk about hearing in between the lines, the best example I can give you, Louis, is let's take a look at you and your relationship and mine and my wife's relationship. one of us is always traveling.

Yeah.

So you travel, your partner travels. I travel, my wife travels. Sometimes we're missing each other. Imagine you've got really busy and hectic. Do you think, and anyone listening or watching, you can ask the same question. If you were really busy and hectic and stressed out, do you think your partner feels comfortable to tell you how they feel and get your attention?

If If I'm busy, stressed out, overwhelmed, will my partner tell me how I.

Feel about themselves or about- yeah, do you think they would feel confident to be like, Louis, I need to tell.

You something really important.

I don't think they would. They wouldn't.

They really wouldn't because- They don't want to stress you out more. They don't want to stress you out more.

You're not present, all these things.

Exactly.

So exactly that. And so what happens is when you're still, your mind and body actually get to speak to you and give you signals of how they feel. And so when you're still, that's when you notice that ache in your foot that you haven't noticed for a month. Sometimes when you slow down, that's when you get sick because your body wasn't allowing itself to be sick because you were pushing it to get through stuff. And so just like your partners can't communicate with you until you slow down, your body and mind can't communicate with you until you still. And so there's a beautiful Buddhist teaching that says what movement does for the body, stillness does for the mind. And so when we find that space, stillness and solitude, you really are able to hear your deepest desires and challenges, your physical pains and areas of growth. It's one of the reasons why when people meditate, they feel sleepy afterwards and they think they're doing it wrong. But actually they're doing it right. Meditation just told you you needed more sleep.

You need to rest.

Yeah, meditation was just a signal. So sometimes when I meditate with people that I'm coaching, they're like, pass out. Some of them will be like, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry Jay, I'm just feeling so tired. And I'm like, no, no, then sleep and rest. Yeah, that's what your body's telling you because you finally listened. And some people are like, oh Jay, I feel so energized. And I'm like, yeah, because you allowed yourself to be in line with your.

Body and now your body's saying that you feel energized. And that's great, you've got that energy. Go work out, go build something. or you've cleared out those negative thoughts or you've let go of those distractions or that resentment and so you're not feeling this weight so you feel lighter.

Correct. And so that stillness and silence is one of my favorite ways for you to actually build that relationship with hearing your inner voice.

Is there too much silence? Like if you say, okay, five hours a day, is there a tipping point when you're like, okay, I think you do two hours every morning but A lot of people say, well, I've only got 20 minutes maybe. Is five hours too much? Is an hour? What is the maximum or minimum, the sweet spot you think for people to be silent every day? To live a great life?

I think 20 minutes is a great starting point. Because 20 minutes is significant enough time for your mind to switch off. We hear that studies show that we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts a day.

80% are negative.

80% are negative. I'm guessing a lot of them are repeated. and so if you're only gonna say, I'm gonna do five minutes, it just takes five minutes to switch off. Like it takes five minutes to just overcome that noise. And so I'd say that 20 minutes is a good amount of time. And hey, you're not trying. And I think this is the challenge with meditation mindfulness. You're not trying to empty your mind. You're just trying to be present with it and actually listen to it and experience it. the reason why I start with identity is because I think that's the root of all our challenges. And the first step to thinking like a monk is starting at the root, not starting at the symptoms or the superficial or the surface level. But let's go to the root. If you're playing a role, if you're wearing a mask, if you're dressed in clothes that are not yours, Then you end up living a life that's not yours. And in the book, I give this example of method acting.

Yes, so Daniel Day-Lewis.

Yeah, I'm a massive movie junkie and I love method actors. So people like Heath Ledger, of course, from the Dark Knight series. You've got Jared Leto. So Jared Leto, when he played the Joker in, this is not in the book, in Suicide Squad, he used to send dead rats in the mail to his co-stars. He did not. He did. because he was trying to get into the mindset of how someone that perverted would behave. And then Daniel Day-Lewis, when he was filming for Gangs of New York, he's actually wearing these coats that are centuries old so that he can get into character while off camera. Yeah, when he can feel it, right? He's not wearing watches, he's not carrying around his mobile phone, they're speaking in the accents, and he talks about how he actually went crazy because guess what? When you fake being someone for so long, you think it's your reality. And that's what happens to all of us. We play a role at work, we play a role at home, we play a role with our family, we play a role with our friends, and then we think that role is us.

Right.

And we lose ourselves. And to me, that is the core reason why we're chasing things that are not important to us. We're unhappy despite reaching accolades, and we feel dissatisfied.

So what should our identity be then?

Our identity should start with unlearning. everything that we think we know about ourselves. How do we unlearn? So the best method of unlearning is this. First, and I'm gonna get really strategic and tactical because I think that people need to know what to do rather than a concept. The first thing you do is write down everything you currently are chasing in your life. Make a list of your goals, your dreams, your accomplishments, anything that you're currently chasing and pursuing. Write them down. You can write down three, you can write down five, you can write down ten, depending on how ambitious you are. Second line, ask yourself, what is the source of that? Where did you get that idea? Did you get that idea from a TV show you saw? Did you get that idea from your parents? Did you get that idea from your mom and your dad, your sister, your cousin? Did you get that idea because your friend just got proposed to on Instagram? Did you get that idea because your friend just got promoted? Did you get that idea because you just broke up? Or did you get that idea because you just feel it when you do it, that you feel alive.

Give me a specific example that you had when you were 15-18 was like a goal or accomplishment that you were chasing and where it came from.

Absolutely.

So my goal when I was young was to be an investment banker. And when I really asked myself where did that come from, it came because in my community, small community in London, the most successful person financially was an investment banker. So I believed you had to be an investment banker be successful. So when I ask myself that question, where does that come from? It comes from society's version of success, not mine. And then the third thing you ask yourself is, well, then what is mine? What is coming from inside of me? And if you just do that three-step process, now what you're doing is you're filtering out the noise and you're starting to listen to your voice. The thing is, you've got a voice inside of you, but it's quiet. It's like, it's like, Jay, like, take note of me. Like, Louis, you know, and it's just like, trying to get through and the noise of everyone else's opinions is so loud. So, this is where you filter it.

How do we start to find out what we truly want then? Not based on what other people think is success. How do we listen to ourselves? If you've been chasing something your whole life, how do you say, well, actually that's not what I want. This is.

-Yeah, one of the biggest mistakes we make is that we confuse inexperience with being unqualified. so because we've not tried a lot of things, we just naturally believe that we can't be that good at them. So if I've never spoken on a stage, I just think, oh, I'm probably not good at that. Or if I've never played golf, I'd probably think, oh, I'm probably not good at that. And so we start writing off things without even trying them. So the best method I can share with someone is take the next month, take the next four weekends in the month that gives you eight days. and get really tactical every single day.

That's why you're playing tennis a lot right now.

Yeah, play tennis. Take the eight days, go join a course, an online course, a workshop, go and shadow a friend, go to a seminar, a conference, go to reading a book, listen to a podcast, go and expose yourself to eight different things in a month. Eight different things. Eight different things in a month. And guess what? In a month, you will have learned what you probably would have learned in eight years. Because most of us test one new a year.

Maybe.

Maybe. If that, exactly, right? Like some people don't even do that, but if you do eight different things in a month, and this is how you have to see it, if you went to eight different restaurants in a month, you ask yourself after you eat a meal, like, I had that burrito or I had that taco, did I like it?

Right?

The first question you ask yourself is, did I like it? You gotta try it first. You gotta try it first. You gotta go to the restaurant. There's no point. So you're gonna say, did I like it? The second question you ask yourself is, why did I or why did I not like it? Mm-. Like, why is so important? I think too many people just go, I like it or I don't like it. Why didn't I like it? And the third question you have to ask yourself really, really simple is, do I want to do it again? And if you do, that's where you start uncovering. So my point is, inexperience, do not misinterpret inexperience for a lack of qualification. I'm guessing you're doing things in your life right now that you would have written off if you didn't try. I know you've talked about writing a best-selling book. talked about it with this amazing documentary. I never believed I could do half the things I'm doing today. And you know that because we met when I was just creating content on social media. And it's like now when you see things expand, you're like, you don't know until you give it a go and ask yourself, do I enjoy it?

