Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #261 BITESIZE | This Monk Mindset Will Help You Live a Happier Life | Jay Shetty

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Starting point is 00:00:51 10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 122 of the podcast with the award-winning storyteller and former monk, Jay Shetty. In this clip, we explore identity, the monk mindset, and living an authentic life. And Jay explains why so many of us these days are not living lives that are truly ours. Jay, I think one of the first times I came across you was a few years back. I heard you on an interview. I remember being really impacted by what you said. I think, who is this guy? I mean,

Starting point is 00:01:59 this is pretty incredible what I heard. You were talking a lot about, I think, identity. incredible what I heard. You were talking a lot about, I think, identity. It really got me thinking about what is my identity? I guess I was on a journey then anyway, since I lost my father about what, seven years ago now. I think that was one of the significant moments in my life that got me to start questioning everything, thinking about, well, who am I? Am I living my life or am I living somebody else's life? I think you expressed it so beautifully. But then when I read your book, I think you start off very early on with identity. So I wonder if you could expand on identity. What is it and why do you think many of us need to spend a bit of time thinking about it?

Starting point is 00:02:42 The monks start with identity and at the root of the issue because a lot of what we experience in the world today, as you know, and I know how holistic you are in the way you advise your patients. When you were speaking on my podcast, I was so impressed by you and how you're able to tie in so many psychological and natural practices and relational exercises that can improve people's health and well-being overall. I remember you talking about encouraging your clients to see more friends as a way of changing the way they feel. And I was thinking, wow, this person's got so many great ideas. And the reason is because, Rangan, you also have that monk mindset of you

Starting point is 00:03:21 go to the root of the issue. It's really easy to just say, oh, well, just take two of these a day or try this, or, you know, maybe you need to do this. But when you think about it from the root perspective, where do our challenges arise? And our challenges arise by how we see ourself. And what I believe Rangan's referring to is there's this quote that I begin my book with and that I've shared in interviews for the last few years. And it's from a writer named Charles Horton Cooley. And he said, and bear with me, and you've got to really listen closely to this. So what he said that the challenge today is, 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. Now, just let that blow your mind for a moment. I will explain it. I promise. I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. Now, just let that blow your mind for a moment. I will explain it. I

Starting point is 00:04:05 promise. 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, which means we live in a perception of a perception of ourselves. So I'll break it down. If I think Rangan thinks I'm smart, I'll say I feel smart. But if I think Rangan thinks I'm not smart, then I'll say I'm not smart. And so the challenge is that we're basing how we feel about ourselves on what we think someone thinks of us. And the greatest challenge with that is, how do you have any idea if what you think someone thinks about you is even true and whether that's even the best place to start. So that's where our identity struggles.

Starting point is 00:04:51 We start pursuing things in life because we think other people value them. It's almost like, let's think of the most playground version of this. If I remember wearing high-tech shoes from BHS to the playground, right? I remember my mom, because my parents didn't buy me Nike trainers or Adidas trainers, which I always wanted. You know, we didn't come from that background. I couldn't afford them. And my parents didn't want me to have them. So I'd walk in with my high-tech trainers from BHS. They were about 10 quid or whatever they were. And, you know, to me, it didn't make a difference. I didn't really know at that time, whether high-tech was good or bad. They were just

Starting point is 00:05:29 trainers that my parents bought me. Now, everyone, the cool kid at school had the latest Nike trainers. All of a sudden I start thinking that he's now surrounded by everyone. Everyone's talking about his trainers. Everyone's giving him adoration. Everyone's giving him respect. everyone. Everyone's talking about his trainers. Everyone's giving him adoration. Everyone's giving him respect. Everyone's talking about his trainers. So now I think that if I want to have that same experience and love from people, that I need to get that. Not realizing that I may be able to get deeper love from people by being kind and compassionate. That I may actually be able to build a real relationship with people if I'm loving and considerate and empathetic. And it's so crazy how your life can become about pursuing something. And that's why Jim Carrey puts it best. And I'm paraphrasing. He says, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:15 everyone in the world should achieve everything they've ever wanted and accomplish everything they've ever pursued just to realize that it's not the point. Now that doesn't mean the monk mindset is not about not pursuing your goals. It's actually about pursuing your truest goals, your truest self and your most authentic aligned goals. So it's not about not having goals. It's about making sure that your goals are actually yours. Yeah. And you know, I get shivers when you say that coolly quotes. Oh, me too, man. And I can't say for sure where I was when I heard that interview, but I pressed pause and I think I wrote it in my notes, but I really had to sit with it for a while. And I would urge people if they

Starting point is 00:06:58 need to press pause right now, listen to it and really think about it. And I think, you know, it's really interesting, you know, hearing that and I reflect on my children. I think about this as they go through school and, you know, they start to see what other people have got. And, you know, my wife and I, we're very keen to try and not put value on those things because I know I also had experiences like that where I'd say, oh God, man, they're wearing those things. I want to wear those because if I wear them, I'm going to be happy. You know, we all do things at times to get that validation or what we think is a validation

