How to Find and Keep Love Ft. Jay Shetty

Hey everyone, I have something really, really special for you today. My dear friend Jay Shetty recently joined me and our Love Life Club members for an exclusive interview and Q&A session where he talked all about his new book, Eight Rules of Love. I've taken a portion of that conversation to show you here today. I wanted you to see it. I think that you're going to get so much out of this. Jay is a dear friend of mine and an extremely talented coach, an extremely insightful person. By the way, Jay also sent me a lovely little package today with the book inside and a mirror where I can write why I love myself, which is adorable. And I will do that after this video. And so will you, Jameson. And by the way, as you're watching the interview, pull up a tab on Amazon, grab yourself a copy of the book. I want everyone who watches this video to go out there and grab a copy of this, go check it out, Eight Rules of Love, and enjoy the interview with my friend, Jay. It's such a pleasure to have you here with us. Thank you, Anthony. Thank you. And to be doing this. It was exciting for me when I knew you were writing a love life book. 'Cause then I was like, oh man, this is gonna be a whole new angle on it because of everything that you've done in your life and the time that you've studied as a monk. It was three years.

Three years, yeah.

Yeah, which is an extraordinary amount of time. I mean, most people, if they're gonna do something that represents kind of a big shift in trajectory, they might go and do it for a year. But to take those three years, it always strikes me as an incredibly, maybe you don't see it this way, I don't know, but a very brave thing to do, to sort of take yourself out of the rhythm of everybody else that you probably knew, and put yourself in a completely different rhythm that I have no doubt must be, everything you learnt there must be responsible for so much of what you've now done in your life. But I heard Rich Roll talking about the fact that when he was going to AA meetings for his sobriety, he felt like, and I think he did that in his early 30s, but he felt like being in AA meetings was one of the things that was hard is he was watching his friends get promoted and like go move forward in their lives, their careers, getting married. he was sort of felt like he was standing still in AA meetings doing very internal silent work that didn't have any immediate external.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow.

And that he had to kind of make his peace with that. Was it the same for you?

So, I mean, first of all, I'm so grateful to be here, man, and grateful to everyone who's, I know audience watching live, thank you so much for being here as well. And I want to say back just how much I admit your work and how awesome it's been to watch you from afar and then become friends and kind of message over time and connect. And I know Lewis has been a big part of us getting to hang out more as well. But yeah, man, thank you so much for this opportunity and so excited to speak about this with you.

Thanks, man.

What's really interesting is that when I chose to become a monk for three years, I actually thought I was going to be a monk for the rest of my life. So when I made that decision, it wasn't a three-month one year, three year commitment, it was a hope of this is home now. And so when I look at it, I look at it the other way where it was almost like three years was a failure or was me not completing what I wanted. And when you talk about it from the rich role sense, it's really fascinating because when I went to become a monk, it was almost as if time stopped. So you don't celebrate birthdays when you're a monk. You forget how old you are. You feel you are the age that you went in as. So I went in at 21 going on 22. I still sometimes feel like I'm still 21 on 22 in so many ways because you just switched off this idea of growing up. There was no thing you had to do. It wasn't like all your. I didn't know when friends were buying houses or, you know, moving into a home. I didn't know when friends were getting married.

Were you in touch with people?

I wasn't in touch with pretty much anyone.

Wow.

And so I wasn't really aware of what was happening in the outside world, and so I got this. beautiful opportunity to truly go inward with zero comparison, with zero outlook into what anyone else's life was. And I think that that's kind of what I urge other people to do in their own way. So not everyone's gonna take out three years, but I think we have to find time every week, every month, every year where we're just by ourselves learning about ourselves, figuring ourselves out. Because when you shut out that outside noise and that outside comparison, you actually can hear your own voice. You actually can understand what's important to you because now you don't have someone else's opinion or expectation or some other obligation kind of pulling on your time and your energy.