Yes. So I grew up very competitive, and you talk about competition as one of these. I can't remember if it's like four or five different things. And competition is one. the things that's actually like, I wish I had the page right here.

Yeah.

But you talk about competition as like not the highest level of ourself.

Yes.

In my entire life, I was competitive, was driven to beat other people. And in the last seven years, I have shifted so much. I'm still competitive, still want to win, but I'm not like hurt if I lose. I'm not upset. I'm not, it's that doesn't defeat me emotionally. Whereas before it used to be like, this was my identity, winning. I had to win. Now it's like, okay, what did I learn? What did I gain from this experience? Did I have fun? Did I enjoy it? Did I inspire people even if I didn't win in this situation? In chapter two, you talk about negativity and the quote you use is, Is it impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others? Does Competition and unhappiness linked together in your mind. Like if we need to be competitive to be happy in order if someone else loses, how do we manage ourself in this competitive world of winning in sports, of building a bigger business, of these different things, being number one in New York Times best seller list. How do we manage that with this world we're in but also wanted to be happy at the same time.

Yeah, what a great question. So the way I see it is that competition in and of itself is not good or bad. And, and this is like the monk mindset on 99 of things, that this mug is not good or bad. It could be filled with water or it could be filled with poison.

Yes.

And so competition, I'll give you an example. As monks, our competition is in how much love and the respect we showed to each other.

That's your conversation.

That's what you compete on.

Or how long can we meditate for? No, no, no.

I can meditate longer than you. So if any monk, and I did this plenty of times, if I sat there and I thought, oh yeah, look at him. He's scratching his back. He got out. Like that. Your meditation just got destroyed.

All the value.

And so monks will never ask how long you meditate.

They focus on how deep you meditate.

And someone who meditates deep doesn't go on about how deep it was. But you compete for showing respect. You compete for serving each other. You compete for how well you can collaborate.

And I feel like you live this.

Yes. Like I feel like you have this.

I didn't used to do that.

Yeah.

But the last year you did that.

Now you think like a monk. Like I feel like we're always trying to find a way where we can be better friends to each other and support each other. And so you're competing on that. And that's a positive competition that I think you can have. So you can still use and this this is the beautiful thing about the Monk mindset. You can use any thing in a positive way. Now in your second question about what does it mean about business and New York Times bestseller lists and being number one, this is how I see it. If while you're writing your book, if while you're recording your podcast, if you're sitting there going, I hope this is gonna be number one, this better be number one. I hope I sell more copies than this person who's launching at the same time. the only way. Well, guess what? Now the quality of your output right now has just dropped. Because guess what? You are now living 75% in the future and you're 25% right now. And guess what? This 25% is gonna define that future goal and result. And your happiness. And your happiness. Whether you get the result or not. Totally. Whereas for me, when I was writing my book, and of course I want my book to be a best-selling book, of course I want my podcast to do well. Of course we don't do anything for it to be lost. like no one does that. But what I do know is that when I'm creating, when I'm producing, when I'm writing, that's all I'm doing. See, the truth is that only two percent of the world's population can multitask. Now, the crazy thing is when those two percent, when two percent, when people hear that, they think, I'm in that. Oh, I'm in that two percent. Everyone thinks that they're in that. But most of us are the 98%. Yeah. And the truth is, there is no such thing as multitasking. What it is is fast. switching between two tasks. So the quality is just dropping.

Because you can actually, you cannot do two things at one time.

You cannot. No one genuinely can do two things at once.

I guess you could maybe like pat your head and do this at the same time. You can't do something productive at the same time, right?

Or creative. And so what I'm saying is that when you're sitting here going, this needs to be number one, you are reducing that thing's ability to be number one because it now doesn't have your full focus.

Right.

So that's the difference maker that you can want to be number one, there's nothing wrong with that, but you can't keep comparing what number one is to someone else's goal too because everyone's got a different trajectory. Like there are some people that are kind of come in and do really well at one thing and you're gonna do really well at another and that's why competition has to first be in your space. Like don't compete in a space that's not yours.

Right.

Because now you're just trying to be someone else again and you get a false identity. Exactly. Exactly.

You talk about the four motivations. One is fear, desire, duty, and love. And as I was reading this, you know, fear is kind of like the making sure you have your basic needs met, right? It's like, do I have shelter? Do I have food? Am I protected? Am I safe? You know, living in fear, it's being driven to get out of that fear, I guess, right? Or driven by that. Then you have desire, which is probably what was the most of my life. was my one of my main motivation which was desire. Seeking personal gratification through success, wealth and pleasure. That's probably most of like... I don't know any teenage boy who's just like watching the media and seeing what their friends do, they're driven by desire. Girls, money, cool toys, results, success. I don't want to generalize it but that's what I saw a lot growing up.

-Sure, me too.

Now, the last two, the third and fourth are duty and love. Duty is motivated by gratitude, responsibility and the desire to do the right thing. And love is compelled by care for others and the urge to help them. And I feel like in the last seven years, it's been more duty and love. It's more like mission focused. And there's an amount of happiness that I've never felt before until I reached practicing duty and love. And I remember I never was able to fall asleep at night until about 78 years ago without an hour, hour and a half of just anxious, anxiety, stress, concern, worry. And when I shifted from seeking personal gratifications to being motivated by a mission and love and gratitude, it's like I started to fall asleep within minutes. And it's crazy. But why do we live in this fear motivation and desire motivation when it only causes us a lot of pain?

Great question, man. And thanks for sharing your journey too. Because, I mean, everyone, as you can see, Louis is already thinking like a monk. So, it's great.

I love it.

But it's so, yeah, great question. The challenge is that we think things come with emotions.

Feelings.

We think things come with feelings and emotions. And guess what they don't. So if you chase money.

Well, they might for a moment, right? Or do they?

I don't think they even do.

It's a false sense of feeling.

It's such a false sense of feeling. I don't, maybe for a moment, but it's so short-lived that it's not even worth counting almost. So it's like when you think that I'm chasing money, guess what? You will get money.

Yep.

And that's great. Money is really important. And money is a really important resource. But guess what? Money is not now gonna fill that gap, that void, that feeling, that emotion that you're missing in your life.

What are most people missing?

We're missing a deep sense of love. I think the biggest need in the world, as we've heard many times before from all the ancient texts, they summarize it like this: To love and be loved. Like that is the need of humanity. To love and be loved. And when we don't experience that, we then start looking for status. we then start looking for money, then we then start looking for recognition.

To help us give the feeling of false sense of love.

Correct. And the challenge is, because most of us didn't experience that from our parents, and this is the key thing, what we crave in life is what we did or didn't get from our parents. What our parents did give us is what we continue to crave, or what they didn't give us is what we continue to crave. So you'll find that most people's love languages that they chase are things that their parents didn't give them. So if their parents didn't give them time, they now crave everyone's time. If their parents didn't give them gifts, they crave gifts. If their parents didn't give them acts of service, they're craving those acts of service. So it's because of our childhood. And if we don't learn to process all of that experience, which most people never get the time to do, and I empathize with that because I've had to go through that. I've seen me repeating my parents' patterns.

What was the thing you were craving?

So I would crave, a big thing for me was I would crave surprises and gifts because... That's your thing. Yeah, that's my thing. It still is your thing. It's still my thing.

Did your parents not do that for you?

No, they did. My mom did a lot of it.

