Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | 4 Steps to Find Your Purpose in Life | Jay Shetty #395

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

Finding your purpose in life can have a positive impact on your health and wellbeing. So how can you start finding yours?  Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.   Today's clip is from episode 334 of the podcast with Jay Shetty - a former monk and one of the world’s most influential modern self-help gurus. He’s also a bestselling author, host of the podcast On Purpose, and Chief Purpose Officer for the meditation app Calm. In this clip, he shares his wisdom on the importance of purpose and how we can go about finding or refining our own. Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/334  Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

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live more, they are giving my listeners a very special offer, a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first order. See all details at drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Today's clip is from episode 334 of the podcast with author and former monk Jay Shetty. In this clip, he shares the importance of purpose and how we can go about finding or refining our own. So this is something you've been talking about for years. If someone was to come up to you and say, I don't know what my purpose is. Can you help me? What would you say to them? I would focus on the definition of purpose that comes from the Sanskrit term dharma, which has many different definitions. But one of my favorite definitions

is eternal purpose or eternal duty. It means something that you're naturally inclined to do, something you have proclivities and propensities for. And I think both you and I love the Japanese ikigai, the reason for being, why we live. And dharma and ikigai have a lot in common. And so I always tell people, look, purpose is this big, scary word that needs to be simplified. And so my first simplification is, let's see if we can discover four things. The first is what you're passionate about, what you're really interested in. And if you're like, Jay, I don't know what I'm passionate about. I don't know what I'm interested in. We go to the root and we say, well, what are you curious about? What is it that you think

intrigues you, even if you're not passionate about it yet, if that's a strong word? The second thing I'd say is, what are you naturally good at? What do you already have expertise or skills in that you aren't even aware of or you're not even conscious of? So many of us have so many talents, so many hidden gifts, but we keep placing them on the back burner. The third thing I'd ask is, is there a pain in the world that you want to solve? Is there a problem in the world that you feel really calls to you?

Some people don't find their purpose through their passion. They find it through their pain. They find it through a stress they want to alleviate in the world, a challenge they want to remove from the world. And then the fourth and final one is, as Ikigai says is, can I get paid for it? And that's a fourth and final consideration because

I don't think purpose has to be something you have to get paid for. It can be something we dedicate our weekends, our evenings, our vacations to as well. And so the way I define it is that your passion makes you happy. And when you use your passion in the service of others, that's a purpose because it makes them happy. So how can you use your gifts and your talents and the things you love to improve the lives of others? That's what purpose really is. And now we're not looking at it as this big word. We're actually looking at it as this broken up equation of what am I passionate about? What am I excelling at? What problem do I want to solve? And then if I can, how can I get paid for it? How does your morning routine help you

tap into your purpose or, I guess, continually refine your purpose? Because I think there's something really powerful in what you do each morning that many of us can learn from. So my morning routine is made up of four key habits. And these four habits I have in the form of an acronym called TIME. And so T-I-M-E, the T stands for thankfulness. I start my day with thankfulness and gratitude. And the way I do that, Rangan, is I have a little post-it note next to my bed that says, what are you grateful for? And so the first thing I see in the morning is this post-it note that says, what are you grateful for? It's a question back at me. What I love about that is

you can write down any question you want. This comes from the idea that we have 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day. And studies show that 80% of them are negative and repetitive. Now, that's quite scary to look at. And the truth is you can't control 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day, but you can control the first thought of the day and the last thought of the day. And so for me, when I wake up to that post-it note, I am training myself to make the first thought of the day a grateful one, a thankful one. The I in my acronym stands for intention or insight. And I try and set my intention for the day.

Usually my intention is I want to be of service. I want to be able to give love. I want to express love. I want to be an ambassador of purpose and compassion in my life, in my day. And then there could be a more specific intention. Like today, it's like, well, I hope I get to share energy with Rangan.