It strikes me that the what a gift that is to be able to do that. I've spent 15 years of my life now working with people in their love lives who feel like there is this constant pressure to kind of graduate in this area of their lives, to find someone special, to find whatever they want to call it, my soul mate, the love of my life, the person I'm going to build with. And it's one of the things that a lot of people in that position don't have the benefit of is that kind of shutting out the comparison, because the is at the Thanksgiving table. The comparison is on Instagram. It's being invited by their grandmother who says, why aren't you married yet? Or their friends who are having kids, and that's what they may want for themselves, but it hasn't happened and they haven't met someone. So do you, and I know at the beginning of your new book, you talk about the importance of solitude, the importance of having that time to hear your own voice and discover yourself. What would be your suggestion for people who want to do that, but they are being bombarded by these, they're being ambushed really by comparison all the time. Even if they're not addicted to social media, they're still feeling it from just the peer group they're in and feeling like they're not at the same stage as everybody else.

I mean, that's like the question of life. It's like, I feel like everyone's trying to live up to everyone else's timeline. It's almost like you're living your life on someone else's schedule, on someone else's calendar. And that's really hard to do because everyone's moving at their own pace. And I often say to people, like, if you feel early or late, or if you feel ahead or behind, or if you feel like you're first or last, chances are you're exactly where you need to be. But because we're so dissatisfied with where we are, we're wanting to be where someone else is. And how you do that or how you find the time, that's important. But what's more important is you really believing you need to. And I think that's the issue. It's not that people don't know how to spend time with themselves or don't know how to reflect or don't know how to do that. We're almost trying to avoid it because we don't really see it as that important. All we see it as scary. And so there's this incredible study that was done on men and women where they asked men and women either to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes or they had to give themselves an electric shock. And the results are just fascinating. So 30% of women chose an electric shock instead of being alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. And 60% of men chose an electric shock. And when they asked them why, It's because they said they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes. They were scared of the idea of listening to their thoughts. Now, what I find the challenge with that is, is that you can avoid that for a long time. But what we don't realize is you could avoid that, get into a relationship, get married, have kids, and then still have to deal with those thoughts 10-15 years later. So it's your choice as to whether you want to deal with those thoughts with less responsibility, less accountability, less pressure from someone else in your life, or you're actually going to set yourself up to deal with it when you're 40 or whatever it may be, 50, whatever age you are, with someone else, with kids, maybe. And now you don't have as much time, you don't have as much energy. And so I'm encouraging people to say, I know it's scary. I know it's hard to spend time with yourself. I know that you're worried about what you'll hear if you truly sit in silence. But the problem is that suppressing that voice only makes it stronger. And the less work you do upfront, the more you're going to have to do after with so many more challenges and responsibilities.

And there is the false economy of if you don't do that, you are liable to keep choosing the wrong partners. So there's this feeling of immediate progress when you meet someone else and you go, you know, you could sort of hold that badge up and go, Look, I'm seeing someone. So now when someone asks you at the Thanksgiving table, you know, what's going on in your love life? You go, I'm seeing someone. And everyone gets off your back for a minute. So there's this feeling of progress, but it's a false feeling of progress because a year from now, when that doesn't pan out or when you're suffering and you have to leave because it's not tenable, you're right back to where you started again. Absolutely. I think you pointed out something that's really interesting to me, which is this idea that you A lot of people just don't believe it's actually gonna work. And that I have to believe alongside the discomfort of sitting with your own thoughts, there is this feeling of that's not gonna be the thing that changes the game for me. It's a bit like saying to a guy who's young and hungry, like, you know all this money you're chasing, it's not gonna work. And I feel like you have a lot of, People in their 20s now who are very good at espousing spiritual mantras and, you know, putting the right quotes on Instagram. But if you actually look at the way they behave in their lives, it's like, yeah, yeah, money doesn't make you happy. Now let me get to that next meeting. Because there's this feeling of, no, no, no, but in reality, the most important thing to me is to get status and success and money. And I feel like for a lot of people who are single, While there may be the bumper sticker kind of acknowledgement that, you know, yeah, no, I know, I know, you have to be happy on your own first. You have to be, you have to, you know, they're like, I know that, I know that. Anyway, I need to find someone. There's the, what we say we know, and then in our bones what we think is gonna make us happy, which is finding that person. And that to me seems to create this contradiction where it is really hard to ever sit still and do that work. Yes. You do so much of that work with people. Is there a, is there a convincer almost that you say to people that helps them finally go, oh, I'm gonna do this work?