That's why you're still crazy. Correct. So my mom would always, every year on my birthday, she'd always surprise me with the one thing I wanted. And I wasn't surprised. sport growing up. I didn't have a lot growing up, but she would get that one thing, whether it was like a Power Rangers toy or whether it was whatever it was, you know, something. Yeah. The thing is, you want as a kids, right? And she would always surprise me with that. And that became so deep rooted.

Now, I'll give you an example.

When I then married my wife, you.

Just expect people to know that. That they're gonna do the same thing.

Totally. And she didn't do that. No, because I'm expecting my wife to be like my mom in the sense of I expect her to surprise or show me love in the same way. And she doesn't know that. She's not a mind reader. I can't explain, expect her to know that. So it took communication. It took time for me to explain that. So anyway, I think that's where it stems from. That desire, it doesn't come from any, you can say it comes from society and education, of course it does. But I think the deepest place it comes is what your parents did or didn't give you.

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're just talking to people or just walking down the street and just being aware of what was happening?

Absolutely. 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, a philosopher writer. 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's 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've 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 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.

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, yeah, 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 realized by living as a monk is I can't survive of a four hour sleep a night.

Like I realized that about my body.

When you were a monk. Kind of when I was leaving and when I kind of came back to my real bed and I was just like, I like this.

This is good.

Yeah. Right?

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 those four hours and been a battery.

Exactly. So, the point I'm making is that's physical self-awareness. We know our limits, we know what we can do, we know what we can't do, we know what are challenges. 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 about two years old watching a cartoon and she takes a handkerchief and the cartoon character is crying and she goes up to the television and she tries to wipe it off, right? And 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 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. 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. We've been created to connect and serve.

But you don't know why.

I can give you my opinion in the Vedic opinion. I can't tell you why for everyone. The reason is The main deep or the main Vedic reason 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.

This.

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?

Go ahead.

Yeah.

And then they spent $5, $10, $20 on others. So people spent $5, $10, $20 on makeups, Starbucks and normal stuff, right? That was the three makeups, 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 themselves didn't feel any happier or any less happier. But the people that spent on others felt 10 to 20% happier. And then he went and tried this out. This was a college in the United States. They then went and did it in Africa. They did it all over the world. And the stats and the pattern showed the same.

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 the Vedic opinion and that's why you had to probe me to go to why it is. I know why it is, but 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 me to share the one I shared before or share another one? I've got an- I'll share another one. Yeah, okay, I'll share another one. This is probably 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.

ABCD.

Yeah, exactly. Alphabet, the numbers, right? 1 to 10, 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 noticed this 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, 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 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 and 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?

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 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 of 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, oh, if you're stressed out.

Just take a stress pill.

If you're stressed out, just go to get a massage. If you're stressed out, 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 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.

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 all know that. 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. Cut 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 a bit. Just really go to the root and just knock it out. Just get rid of it.

Get a big axe and cut it down.

Wow.

Are there any weeds in your life right now?

Loads. In your heart or in your mind? Always my daily practice is to refine my intention. 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. I hear that voice.

Right?

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, 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 God in a toolbox.

I have no idea, but... What's the intention you set every morning for yourself then? If it's going back to the core of what you really want to create, what is that thing you want to create the most?

Service? Yeah, service. 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 somebody 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 gonna get? Then you're always gonna 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. themselves and they also feel disconnected. And again, they have nothing at all. And 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.

Or 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 it?

We know.

Of course. Thoughts are something. What do we have? 60 to 80, 000 thoughts a day. 80 are negative.

Yeah.

Most of them are repeating thoughts.

Yes.

So let's talk about thoughts.

Yeah.

My favorite technique that. talk about in the book is called spot, stop, swap.

Yep.

And so that theme is all around how thoughts are meant to be spotted, stop and reflect, and then swap. And what I mean by that is if you've got a thought that's repeating, like you said, and is negative, I'm guessing you don't want that thought around for too long. So you want to spot when does that thought arrive? Does it arise when I'm with certain people? does it arise when I'm on a particular social media platform? Does it arise when I go to a particular place? Where is that, what is the seed of that thought, right? So once I identified that, I now need to stop, spend some time in stillness and go, is this thought benefiting me? Is this thought useful to me? Is this thought actually leading me to who I want to become? And if it's not, I need to swap it with a thought. So one of my favorite ways of, let's take an example of like, I feel less than. I feel like I'm not achieving anything. I'm not good. I'm not good. I'm not good enough. So you spot that and you go, oh, I always feel that when I'm going through this particular Instagram profile because I'm looking at someone who I think is better than me. Okay, what do I swap that with? You don't swap that with you're beautiful, you're amazing, you're incredible because you may not believe that yet.

Yeah.

But you stop it. You, you swap it with, I feel confident when I feel. Attractive when? I feel happy and joyful when and you figure out what is that thing that I need to be and do to feel that emotion. Yeah, because you just don't lie to yourself. Don't lie to yourself because lying to yourself is not going to get too far.

And you're losing your integrity as well to yourself. Totally.

Which makes you less confident. Yeah, like I feel healthy when I exercise. Yeah. I feel happy when I spent on my wife.

Yeah, there's a line that everyone uses fake it till you make it, but it's really, you should be facing it till you make it. Like face that fear, face that doubt and say, okay, what can I do to improve this until I make myself feel better about it?

If you wanna get a result for the long term, yes. Like if you just wanna make yourself feel better instantly, then do what you need to do, but if you really want to create a life that's fulfilling, that's thoughts.

Thoughts can transform your life in a positive way or a negative way.

Completely.

I feel like that's the foundation of our life is what we think.

The best place to talk about that though with thoughts is the movie Inception. So you look at how a thought is planted into someone's mind and how in that movie, Leonardo DiCaprio in his wife's mind plants a thought that this is not real. And that thought grows into a belief.

A belief that is so strong. It's crazy.

Right? And it's like, that is literally what a thought can do. And you see that in the Joker movie. So I did a whole episode last year which was all about like mental health and the Joker. And you look at the Joker stories, he's trying to bring joy to others, but everyone treats him badly. And so the thought sets in of I'm not worthy, I'm not valuable, my father doesn't want me, no one thinks I'm funny, everyone makes fun of me, even when I go on TV, everyone's laughing at me. that idea becomes his reality. Now, I get that that's a fiction movie, but the point is still that we see even in today's world that thoughts have the ability to become, I forget the word that Leonardo DiCaprio uses in the movie, but that thought- yeah, cancer or something. Yeah, it's like a cancer in the mind, right? It really just expands. And so, I think we have to be so good at spotting, stopping and swapping thoughts in the middle. I love that.

Okay, so beliefs, we want to ask.

About everything and question everything.

Spot, stop, swap, thoughts. What about words? How important is the things that come out of our mouth into existence?

Harvard did a table which I really believe is what mindful speaking is all about.

What is this?

So it's called Harvard List of Emotions, but I kind of changed the name to Emotional Vocabulary because I think it sounds better. So an emotional vocabulary, if you look at all of the world's emotional vocabulary, It's very limited. We use five words to describe pretty much everything. Good, bad, okay, fine, hm. So it's like, how's your week going? Good. How's your day been? Bad. How are you feeling? Okay, literally like we use such limited words and that may be okay for the majority of people, but in your personal relationships, it's so important to expand your emotional vocabulary. So this table that Harvard has made, which anyone can find just by typing in Harvard List of Emotions on Google, what that does is that it shows you that when you say you're sad, what do you actually mean? So it gives you all this list of emotions that sit under the word sad. Are you irritated? Are you offended? Are you disappointed? Have you been let down? The more you expand your emotional vocabulary, the more you can diagnose how you feel. and the more you can tell your partner or your friend, this is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm actually feeling. And this is one of the biggest mistakes with words is that we think our words mean the same thing. Now when you say love, you might think forever. And when I say love, I might think for tonight.

Right?

And that is literally how the word love or care or marriage or forever gets misused, abused and thrown about because we both mean different things and our meanings are based on our backgrounds.

Our beliefs.