Starting point is 00:07:44 from people around them. But I think what you're trying to get at is how do we find our own identity? How do we live our own lives? Wasting your time trying to change how someone thinks of you can actually be one of the most worthless pursuits in life. But changing how you think about yourself is probably one of the most worthwhile pursuits in life, but the one we spend less time on. We're constantly trying to change how people think about us. And we think if they think highly of us, then we'll feel better about ourselves. But that's not the case. The case is we can change how we feel about ourselves by changing our behavior and being

Starting point is 00:08:20 more in aligned with the person we want to be with our values so don't get lost in trying to change other people's perceptions of you because that could be a never-ending journey and and a journey that you never reach the destination of because you never will truly be able to control it yeah comes full circle back to that cooley quote right i mean that is it is such a powerful quote because everything we talk about, you can Jen just back it up straight into that. And again, it brings out the meaning of that quote so much more. You mentioned gratitude and gratitude has come up on the show before, but what I loved about your take on it was, if I remember the chapter rightly, you said,

Starting point is 00:09:05 take on it was, if I remember the chapter rightly, you said, gratitude is a daily practice. That's the easy part. I want you to be grateful in every aspect of your life. And I love that. And I've been sitting with the idea for the last week or so. What if you could expand on it, Jay? Yeah, beautiful. I'm really glad you're asking me about gratitude. Before we do that, though, you sparked another thought. When you were talking about the stories we tell ourselves, I think that's so important because there's a great study that I talk about in the book by Amy Vrzniewski from the Yale University. And what they found is that they tried to find a career

Starting point is 00:09:39 that they felt people may find not sharing a positive story around. And they found that hospital cleaners or hospital workers potentially have one of the toughest jobs. And Rangan, you're a doctor and I'm sure you've seen people having to do that work and it's a tough job. And so they asked hospital workers how they define their jobs. And the majority of them defined it as low skilled, they defined their jobs. And the majority of them defined it as low skilled, defined it as insignificant, defined it as just a way to pay the bills and that their job wasn't useful or their job wasn't important. And their role was basically described like the personnel manual. But then they asked another set of hospital workers, different people who did the same jobs. And they said,

Starting point is 00:10:22 how do you feel about your jobs? And these people had completely different views. They felt they were healers. They felt they were caretakers. They felt that they were able to transform the energy of the actual hospital. They felt that they were carers for the people there. And what they found is different people who did the same job were telling themselves a different story. And what they found is different people who did the same job were telling themselves a different story. And therefore they saw their role as integral to the healing of the patient. And because they saw their role as integral to the healing of the patient, they found the work that they did to be extremely meaningful. And that's crazy to think about it, that different people doing the same job could say different

Starting point is 00:11:05 things about the same work. They're doing the same exact thing daily, but someone thinks it's meaningless and the other thinks it's so meaningful. And this was a term by Yale that was called job crafting, the ability to assign meaning where you see it. And all of a sudden your life becomes meaningful. So if you're sitting in a job right now that you hate, or if you've got a boss that you really don't like, or if you're in a relationship that you don't want to be in, if you can't leave for whatever reason right now, one of the things I recommend you do is called job crafting from the Yale School of Management. You start asking yourself, where can I find meaning in this? What can I learn?

Starting point is 00:11:45 What can I adopt? What is this trying to teach me? And that's actually where gratitude can be applied to every place because you start going, there is some value in this. I remember when I wanted to leave my corporate job and I wanted to live my passion and do what I do today, but I'm so grateful I was at my corporate job

Starting point is 00:12:04 because I learned so much there that is so useful to me now. And we find it very easy to be grateful when things are going our way, but we find it very difficult to be grateful when things are not going our way. But what we have to learn to realize, which is a really hard lesson to realize, is that things are always going your way if you're moving in the right direction. Things are not going to always look like they're going your way and they could still be going your way. We've all seen curses turn into gifts and gifts turn into curses. But the problem is, and this is the challenge, we have a projector up here of what we want life to

Starting point is 00:12:41 look like. And then we have the reality of what life actually looks like. So there's this big discrepancy. And so sometimes you're actually going in the right direction, but because it doesn't look like your picture and your image of what it should look like, you work less, you become lazier, you become complacent, you try less harder,

Starting point is 00:13:00 but you're like, this doesn't look like the right direction. But you'll get to where you want in life, just not in the way you imagined it. If you keep going, if you keep pushing, if you keep learning, and that's what it means to be grateful in all areas of your life is trying to, even in the toughest moment, even in a challenging situation, not gratitude, like, oh, I'm so thankful to you for causing me the pain. That's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is saying to yourself, where is there meaning in this? Where is the lesson in this so I don't repeat this again? If I can be grateful in this challenging situation and I can experience gratitude at all times, then I'm always going to be coming at

Starting point is 00:13:41 things from a positive space and positive energy yeah so powerful jay really hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip i hope you have a wonderful weekend and i'll be back next week with my long-form conversational wednesday and the latest episode of bite science next friday Bites Science, next Friday.

Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - #261 BITESIZE | This Monk Mindset Will Help You Live a Happier Life | Jay Shetty

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