Yeah. Well, I think that, by the way, I completely agree with you. And I love, I love where you're taking this conversation. And I think it takes, you know what it's like when you first get into a cold plunge, when you first sit in extreme heat when you first do something that's uncomfortable until you actually sit in it for three to five minutes, you don't get that kick that goes, I want to do more of this. And so what I encourage people to do is schedule that time in your calendar this week where you're going to spend time with yourself for an hour, or maybe that's too much for you, and you're like, 10 minutes. It's good enough. I'm gonna schedule 10 minutes where I'm not distracted by my TV, I'm not distracted by my phone, I'm not reading a book. I'm actually gonna sit with myself and I'd like you to answer just one question. What could I do today that's going to make today a great day for me? What do I need to do today? What's in my control? What can I do today that's going to make today a great day? Just sit with that question for 10 minutes. Let the answer come naturally. Don't force it, allow it to be. And I find when you sit with that discomfort, it feels weird at first. You feel strange. But when you sit in that discomfort, you discover something. And so I think the only way is through discomfort. And there isn't a convincer apart from the experience. I don't think there's anything me or you or anyone on planet Earth can say that's going to make someone have a tangible experience without actually taking the steps towards it. So my convincer is encouraging people to do that. And when you start doing that, you get a certain feeling of, oh, wow, that was really useful or that was insightful. Or maybe you do and you're like, that was a waste of time and you need to try it again. And so I find like with anything I've done that I've always been scared about or worried about or trying to avoid, like cold plunge is a perfect example. Like, I think the only reason I did a cold plunge is because I was standing next to a friend who was like, jump in. and I didn't want to look weak. And so I was like, Sure. And so I jumped in and we both, the first time I did it, because he was, he'd been practicing and everything, we sat in there for four to five minutes the first time I ever did it. And I wanted to get out at every point, but after overcoming that, I was like, oh, that was, that feels really great. And now when I get back in, if I've been back in after a while, I want to get out in 30 seconds. So that's, that's how I see it. Like, there's no, Nothing can, no one could have told me how amazing that experience could have been without me actually taking the step to do it.

I suppose the only thing that can help is the acknowledgement empirically, doing the other has never worked.

Yes.

The pattern I'm in, in relationships has never worked for me. Firstly, feeling frantic and panicked single is not working for me, or even just a quiet reservation that I don't feel good. And then jumping into relationships and hoping that's gonna fix it hasn't worked for me. Because now it just translates to jealousy or controlling behavior or constant fear of abandonment that I'm gonna lose this thing that's now so important to me. So I feel like it's useful at least to acknowledge the untenability of the pain I'm currently suffering.

Yeah, and I think you've sparked another thought for me that the other way of looking at it is, well, even if I find someone, I might actually push them away.

Yeah.

So even if I attracted and connected with a person that I think is right for me, I might be in the wrong place in my life for the right person, and I may actually push the right person away. And I think that is a healthier fear to say, let me work on myself, let me figure myself out, let me be somewhat on that path. there is no completion. I'm not saying you have to completely figure yourself out before you move into a relationship, but if you're on that path, chances are you're more likely to find and keep the person that you're really wanting to have in your life.

Yeah, and I want to come on to that. I want to talk more about that because you said something in the book that I thought was great, which is that by spending time with yourself, you start to relearn what you like. Because I think a lot of us, it feels very abstract the idea of spending time with ourselves and what does it mean and what's the benefit, but you know, put it in really specific terms, which is I will learn how I like to spend my time, I'll learn what my own values are, what I love doing. And then at the very least, that means I come into a situation as an entity in the arrangement who has needs and who exists and is an invisible and doesn't just chameleonize themselves to whatever the other person wants. I think the struggle for so many people is that while they see themselves doing that work, they go, the clock is ticking. And as the clock is ticking, the things that I think give me any value whatsoever are fading. Because we can be told that looks don't matter or that age doesn't matter, but so many people's experience either lived or viewed through people they know or the way just the perception of dating. Oh, they keep going for younger people. That's interesting. Like men keep going for women half their age or who are a bit younger or relationships with big age gaps don't work or even men at my own age still are looking younger. And so there's this almost this feeling of, yeah, but the longer I'm on the shelf, the more I feel like my value is going down. And so that feeling of my stock's never gonna be higher than it is right now today recreates the sense of panic that I don't have time to do the work you're doing. I need to find someone now while my stock is at the highest it's gonna be. I'm not stating that as a truth. That's the psychology that I think makes people constantly look at the clock and go, I don't have time for all this sitting with myself stuff. What do you say to those people because I think that would really help.

Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. The first thing is, how many times have you ever made a good decision when you've been panicked, desperate or felt stuck? So that desperation that you're referring to, that kind of state of panic, that state of on the shelf, how many times have you ever made a good decision based on those emotions? And all the studies show that if you are trying to get out of loneliness in order to find love, chances are you're going to settle for someone or be with the wrong person because your motivation is coming from a place of fear, insecurity, and nerves rather than from a place of excitement, joy, and sharing. And if you look at any decision in the world, when you're panicked and you choose something to eat, do you choose something healthy or unhealthy? If you're stressed, Do you work out or not? Like you look at any habit in your life, when you make decisions in that pain, you rarely make good choices. And so that would be something I'd alert people to. The second thing I'd say, which is much more realistic, is this is a simultaneous process. This isn't a linear journey of I figure myself out, then I find the right person. This is happening at the same time. You could be dating and working on yourself at the same time. You're just slowing down the process. I read a study that said it takes 200 hours to truly get to know someone. 200 hours of quality time to get to know someone. But the other research shows that men pretty much say, I love you in one to two months, and women take like three to six months to say it. So now when you look at that, not only are we not doing the work, we're also trying to fast forward and accelerate the relationship. No wonder it ends as quickly as it starts.

Do we know why men say I love you faster?

Well, they say it more often in their life too.

Really?

So men are more likely to say I love you.

Is there a, do they, have they come up with a reasoning for that?

Not that I've read. I mean, I have my own, and I'm sure you, and I wanna hear yours as well. I haven't read anything specific. I mean, my reasoning is that I think men, at least men that I know, men that I've worked with, often equate lust or attraction to love. And so if a man is infatuated with someone or finds someone extremely attractive, a man thinks to himself, I'm in love with that person. And so it's more likely to equate attraction and lust and infatuation with love and therefore say it more often. And I don't think women think the same way and therefore they're less likely to say it because they are trying to look for a few other things apart from that and therefore they slow down that process. And so sometimes, and I think this is why, I mean, a lot of the women that I've been working with or speaking to recently are experiencing so much love bombing. Like there's this whole, you know, like the man gets infatuated, he's totally into, and again, I don't wanna make gender stereotypes, it can be anyone, but like you feel like this person's fully in love with you because they're finding their validation from making you feel good. So they think that if they make you feel good, that that means they have value, so they love bomb the hell out of you, and then three months later, they realized they didn't really get to know you or they find someone else or whatever it may be, and all of a sudden you think you're being left behind. And so I think that's why. That's my reasoning. I'd love to hear yours and yours.

I think that's really. I think that that's a very good point. Perhaps there's also some element of societal roles coming in there where women feel like it's a guy's job to make the first move. So there's maybe a little bit of, like, I'm, you know, as a woman, I don't want, you know, women routinely get accused of being, you know, overboard with their emotions or like, oh, she's crazy, man. She's this. And no one wants to be accused of that. And of course, it's a completely wrong stereotype, but the idea is that women are labeled that too often. And so I think a lot of women have the idea in their mind that the last thing they want to be called is like, high maintenance or over the top or like moving too fast. They're like, I don't want to scare someone off. So it's like maybe there's an element of waiting for the guy to do it first. And then it's like, oh, now it's safe for me to do this because I know we're in sync, whereas maybe men don't have that, you know, we're the ones that propose, right? So men don't have that feeling of, I have to go second. And it might also be a Perhaps there's some lack of impulse control in men.

Yeah.

That women are better at, where men are just like bull in a china shop. Let me, yeah, I'll say I love you, not thinking of the consequences of that, or that I might actually end up hurting you three weeks from now when I realize that I didn't give that in myself a chance to see if that was actually real or not.