Our beliefs, but how we were born and how our parents were born.

Our culture, our experience.

Everything, yeah. It forms our meaning. So I really believe that in a relationship, in our communication with words, define words. When you say, yeah, we're best friends or friends, what does that mean to you? When we're business partners, what does that mean to you? A contract in a financial legal sense is to define the terms.

Right.

But in our emotional sense, we also need to define the terms. And we don't do that emotionally enough. And that's why we feel emotionally like someone broke the contract and you have nothing to hold them to because you never made a contract.

You never communicate.

You never communicated.

The meaning of these words.

Exactly. And that's why words are so powerful, but they're only really powerful when we agree on the definition.

Yeah.

What are the words we should eliminate from our vocabulary and what are the words we should be adding or using more of?

Words that we should use more of in our life are words that give us the right feeling we want to feel. So I'll give you an example. Instead of saying, now I work super hard, I do get tired, and I do get exhausted sometimes. I'm very aware of it and I'm cautious of it. And I realized that for a long time I just kept repeating, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm exhausted. And I'd say to my wife, I'd say to my team, I'm overwhelmed, I'm stressed. Yeah, and I still do it sometimes. It's not that I'm perfect, but you make me aware of it. And I say that, I start to realize that, okay, it didn't make me feel better by saying it. And actually what I was trying to do was get validation from someone else to be like, I know how hard you work and you're amazing and blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, you're really doing it for a reaction. And then I start to realize, well, I am tired, but why don't I just say, I'm going to make some time to nap today. I need to find some time today to rest. I need to make sure that I, you know, get some time to myself today. Like when you flip it, not by just saying, oh, I feel amazing because I don't feel amazing. Again, you don't want to lie to your yourself, but you're trying to create words that help you actually get what you need. So me saying I'm tired, really what I need to be saying is I need to get some more rest today. I better sleep early. And when you go, all right, you know, to Rati, Rati, you know what? I think I'm gonna sleep early tonight. That's perfect. Because now I'll sleep early and I'll get the rest and I won't be tired. If I go, hey Rati, I'm so tired, it just creates this negative pattern of complaining and whining and and creating that in ourselves.

What's the difference between a positive mantra and fake positive thinking? Because there's the power of positive thinking, but if it's not accurate to where you're currently at, it could be out of integrity with yourself and you could feel off. So how do we have a positive mantra or a saying or thoughts or words that support our growth as opposed to I'm fine when you're not fine?

Yeah, and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Because when I'm tired, if I was told to just say to yourself, I'm healthy, I'm excited, I'm energetic, I may survive for 30 minutes more, but that's not gonna survive for 30 days or three years. And so for me, I find connecting positive mantras to a act or an action. For example, if I'm tired and me saying, I think I need to eat on time, that action is what's gonna solve the fatigue long term. Or me saying, I need to sleep early tonight, that action is gonna solve the fatigue long term. So to me, the positive mantra needs to be linked to an action and a habit that's actually going to relieve you in the long term of that pain point.

Right?

Yeah.

Like I need to get my schedule to be more organized on Monday mornings. And my favorite example with that, again, I don't know if, yeah, this with the words is the definition that I think we see this most prominently in is the definition of time. So so many friends will come to me and say, my partner doesn't spend enough time.

Or I don't have enough time.

And what they're really saying is, from a partner point of view, is, I really want energy, intimacy, and presence, and attention.

It's attention.

You're not asking for time, you're asking for attention. And I've had friends who have gone on weekends away with their partners, and they'll come back, and their partner on Monday morning will say, I wish we had more time together. and the partner's thinking, well, but we just spend the whole weekend together, but they're like, no, because you were doing your work by the beach and you were reading your book and I was trying to take care of the kids and you realize it was never time. It was attention, it was intimacy, it was presence. And so if we don't define those words, words are all about definitions. If you don't define them, people will break that contract and that emotional contract and you have nothing to hold them to. Well, you didn't have the right, you.

Guys weren't aligned to your contract. No, not at all. You just had your belief that like, oh, she understands me. He understands me. Like, this is the way it is in my life, and it must be the same way in their life.

Exactly.

What are the actions we should be adding more of in our life and the ones we should be eliminating?

I think actions that we should be adding more of in our life are actions that create positive habits. I think it has to be habits orientated. It has to be stuff that we can repeat. And, and in Think Like a Monk, I talk about the four key habits in your day, which are thankfulness, inspiration, meditation and exercise, which is the acronym of time. So make more time in your day for thankfulness, inspiration, meditation and exercise. Those are four actions that I think if everyone wants to take in their day, this is what happens when you're thankful. You boost your immunity, you boost your self-confidence, you boost your mood. Yeah, because you go, oh, people love me. That means I matter. People care about me. That means I have something to care about. So it boosts your mood. And then when you tell people that you're thankful, you now boost connection and relationship. And when you thank someone, you now boost the feeling of I have people in my life that care about me and I care about them. So much comes out of that one action, inspiration or insight, listening to a podcast, reading a book, reading a quote. When you do that again, you feel excited, you feel enthused, you feel like you're you're learning. You feel like your mind actually works and that they can go somewhere. So that's a great action. Meditation, of course, we've talked about at length in the beginning. And exercise, people just don't understand that we could solve so many of our challenges simply by sleep and exercise and diet. Like those three things.

Change your life.

Could change your life. And, and we have to just get focused on one at a time. And so we're in actions. I talk about this thing in principle is we want things to be small steps, but big priorities. So if you want to change an action in your life, it needs to be a big priority and then you need to break it down into small steps. What we try and do is we try and change everything at the same time.

Yeah, we're like, okay, I'm gonna only eat lettuce. I'm gonna work out three hours a day. I'm gonna sleep 10 hours. I'm gonna be... It's like you need to shift your identity around the thing and take the small steps towards it, but don't try to do everything right away. Like if you want to be healthy and in shape, then you just need to change your identity to say, I am Mr. Fitness. I am fitness. And I'm going to start living my habits and my actions towards being in fitness in good health. But you can't cut, you can't change every habit right away. Because then you'll get burnt out after two weeks. You'll be like, this is exhausting. I'm not Mr. Fitness. You change your mindset and then take those small actions.

Exactly. And there's a beautiful quote from, this is more like an underpinning, actually this.

Kind of leads to the next one.

We'Ll save it for the next one.

Intentions?

Yeah, so there's a beautiful quote from the Dalai Lama where he said that we're born to help people and if we can't help them, let's at least not hurt them. And I think that's the intention that you want to leave every person happier than you found them. Leave every place cleaner than you found it. Leave every project more productive than you found it. Like you want to feel that if you couldn't uplift something or someone, at least don't pull it down. And I think that when you live like that in your intention, people feel that this isn't necessarily something that you even have to say or do. People feel that when you just leave a place and all you wanted to do was give your energy in a positive way, so to me, intention is just coming from a place of how do I leave every person just a little bit happier than I found them? I don't have to change their life.

Right.

But how do I not hurt them?

Try not to hurt them.

With everything that's been happening in the world right now, I'm hearing a lot of people say that intention isn't enough. Like having a positive... I had a good intention to say the right thing, but it offended someone and it impacted them in a negative way.

Yeah.

So how do people understand that, that it's about intention, but it's also you might hurt people, you might offend people, even if you weren't intending to. How do we shift that in our mind and our actions to sync up our intentions to actually impacting people in a positive way?

Yeah, you know what I mean?

It's like, yeah, it really makes so much sense. A real deep intention means that you will care and do the research and study. And often we have a good intention, but it's not the deepest, greatest intention, so we try and wing it.

It's based on our beliefs.

Correct.

As opposed to doing the research of other things.

Correct. And so really good intentions are make you ask questions and make you care and make you compassionate. And sometimes that doesn't mean saying a lot. Sometimes that means listening, learning, receiving, understanding. And I think when we are trying to show our good intentions, we say a lot and it may be taken the wrong way.