I know Rangan's been going through a lot of personal things today. I hope that my energy, he's choosing to spend time with me. I hope that that can serve him, serve his community. And so I'm setting a really powerful intention. The M, T-I-M, M is for meditation. I meditate every morning.

I do three types of meditation, which is what I was trained in as a monk. It's meditations I teach. It's breath work for the body, visualization for the mind, and mantra for the heart or soul. And so I do my three techniques. Really what I'm trying to do in the morning is align my body and mind. Because what I find is, Rangan, we usually wake up in the morning and our body is ahead of our mind. How many times have you ever felt where your body's running around, but your mind is just still in bed? Or you experience the opposite. You wake up and your mind is racing, trying to do everything, but your body is feeling exhausted. And so for me, breath work brings my body and mind together.

Visualization allows me to visualize the day. What am I going to do? How am I going to show up? Who are the people that I'm going to meet? What kind of energy are we going to exchange? And then the mantra or sound meditation is the repetition of sacred sounds, affirmations that again become my internal dialogue. And then E is exercise, movement. At the moment I've been hiking. I've been doing a 45 minute to an hour hike every day to get some really good cardio in, to get my heart rate moving. And so that's my morning routine, pretty much five days a week. It's probably a couple of days a week that I'm a bit more flexible. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.

I also am a huge fan of morning routines. I think the way you start the day really sets the, I guess, the dial on the compass for what's going to happen that day. You mentioned all these beautiful words like intention and integrating or aligning your body and mind. I think these are really beautiful concepts for people to think about. For that single parent who feels that they're out of control and they're rushed off their feet, and they hear that and they are thinking, Jay, hey, all right for you, buddy. Maybe you've got a life that allows you to devote that kind of time to yourself each morning. I don't have that time. What do you say to them? I think that's a really fair point. You know, I don't think I'm going to be able to keep up with this exact morning routine when I

have kids. I think the first thing I'd say is you may not be able to do all of those and you may not even be able to do any of those, but I'd ask yourself one question. What's the one thing I can do today that is for me? As a parent, you're probably doing a million things a day that are for your kids, maybe for your partner. If you're a single parent, then maybe you're taking care of a family member. Maybe you've got busy work schedules. What's the one thing you can do today that's truly for yourself? It could be as simple as I'm going to sit and have my cup of coffee. I'm going to sit and have my cup of tea. I'm going to make sure that I listen to an episode of Rangan's podcast. What is that one thing I can do today that is truly for myself? Because what we're really talking about

here, Rangan, is the point of a morning routine isn't to have a perfect morning routine or to have a perfect setup. The reason for having a morning routine is to create some certainty in an otherwise uncertain day. That is the reason for a morning routine. It's saying, I know that something is going to be foundational in a day that is going to be full of chaos. I'm going to bring some sense of control into a day that will not have control. And that could be as simple as one thing you do that sets you into a positive, healthy rhythm

of the direction you want your day to go in. And so it can be as simple as, I'm the chief purpose officer at Calm. And every day on Calm, I do a seven-minute meditation. And it's aimed at anyone who has no more than seven minutes a day to get an insight, to be grateful, to breathe. And literally in seven minutes, I guide you through my own morning routine, which is two to three hours. I teach within seven minutes. And so I think there are lots of simple tools and techniques today that can give you the same benefit

without the same amount of time. Yeah. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Do spread the love by sharing this episode with your friends and family. And if you want more, why not go back and listen to the original full conversation with my guest. If you enjoyed this episode, I think you will really enjoy my bite-sized Friday email. It's called the Friday Five. And each week I share things that I do not share on social media.

It contains five short doses of positivity, articles or books that I'm reading, quotes that I'm thinking about, exciting research I've come across, and so much more. I really think you're going to love it. The goal is for it to be a small, yet powerful dose of feel good

to get you ready for the weekend. You can sign up for it free of charge at drchatterjee.com forward slash Friday Five. I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Make sure you have pressed subscribe and I'll be back next week with my long form conversation on Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.