Yeah.

Yeah. Whereas women might be more thoughtful about going, Let's just see how this plays out before I do that.

Totally, I completely agree with your point. That theory stacks up well for me too. I feel like there's some truth in that. And ultimately, there's also the bad advice of I love you being the magic words and it unlocks all these other benefits that come in a relationship. And so there's so much manipulative- and.

That comes in the kind of impulse control thing, because there's a selfishness that goes hand in hand with that. If I'm- I often think impulsive is like kind of a nice window dressing of selfishness. 'Cause what it really means is I act without any kind of acknowledgement of the consequences of doing this. How will it may you use the example in your book of taking someone to a wedding, not because you really like them, but because you needed a date for a wedding. And you're not really thinking of how will this affect this person's perception of what this is. If I see this as something just purely casual, and this person now says that they're taking me to a wedding. This must mean something. You know, if you're sort of impulsive and spontaneous, it's also a way of saying, I don't really think about how this is gonna affect you.

Absolutely, and in the movies it always works out. So that's the other issue. Like when someone takes you to a wedding, even though they were just trying to make someone else jealous, but somehow, you know, you found romance. And so I feel like that's the imagery that's been thrown around as well, that, you know, when you do these things, somehow it works out, somehow it develops into this. And so, Everyone's misled.

I think that I really like what you said about when have you ever made a good decision from that place of stress, panic, desperation, anxiety? Because it also translates into the early dating process, right? It doesn't just translate into I really want to find someone. And then when you find someone, you go, okay, now I'm going to be really measured about this. It translates into those first weeks and months of dating as well. So now instead of being, I like that you said you could do the work that we're talking about at the same time as meeting people. And it's actually a very good time to practice it because you can meet someone, you can have a great first date. You certainly haven't clocked the 200 hours that it takes to know someone and therefore to know if they're really right for you. All you know is that I had a really good time And my brain is now on overdrive with making this person much more important than they should actually be right now. It strikes me that that's a really good time to practice the work that you're talking about because it's a way of, it's a way of like stopping the clock and slowing everything down while you're in a process where your emotions and your sometimes insecurities and your desires are trying to speed everything up.

Yeah, no, you're spot on. I was thinking about this this morning actually, that if your relationship starts like an interview, it will end like a firing, right? It's like this idea of like, it starts like an interview. Both people are presenting perfect versions of themselves. They're answering the questions in the right way. They're responding and behaving in a way to impress the other person. And then fast forward a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, and someone's going, oh, well, you're not who I thought you were.

Right?

And that's the firing. That's like, oh, you didn't live up to what you said on the job application. Right? You didn't live up to how you interviewed with me. And that's really what we're saying. And so I find that that's what's happening. And if you're doing the work simultaneously, what you just said is a perfect connection that, to be honest, self-work can't be done in a silo. It can't be done. Like, when I came back from the monastery and tested the ideas I'd learned, that's when the ideas became even more real to me. Like for three years, I'd say I learned the wisdom and the knowledge and the curriculum. But when I came back into the real world and actually had to apply the curriculum, that's when it went really deep for me. So absolutely people should do it simultaneously. And you're absolutely right that actually if you're doing that work, you'll be able to spot someone love bombing you. If you're doing that work, you'll be able to tell someone's misleading you or maybe being manipulative. or you'll be able to tell whether someone's being a bit more genuine and real because they're showing you more parts of themselves. And so I feel like if we want something real, if we want something true, then we're having to put forward a real, true version of ourselves. And that only comes with a form of self-respect and confidence that is built outside of being in front of someone. I think it's very, very, very difficult to be completely yourself in front of someone new that you like, if you haven't become confident with who you are with yourself in the first place, right? Like it's just, I think it's natural and it doesn't make you a bad person. It's natural when you're around someone new to want them to like you, to want them to think you're great and attractive, and to walk away thinking that's a nice person. Even if you're not attracted to them, you feel that way.

Yeah.

So when you are attracted to someone, you definitely want them to feel that way. But if you've realized that I don't want to mold and bend and become a worse version of myself in order for someone to like me, and you decided that separately, you can hold on to that in that conversation.

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