Yeah.

But when we really want to be our good intentions, we're just listening and, and learning and asking good questions. And you do that really well. Like, you know, whenever, even if we're, you're this person, even if we're on a dinner, like, Lewis will ask this many questions, even if we're having dinner.

Yeah.

And we'll go back. forth and I'll ask questions. But you're a really curious and inquisitive person in a positive sense. And that's why people always feel very comfortable around you to open up and share because they feel that you're really listening. And so I think that's a big part of it is that when we're doing that, the second part is even if you do all of that, there will be people that get offended. So even if you master the way of communicating and you you really care and you do the research, there'll be people that get offended. And what you have to realize is that there are just so many more triggers right now to everyone's lives and there are deep triggers there too. There's historic triggers, there's so much going on that you can't make it about you. And I think sometimes we're like, oh, how did they get offended me? I tried so hard, but it's like, don't make it about you, because there's so many more things at play here. There's so much more going on. Again, we try and reflect it because we want to be liked or considered to be supportive. But we're not realizing there's just so much more at play here.

All of a sudden, one of your mentors, a teacher there, this Ashram, right? Yes. He said, Time for you to go.

Yes.

So what was that conversation like when he said, you,'re no longer welcome?

Yeah.

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 his nice way of saying, you're not ready.

To be a monk.

Like, get out of it. that's how it felt. It felt like I'd failed and it felt like he was like breaking up with me. Like I equated 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.

Is it the same monk that you who came to speak at?

No, no, it was his teacher. Oh, wow. So his teacher. So like a- Even more so. Yeah, even more so, right? Like, 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 one of the most toughest, humiliating, ego-bashing, crushing things that happened. Because here I was thinking, I'm going.

To be a monk and I'm going.

To do this and I've got all these plans. 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 in 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 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 crashed. And I know no one can really understand my dream of becoming a monk, but you can credit it to, I don't know, playing in sports. Like, I know for you, it was 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 hurt, it really hurt. And it hurt the ego because all my friends or family who I just about convinced I was becoming a monk, when I was coming back, they were all like, well, I thought you were gonna be a monk. What are you doing? Did you fail at that? You know, it was kind of like.

You failed at being a monk.

You failed at doing nothing. 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, you know, you start judging yourself and you put that mirror onto 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. 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. My practice. So I never left my 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, 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. 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. You walk around, you're like, what's the point of this all?

You know, it's 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 working- Tell us what you learned from being a monk. Yeah, that's it. They were all working at these big brands and they were 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 wasn't huge yet, like now everyone talks about it. So I kind of had come back just at that moment when- Good timing. Yeah, good timing, but without any strategy whatsoever. And I actually remember, I know you've got Andy Puddicombe on your wall. I remember finding out about Andy Puddicombe when I was still a monk. And I always talk about this.

He was there for 10 years or something.

He was a monk for 10 years. And I think when he left and started up Headspace, I remember learning about Headspace. when I was a monk. I remember hearing about it and it was very early days then. Like you made it. Yeah, that's possible. Yeah, and now I always look back and go, that 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 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.

Right.

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 in university because I thought I was going to be a monk. So I tried to avoid it. Then 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. 14, 10 years after Facebook's launched. So I noticed this rise in 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 21. So I'm like the oldest guy there 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.

Yeah.

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.

Wow.

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.

Right.

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 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 were like a quarter of what I made.

I was like, I don't care about the money. I want to make videos. 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, Huff Post, 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 wanna 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 bike around 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 say, John, can you please give me a job? I don't even want to get paid, I'll just watch you. 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 master's in media and then come back.

And I'm thinking, I've spent two, three more years. Yeah, exactly, I've gotta go back. Anyway, so I came to a point where I literally had no other option than to start a YouTube channel. 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 gonna 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, 2011. 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 want it to go to them and Beyond. and I 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. Right. 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. 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 100,000 people at an event isn't as powerful. It's not big. But it's limited still.

Exactly.

It's a lot of people. 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. 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 with 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.

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. say, please feature my video. And then coming back even on Twitter and saying, 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 Arianna 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. 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 some 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 1 million in 24 hours and then like 12 million by the end of the week and then 24 million in two weeks and then 40 million overall. And then the third video did another 15 million and then 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 Ariana spotted it and her team spotted it, Danny Shea, one of my favorite people in the world who really had faith in me and fought my battle when I was just this guy making videos on YouTube, which I still but still am. But he really saw that they had potential and Ariana. So them two were like the best. And Danny's Ariana is one of her favorite people. They made it happen. He invited me to New York to host a show on HuffPost Live, which is 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. I would have loved to have you on that show. Had I we've been there. But we interviewed Deepak Chopra, Tim Ferriss, Gabby, Dr. Shefali, Russell Simmons, Etc. And Shefali's great. Yeah, Shefali's awesome. Yeah, she's really cool. So I'm gonna meet all these incredible people and more on that show.

And that's when it. So that was September 2016. That's when it really started. That's when I came to New York. Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the.

Notification Bell right now so you don't.

Miss out on these great videos every single day. How does someone find purpose in chaos when they can't even get out of the thinking because they're just trying to survive?

-Yeah.

So, beautiful question. My biggest answer is, first of all, I empathize with anyone who's been in that situation having I can't ever say I've been in that situation in the same way, but I've experienced similar things.

Or I've seen feeling in your life.

Yes, in my own way and I've seen my mom go through stuff like that. I know that my mom worked really hard to raise me and my sister while working, you know, while running around and I've seen my mom be that incredible powerhouse of a person. And the main thing I would say is what you can do right now is find meaning in what you do. Make what you do you're meaningful, passionate and purposeful. You don't need to suddenly look to become an entrepreneur or start a side hustle or find some more time, find meaning. And the way you find meaning as you genuinely stop, press pause for a second and go, what am I living for? Like, what am I living for right now? And if you're living for your child and if you're living to provide and put food on the table, that is a beautiful thing that we should celebrate more. and sometimes it takes us a moment to stop and celebrate that. And so I would say find meaning, because you can't always find happiness, you can't always find positivity, but you can always find meaning in that position. So I'll give an example, like I lost someone really important to me, a mentor, a few days back. I can't be positive about that. You can't be happy about that.

Yeah, it's hurtful.

You feel sad, you feel lost, but guess what? I can find meaning in it, because I can make a list of every lesson he taught me and make a plan to try and live every one of those lessons.

Wow, that's beautiful.

And so if you're in a really tough situation right now, don't look for positivity. Don't look for happiness. Look for meaning.

That's a good one. Not trying to get yourself out of pain too quickly or discomfort or frustration, which I've been in a guilt of being like, I'll just be positive or whatever to people. But I think it's like, you know, have your experience. Live your experience. and find meaning as quickly as possible. And create a commitment to how you want to use that meaning moving forward. Okay, I may not be great tomorrow, maybe not next week, next month, but I'm going to use this meaning to serve other people, to continue to do what I love, continue to be great to my friends, my family, in the best way possible.

And when you start doing those small things with love and kindness, so much more opens up. It's like when you can be trusted with the small things and the small moments, you get trusted with more and more and more. And so like it helps to just in that moment, and it's in those painful moments that you realize how powerful you are. We all know that, like you really recognize it. And what you said was beautiful about not rushing through the pain because, and you know, this example has probably been shared before, but if you have a wound and you've cut yourself, it's like you can't rush the healing. You can't rush it. If you broke your arm, I mean.

And you've been through so many bodily.

Injuries, you can't rush the process.

It's gonna take six weeks minimum to heal broken bone.

