How to Make 2026 the Year You Finally Change w/ Jay Shetty

I think it's important to understand a lot of people are trying to find their purpose. What's my purpose? What's this big purpose? Who said you had one? Who said you had one for a lifetime?

What I love about time to rise is that that few days, those two to three days that people spend with you, it will create a shift.

There's no question.

Because we all need those moments where we just immerse, we get absorbed, we get focused. Because some of us maybe will do 10 minutes of thinking about our life here and 30 minutes over there.

And people who won't sit for a three hour movie will go 12 hours and say, this is the greatest experience in my is immersion is the way to learn. Like if you're going to learn a language and you learn a little bit at a time, most people learned in high school and college, they don't speak the language years later. But if I dropped You In Rome, 90 days with no teacher, I pick you up, you're going to be speaking because you're seeing it, feeling, experiencing it. So three hours isn't quite that level of immersion, but it's enough to really create momentum, make some real choices and really change your life for the better. And it'll be my privilege to serve anyone who wants to join us. If you write down a purpose statement, it's long mission statement, sounds real good and you read it, it's never going to cover all of who you are, what you're for. Purpose was what gives life meaning. But you don't have to have one giant purpose that you're struggling to find. Life will evolve. And if you just keep moving forward in a purposeful manner, like whatever you do, there's some meaning to it, then I think you're going to find you're much more fulfilled. And those measurements, by the way, I would do them on your finances and I do them on the spiritual side of life. Religio means celebration. Most people in religion don't have a lot of celebration anymore, right? Just a bunch of rules. So it's like, okay, I divided it between how much are you celebrating your life? Because isn't this an unbelievable gift that we're sitting here breathing this heart's beating, we don't have to work at it, that we're at the skin's working, that we can have a conversation, that we can feel, that we live, that we can have our children, That's a miracle. We forget what a miracle it is just to be alive, right? So are you celebrating and then are you contributing? Because Celebration without contribution doesn't last. So I say measure those things. But to answer your question specifically, I think it's critical that you understand stress comes from having activity without purpose, is the drain on your emotional well being.

What's the first thing people need to do if they feel stuck?

They got to make some decisions. And what stops people make decisions. You and I know what is fear. People are afraid of making the wrong decision, fear of not being perfect, fear of the consequences of their decisions. But let's chunk it up a little bit. What do people really want? We started out, we were all here, created by something I like. God is the term. Some people like the universe. I'm not here to argue with that whatsoever. But we have to agree that something created us and that something gave us choices. And choices are how we create. We co create basically our lives. It's not your conditions, it's your decisions that determine the quality of your life. I had pretty rough conditions growing up, say at least. But I turned those into good conditions because of the mindset, because of certain psychology, because of certain decisions. If you think about your life, most people are stressed because stress is usually measured by how much you feel you control events versus events control you. The more you feel events are controlling you, the more overwhelmed you feel. The more stress, the more anxiety, the more fear. And we live in a culture where mental health is at record lows in terms of quality and happiness and joy and fulfillment and depression and anxiety are through the roof. And it's not because the world is so much more stressful. It's because the way we process the world, we have more information coming at us than any time in history. Obviously we're drowning in information. We're starving for wisdom in order to go from being stressed to not. We understand that. I think the single most important tool is decision making. Because I think that's been the skill that took me from, you know, barely surviving in a family that had tremendous pain and tremendous angst was the nicest word say, and no finances and four different fathers and a lot of physical and emotional abuse to being able to serve literally hundreds of millions, billions of people. It's been decisions along the way. So if you look at your own life, yours, mine, anyone's life, anyone listening or watching, you have to be honest and say, I'm a creator and if I don't like what I have, I've gotten here by the decisions that have created that. So the first step is to make some, maybe make some small ones that you can do and get some Momentum. But the more decisions you make, the faster it gets. I think the whole idea that I have to make the right decision is the wrong way to look at it. My whole view has been not deciding is the worst decision, right? I need to consciously decide. If I don't want to feel like things are affecting me. If I'm going to shape my world, I make a decision and if I'm wrong, I'll find out quicker. The biggest reason is people think decision is a one step process. And I found it's three, right? You can decide in the moment. The reason I make that commitment, that when I'm in the moment, I do something commits me. When I leave that moment. You get in state, you get inspired enough, or you get pissed off enough, something moves you and say, not another day, not an hour, I'm changing this, right? But then when you leave that moment and you get caught up with some meeting or something with your family or something in your social media, email or whatever it is, gradually you're in a different state and then you don't follow through. And what you said is true, something else comes up that you weren't prepared for, right? So a real decision. The word decision comes from incision in Latin. Rings means to cut off from. When you cut off any other possibility except what you've committed to, you'll find the way. It's always told people, if you want to take the island, burn your boats. As long as your brain has a way out, it'll go back. Once you decide you want to go to. The second step is commit. In fact, I hear women say this to me all the time. I know you have a large female audience. They'll say, you know, men don't commit. And I said, has he even decided? Because they're different steps. Women jump to commitment very quickly. Men, not as quickly, right? And so deciding is like a war. Sometimes I gotta figure it out, okay, I've decided. The commitment takes it into the future. Decision is the moment. And that moment can change, which is why so many people make a decision legitimately and don't follow through. That's why you need to take action immediately to commit you to follow through. Meaning book the meeting, enroll in the class, you know, call the person and set it up. Organize so you can have that conversation you haven't wanted to have. Put it on the calendar so that there's momentum going out of it. But then committing, deciding is really rough. Committing is not that rough. It's just creating enough compelling reasons to follow through, even though it might Be tough right now. But there's the third step. And after you decide and commit, there's resolve. The whole self care mentality we have, which I think was important. It was like the antidote to the. They called the hustle burnout culture. And people are stressed. You know, they're stressed, they're hustling just to make money. There's no meaning when there's no mean. You can work your ass off and be so fulfilled if it's meaningful to you, if you're doing it for a higher purpose than just money. I'm not saying you shouldn't have money. You should. It's part of a master skill of being alive and take care of your family. But if that's the only thing you're doing it for, you're going to stress out and burn out. I mean, stress comes to making things more important they really is. Failure comes to making things less important than they really are. It's an art, Right? But the fulfillment side is finding what it is that allows you to grow. Because when you grow, you feel alive. I always tell people, people ask me all the time, they say, what is it that makes people happy? You travel the world and millions of people, what is, what's the common key to happiness? And I say, progress. Progress equals happiness. When you're making progress, you're happy even when you achieve it. Like, can you think of a goal you've achieved that you're really proud of? And then afterwards thought, is this all there is? No. Oh, good. I'm so confident. You're more purposeful. Yeah. The purpose podcast.