Yeah, minimum. And you've got to sit through that. It's painful. There's no injections you can take, there's no videos you can watch, there's nothing you can listen to. But our challenge is we try and rush through the pain rather than reflect through the pain. We try to rush the healing process. We try to rush the healing and you can't rush healing. healing is meant to be slow because it buys you time, it buys you reflection, it gives you so much space. To slow down. To slow down. And that's what your body is calling out for. And this is our emergency. Like how many times have you heard it where you slow down, you slow down and that's when you fall ill. Because guess what, your body has been trying to tell you to slow down. Slow down. When you feel pain, so I write about it and think like a monk, pain makes you pay attention.

That's what pain is for.

Pains noticed this, notice this Look at me look at me that c like girl crying baby, craving for attention. He baby's crying, you just go I' crying. You just go, Oh, yeah, well just put it in another room and forget about it right, let you go to it and you find its needs, wherehereas without our pain, when something's painful, we're just like Oh, yeah, Ill just forget about it, I'llscape from it I'll do something else. You have to go into that no Aumb the Anumb the pain That's it or whatever. Yeah A hundred per cent That's that's.

Usually our response is. What can I do to work more, have sex more, drink more, whatever it is.

Rather than let me actually become alert and guess what? The pain just gets higher and higher and higher and higher because unfortunately, until it really hurts, we don't stop.

Or you need more and more to numb it with.

So true.

And so you go into the extremes of life, right?

So true.

Now, what's been the most painful thing you've had to experience since. Because I know leaving the monkhood was painful for you because because this was a mission of yours that you wanted to have for your whole life. And I think you were there for three and a half years. So what's been the most painful thing, I guess, in the last six or seven years since that time that you've had to reflect back on, take notice of, pay attention to, and reevaluate?

That's a great question.

I think for me it was in 2016 I moved out to New York. So just let me paint a picture of 2016. I moved three jobs. I got married, I moved country and I just started a whole new life. Like my life just transformed. So we went through all of that with my wife in one year and by the way all of that was surprises. The job change was surprises, the country change was a surprise, the marriage was not a surprise, we planned that. But apart from everything else, everything was a surprise. Now I said I like surprises so I can roll with it, but my My point is that's a lot of transition in a year.

So much transition.

And I felt the burden of being in a new city where we had no family, we had no friends, and my wife who loves being around her family and no one understands just how close she is to them, I felt this burden on me that I had taken away her time with her family and now she was alone. So I was going out to work and she'd be crying at home. And I was thinking, she's got no friends, she's got no support. And I know you can relate to this with moving and relationships and so much going on. And so it's like, I'm dealing with that and guess what, six months later, I have to leave and move on and work on a new career to build everything myself. And then I'm four months away from being broke. And so on top of all of this, I've now got four months away from being broke. I've got enough money saved for four months to pay for rent and groceries. And that's New York City. In New York City, and that's it. And guess what? Even on top of that, I've got 30 days before my visa runs out, I'm kicked out of the country, so I can't even live here anymore. So not only have I just got married, moved job three times, changed career again, had to move into a four months of being broke, and I might get kicked out in 30 days, and my renewal for my visa cost $15,000. So that's gonna eat into those four months. I have probably never been under that much emotional, physical and mental pressure in my life. Like genuinely I felt it and I felt my body change. My breath was more stressed. I would be breathing faster, shorter breaths, not deep breaths, heart beating faster, not working out, you get into lazy habits, you start craving junk food, sugar, you have energy. I'm living in a 500 square foot apartment with my wife which is tiny, like everything's in that space and guess what we both work from come home. So I'm now sitting at a desk hunched over, trying to figure stuff out. She's trying to cook in the same room. Like, I'm trying to just. Just trying to figure out what to do. And I remember the next morning sending, like, a hundred emails to people and just being like, this is who I am. This is what I can do. How can we serve? And that was the same year that I ended up meeting you later in that year. And the beginning three months of that Journey were so stressful. Like, they were so stressful because I was like, what if I have to move back to London? What am I gonna say to her parents? I mean, I just took their daughter away. Like, you just got married. I've lived in New York City for six months and my life's falling apart. Like, you know, so much. And I've got all these views, but there's nothing.

There's nothing happening. And we met. You also, you also. I mean, at this time, you're also growing so much. How are you able to create and reach this impact with your videos? That's growing. while you're under so much stress and uncertainty.

And I stopped a bit at that time. Like things slowed down hard. Like things slowed down. I remember that. I wasn't creating as much as I was because I don't enjoy creating from stress or pressure and I don't think you can really create something from stress and pressure. So we really slowed down at that time. And when I was creating, I was creating from a place of recognizing that I could share what I had learned and what I had grown in so far. so anything I was sharing was like, this is what I've learned so far. So that was the biggest pain that I've been through in the last seven years for sure. And all I can say is that I remember coming home to my wife knowing that this was gonna be the truth. And I came home and I said to her, I guarantee you this is gonna be the best thing that ever happened to us.

What?

The pain?

The pain.

I said that to the night I came home and then she gave out, I literally came home, I looked her in the eyes and go, this is the scenario. And I just want you to know that I guarantee to you this is the best thing best thing that's ever.

Gonna happen to us.

And I said to her, and this is a monk's statement that we used to repeat, I said to her, I'm just not gonna judge the moment. Don't judge the moment, because what we do is we try to label moments as good or bad. And when you label a moment as bad, it now does not have the opportunity to become good. I'll give you an example. If I go, I don't like this book, this book's bad, right? And I don't, and I love this book. But if I say that, guess what? I will never pick pick it up and recognize the value that's inside of it because you've labeled it. Yes. And we label stuff like we label, oh, that restaurant's bad. But when you label a moment, that person's bad. Now you can't learn from that person. Oh, a great one. That's a really good one. As soon as you start labeling people or anything as good or bad, you limit it. You stop it from being something else. And here's the truth. Every moment can evolve into being anything if you give it the opportunity to.

Right.

But as soon as you say it's got no value anymore, you lose it. And so for me, I had to say to myself, Don't judge the moment. And I'd keep repeating that to myself. Don't judge where you're at. Don't judge what's happening. Yeah, don't judge it as negative. Don't just start saying it's negative. Because guess what? We've all been in positions where a.

Gift turned into a curse and a curse turned into a gift.

That's true.

Right?

We've all seen that. Where our dreams came true and it.

Ended up not being what we wanted. Exactly.

It fell apart and it led us into our dreams. Totally.

Why is it that so many people that win the lottery go broke? Gifts can turn into curses too. True. But because we label them as the best moment in our life or the.

Worst moment in our life.

Whereas when you approach things to neutrality and just what you have on the.

Table, you can be like, okay, what am I gonna do next? That's why the greatest quarterbacks are neutral energy. They'll get a little excited. They'll get a little fist pump in there every now and then, but they're not high. hyped every play and they're not negative every play. They have this calm, they see the field, they're you drop a pass and it's like a little bit let's go but it's very neutral. Even when you score a touchdown, unless it's maybe the Super Bowl or a big championship at the end of a game, in the middle of the game you want to keep it pretty like even keel paced so you can prepare.

For the best or the worst.

That's great.

Yeah.

But they're always up and down. It's like your energy levels will go up and down and you'll be exhausted. You need to have energy in life.

Totally.

And if everything is tied around a story of this is bad, this is wrong, I'm in a bad place, I'm messing up, I'm going broke. That energy is going to pull you away from service. Exactly. Or creation or creativity of how do I get out of this place?

So, I think it's really important.

I love that.

And I used to have a coach and I think a lot of coaches use this or at least he used to say to us, he would be like, if you lose, cry for a day. And if you celebrate, if you win, celebrate for a day.

Yeah.

And then move on the next day. Get back to training. Don't.

Don't let it.

Don't live in the past. Don't live in the past. And what we do is when we lose, we cry for a month, and when we win, we just move on. Yeah. Which means that our negative experiences hold us back and weigh us down more than our positive experiences. So we're actually allowing, because we don't immerse ourselves in winning. and growth, we only submerge ourselves in negative experiences. Yeah, we need to celebrate also.

We try to celebrate, I've been, you know, that's been part of my life as well, is like moving on too quick. And now we try to like, let's enjoy, let's go to lunch or dinner and really like appreciate this moment and celebrate this moment. Even have a dinner with some friends and family.

Otherwise, what are we working so hard for? 100% and we almost feel like we can't do that because that makes us complacent.

Right.

-But that's my point. -Never good enough. -Exactly. But if you win, celebrate for a day. If you lose, cry for a day.

Move on. Simple. -And you've learned so many lessons over your years. As a monk, you learned a ton of lessons. Moving to, you know, getting married, moving into a new country, building companies, launching products and books and you've had ups and downs. What's been the biggest lesson in the last 12 months for you? Because you've learned you've created so much in in the last 12 months, you've.

Done so many things.

What's been the biggest lesson for you in your life?

Oh, that's a big question. I think I'd have to say that it's a, and I was saying it to a friend on the phone this morning when I was on the way to you, and I was just sharing it with him because he was having a moment in recognizing this. There's a wonderful verse in the Manu Smriti, which I talk about in Think Like a Monk. It's a monk book. And in the verse it says, When you protect your purpose, your purpose. Your purpose protects you. Now, I want to unpack that. What I mean by that is your purpose is like a rare jewel and a rare gemstone. And imagine you were walking around with the most expensive diamond or jewel in the world. How would you protect it?

You want to just like- you- want to just wave it out?

Yeah, you want to just wear it on your chest? Like a baby.

Holding it.

Yeah.

Putting a pillow around a blanket, you'd be like, yeah, protect it.

You'd protect it. And so your purpose is like that, and guess what? People are gonna tell you every day that that jewel is not worth anything. They're gonna tell you that that jewel is actually valueless. It doesn't have any impact on your life. They're gonna try and take away that value. They're gonna tell you that there's another jewel out there that you need to have more value. And what ends up happening is you don't, I love the word, look at the wording, protect your purpose. You have to protect it. So what happens is your success grows, you get more opportunities, more ideas, more things coming your way.

Temptations.

Temptations. But they can all take you away from your purpose.

Distractions, yeah.

Distractions. And to me, I'm repeating this for myself because I'm like, I just want to stick to what I was born to do. And I'm so grateful that I get to do it. happy I get to do it, and I want to keep protecting it. I don't want to get lost in the waves. You know, you don't want to just get chucked in the waves of the ocean and just get lost and just not know where you're going.

So for me, when you protect your purpose, your purpose protects you. So that's been your biggest lesson.

That's my biggest lesson. Why do you feel like your purpose has been maybe distracted in some way?

I don't think it has, but I'm saying it so it doesn't.

Like, you're reminding yourself. Yeah, I'm reminding myself. Like, I'm preaching to myself right now. Especially being in Hollywood and the temptation of all these opportunities out here. Totally, and I think for me it's a bigger lesson also because it gives me more faith. So I always encourage, and this is actually, actually this is why it's my biggest lesson. I encourage so many people that I coach, so many people that I mentor, obviously everyone in my community and audience and everything, to go and follow that, go and live that purpose. And I see time and time again that when I see people trying to live their purpose, they are protected, that things work. When you're playing in your dharma and your purpose, things work, things move, you feel momentum. They happen. And I'm not saying they happen without effort, but they happen, they move. Whereas when you're not, you just constantly feel like you're grinding up against, you know, a wall.

I know. Challenges.

Just constant.

So what is your purpose and when did you discover it?

Good question. What is my purpose? My purpose is simple. It's always has been since, not since the beginning, because I discovered it afterwards. My purpose is making wisdom go viral. And I've stuck with that. I've kept it that way because to me, and there's more to it, making wisdom go viral through entertainment, I would say, is my purpose because I believe that that is something that is uniquely my goal, impact and service. And the beautiful thing is I'm not limited to a platform. So that could be books, it can be podcasts, it can be TV shows, it can be movies. It's not limited. And this I learned by by reading. I was reading after, and this was after my video started to, to get seen. This wasn't before I did it. It wasn't like I sat down and I wrote this fancy tagline. I was reading Salim Ishmael's book called exponential organizations. And in this book, he talks about something called an MTP, a massive transformational purpose. And he says that every major person organization in the world has an MTP. So an MTP has to aspirational, it has to be massive, and it has to be service and purpose based. So Google's is organizing the world's information. Notice it doesn't say we're an SEO company. Notice it doesn't say we do Google ads. They're organizing the world's information. That's how big they're dreaming. And when you're organizing the world's information, you can do driverless cars, you can do Google Glass, you can sell Google ads, whatever it is. And so Ted's is Ideas worth spreading. That's what they are. That's what they're about. So Jay Shetty is making wisdom go viral.

That's what I'm dedicated to. So when did you discover it?

'Cause it wasn't when you were 10. It wasn't when you were 21 in college. I say I was 30, probably two, three years ago.

So I'm 32 now. So I'd say like two, three years ago is when I discovered.

So 30 years old is when you discovered your purpose. Correct. So what was your purpose before that? My purpose before that was finding my purpose. Like it's like that process of just like, My purpose before that was 14 years. So I've been online for four years. I've spent 10 years offline talking about the same stuff, sharing the same messages in talks, in universities, in small seminars, in coaching and mentoring. Like I've been doing the same thing for 14 years. But I didn't realize it was my purpose until very recently. But I just did what I enjoyed and naturally tried to get better at it.

So if we don't know what our purpose is, our purpose is and we're working towards finding our purpose, it's okay.

That's actually where you're going to spend most of your life.

Discovering what your purpose is.

Totally.

And that's the best bit. Because I think a lot of people are like, well, I don't know what my purpose is. Totally.

How do I just find it? The pressure of finding your purpose will stop you from finding your purpose. Literally. And the pressure is so heavy. And that's why it's not about finding that. It's just starting with the basics. What am I good at? And I talk about it and I break down Dharma in here and I talk about what are your passion? What is your expertise? What is your compassion? Because that's really important. What is your compassion for the world? Like what problem do you want to solve? I often people will say there's so many things I could do, there's so many things I'm like, my question is not what causes you the greatest joy? Sometimes my question is what is what.

Causes you the greatest pain?

Make that your purpose. Make that your purpose. If you don't know what your joy.

Is, you definitely know what your pain is.

What do you not like in the world?

And so for me- Go serve that thing.

100%. So for me, the greatest pain I see in the world is people not reaching their potential. That causes me more pain. Because I believe that there is someone out there who is stacking shelves, who has the cure to cancer. There is someone out there who's a talented singer. There is someone out there who's not living to their potential. And I think we're better people, we're better partners, and we're better parents. when we live to our potential. So that's what I'm trying to solve. And I'm not saying that's the biggest thing.

Sure. I'm saying it's my thing. Whenever I work with people, I'm always telling them to find your purpose, focus on what you're most passionate about or what you have the most pain around. There you go. It's the same thing. It's like, do the thing you love the most. Totally. Keep doing it until you either discover that's it or maybe I don't love that anymore. Like, I played so many sports growing up. I used to love baseball. I used to love soccer. And then I got bored with it. I got burnt out by it. It wasn't a love of mine anymore. It wasn't a passion. And then I switched to football and it was like, oh, this is a passion. And I'm actually more gifted physically for this sport than I would be for soccer. I was too big for soccer. I couldn't run seven miles a day right on the field. But I think you need to try lots of things and you might think it's a passion, but you might get burnt out and discover, I don't love it anymore.

What else is there?

And keep trying. things like you said eight new things a month.

Yeah.

Till you discover. Till you discover. You might take you to a 30, 40, 50.

Right?

It doesn't, and that doesn't matter. Like it doesn't matter. Like the fun is in the growth and the journey and the, like for me the last 10 years before this happened and my life changed, it was like those were fun. I was happy. I wasn't unhappy because of that because.

I didn't have to know the exact.

Yeah, exactly.