No, and you too. No, but as in, like, I think that's because. That's because, you know, it's about progress.

Yeah. Yes.

No, no, I'm agreeing with you. Yeah.

Yeah. You ever had, though, a goal where you achieved it and you're out of your mind? Like, out of your mind and good. Like celebratory.

Probably not either.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, most people have had some celebration of their head. Yeah. And when they celebrate that, what I always ask people is, you're really celebratory. It was great. You achieved it. You were proud of yourself. Great. I say, how long did that feeling last?

Not long.

And I say, do you last six years? No. Six months, six weeks, six days, six hours. Most people somewhere between six days, six hours and six weeks max. Why does it go away? Because we're not made just to achieve goals. We're made to grow. We're made to become more. Because when we grow, we make progress. We have something to give. We have more to give. So it's like everything in the world either grows or it dies. If your relationship's not growing, don't BS yourself. It's dying. If your business is not growing, it's dying. If you're not growing, some part of you is dying inside. So. But I found that when people really grow, they're happy, and then they want to share, and they have something worth sharing.

Time to Rise is coming up at the end of this month.

Yes.

And it's another opportunity for people to get better at making decisions, to decide, to commit, to act, to resolve, to have that energy. Everything we've been talking about today.

There's something about the calendar that's so funny. It's totally arbitrary. But a new year is like a new life. It's like a fresh start. And we all need a fresh start. But the problem is most people set a bunch of New Year's resolutions, and, you know, 98% they don't follow through on them. So this is about, hey, let's figure out what you really want, what's getting the way, what's the plan? It's only three hours a day, so think of it like a great movie, only you're in it and you're actually changing your life three days in a row. So it's January 29th through the 31st, and you can go, you can attend from anywhere on earth. We had 1.3 million people last year, 10 from 193 countries. Every country on Earth that exists, at least that the UN recognizes. And it's an experience I probably won't forget. Plus, there's a community of people, and there's zero charge. It's not like partial pay or there's zero charge. Once a year, I do this just to give back to people all over the Earth. And it's really, really dynamic. And people create incredible changes and share them with the community on Facebook. I look forward to it.

Every year, I want to push people to timetorisesummit.com it's timetoriseummit.com that's where you can subscribe. Remember, you can sign up for absolutely free to join the Time to Rise summit. You can be a part of it with all of the seminars, the insights, three hours a day. It's very rare that we get to do a podcast and I get to direct you to something which will exactly solve what we've been talking about today. We get to do that, get to give you this summit as a gift. It's absolutely free that Tony's doing with him and his friends. Get into that great season in the first quarter of this year and remember, I'm forever in your corner and always rooting for you.