And now I'm very clear on it. and I'm happy for it to evolve too. Like, I don't think it has to stay the same. I may sit with you in two years time and tell you something completely different.

Right.

And I'm okay with that. But I can only work with what I have now. And I think we start trying to postpone our purpose or find a date by which you have to. You put a deadline on your purpose. It doesn't make any sense. Like, if it. If you really care about it, how can you put a deadline on it? You just keep working towards.

What are three skills that everyone should try to learn in the next one to two years that will help them in their life tremendously? No matter who you are, where you live in the world, three things we could start to practice, learn, master that will improve our life.

-Yeah. That's a great question. You asked me a lot of great questions. Every question.

-I know. That's a great question.

You reminded me of something which I'm gonna share is a bunch of years back I went to the launch of Eric Schmidt's book, How Google Works. And I was in the audience, I didn't get to interview him or meet him or anything like that, but I remember sitting in the audience and there was someone else there who was interviewing him and talking and they were like, and someone asked this question from the audience. So a student got up and they said, what do you think is the number one skill that students should be focusing on? And they said, Everyone should become data analysts. Everyone should be coming, everyone in this room should be coming to, and I was sitting there going, I know nothing about being a data analyst. And I think sometimes we throw out these careers or like hard skills and technicals and it's like, well, not everyone's gonna vibe with that. So I just wanna share that because I think so often like we get bad advice like that.

I'm like, imagine I pursued becoming a data analyst. And you have to also know the perspective of the person you're getting that advice from. So your perspective, your three things that people should be taking is going to come from your perspective and your experience of what's worked for you.

Correct.

But what would you think?

So I'd say the first one for me is learn how to have a conversation with yourself. Like just learn how to have a conversation with yourself. Like if you don't know, if I'll give you one of the studies that I share in the book which I absolutely love, men and women were asked either to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes, or they could give themselves an electric shock if they were bored.

And they took a shot.

30% of women chose an electric shock and 60% of men chose an electric shock because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts.

For 15 minutes.

For 15 minutes. Why is that? Because we have not learned to have a conversation with ourselves.

Or even love ourselves.

No, we haven't. And I think that starts with the conversation. I think you're right. We don't love ourselves but that starts with learning to talk to yourself. So find time for you to talk to your own mind, to talk to yourself, to understand yourself, to find out how many of us, when you go to a restaurant, you know whether you're gonna go back or not based on whether you like the food. When you watch a movie, you know whether you're gonna recommend it to your friends based on whether you liked it or not. Why do we keep visiting the same people, the same places, and doing the same projects when they don't lift us up? So many of us are not aware of the same people that we hang around with that bring us down, the places that don't feed us, they drain our energy, and the projects that don't light us up. But we keep going back there because we don't talk to ourselves. Because we don't talk to ourselves. Because no one, like, I can ask you, hey, did you like that restaurant? But when do we ask ourselves, hey.

Do I like, do I want to hang out with that person?

Does that person, do I want to be in this relationship? Do I want to be in this job?

We just get scared of those conversations.

So we avoid them. So that's first tip.

The second thing is, learn to have.

A conversation with yourself. Learn to have a conversation with yourself. The second thing is know how your mind tricks you. So we used to play this game in the monastery where every time you lose to your mind, you put a scoreboard up and you put a one.

For the mind and zero for you.

When you lose to the mind, meaning what? Like, so let's say you make a commitment.

So I make a commitment that I'm.

Not gonna eat sugar. And then you did 2020.

And I do. The mind beats me to it.

So I'm gonna put a one for the mind. Zero for me. It's great. It's competing with yourself in a good way. It's fun, yeah. And people do this with like, I guess now with like dollar jars or whatever, like you put a dollar in and you swear. But that doesn't make sense because you end up making money every time you swear. But if you beat your mind and you put it, it's great. So you have to start learning the tricks of your mind. When and how does your mind fool you into making bad decisions? If you know that, Where did it.

Fool you the most that it was the hardest for you to overcome?

Yeah, I think the biggest thing was, it's probably ego. Like it's wanting to, it's like walking into a room expecting respect, walking into a room expecting to be dealt in a certain way.

Wow.

Like when you get treated with- Treated.

With, you buy your own hype, right? You fall for the stuff like that.

You just go for it sometimes?

I think we all do, yeah. I think I would be in ego if I didn't say I did like is in like ego. That's the trick of the ego. The ego makes you think you're untouchable and the ego makes you think that you are, you know, that nothing about you can ever go wrong or you're perfect or not even that but the.

Ego- Nothing can bring you down and hurt you.

Correct. The moment you think you can't be brought down, you will be brought down. The moment you think that you can't, one of my teachers would always pray that he never, and he's been a monk for 40 years, he would always pray that he would never fall to his temptations. And we said to him, you haven't fallen to your temptations for 40 years. Why do you pray for that? He goes, I haven't fallen because I pray for it. Wow. He was like, because I pray for it. Because I'm aware. Not just because I think it's gonna, yeah. He's aware. And there's a beautiful story of Benjamin Franklin where he talks about before he died, I believe he had 13 or 14 precepts. These were qualities that he wanted to live by and gain. So they're like Simplicity, Integrity, virtues, all these powerful things. And he was asked when he was on his deathbed, which was the one he didn't accomplish? And he said, the last one, that was humility. And that's like the display of humility. Like, you can't think you're at humility.

And then be humble.

Like, that's not possible. It's an oxymoron.

So we stay humble with.

All with greatness happening.

Yeah.

You know, if you're achieving your dreams, you're making an impact, you're doing great.

Stuff, how do you stay humble? I think the biggest one is surround yourself with people who are constantly better than you. And when I say better, I don't just mean materially. I mean, when I'm around my monk teachers, I just feel filthy.

Right.

Like, they're so dirty. Yeah, they're so pure that it's such a mirror reflection. I'm around them, I'm like, whoa, I've got so much. Yeah, I've got so much, like, Duh.

Yeah.

And that's a good thing. Like, I love being around them. And they don't say that to me. Like, they don't make me feel that way. It's just that you get a mirror. When you're around people who are transparent, you get a reflection of yourself. Like, so I get that when I'm with them. So first thing is spend time with people who are more spiritually elevated and more conscious because you get a reflection without them even saying it. The second thing is keep increasing your goal posts. Like, most of us are not. Our goal should keep us humble, not other people's goals. We try and think other people's goals keep us humble because we're looking at what people are doing. It's like your goal posts should never.

Be achieving or it should be bigger.

And bigger and bigger all the time. Always thank the people who gave you the gift that is being recognized. Like if you're being recognized for a gift, someone gave that to you. Make your mentor thank your mentor. Thank your teachers. Give it back to them. to them because I think we forget that you start thinking you're self-made and I don't think anyone's genuinely self-made I just don't think that's true because someone had to give you an, an Interruption, an interaction, exchange, a skill, a gift, an idea, whatever it was.

These are really fun questions.

The first one is to have a conversation with yourself. Second is know how your mind tricks.

You and be fully aware of it.

And was the humility a part of that or. No, I would say that was just my personal example of what I can struggle with sometimes.

Okay, and the third skill everyone should learn.

The third skill everyone should learn is how to have difficult conversations with other people. So hard. Because I think that marriages are made of it, dating's made of it, friendships are made of it. I think sometimes we've had some difficult conversations, like in the sense of I had to call you up and say, and it's like, I think we're good at that with each other. and that's why our friendship is strong, because I think we're honest with each other. And I feel that you feel comfortable telling me stuff. Like we've had email exchanges where you've been honest with me and I've been honest with you. Of course. I think that's good, because I think when you don't have tough conversations with people, your relationships just sit on the.

Surface and they never go anywhere. If you're looking for more greatness in your life, make sure to check out this video right here. And also check out our free PDF, the 3 Steps secrets to unlock the power of your mind to help you change your life. Download it right here. We're all faced with great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.

And we are at that point.