Life Will Be the Death of Me with Chelsea Handler - Everything Everyone Says is True with Jay Shetty

Episode Date: February 24, 2022

Jay Shetty joins Chelsea in the studio this week to talk about clearing out the cobwebs from your mental space, how his meditation practice has changed since his years as a monk, and why your mood follows your actions - not the other way around. Then: A mom finds herself trapped and surveilled as her toddler follows her every move. A podcaster fights his way out of a seasonal depression funk. And a terrible loss leaves one widow wondering if she’ll ever love again. *Executive Producer Nick StumpfProduced by Catherine LawEdited & Engineered by Brandon Dickert*****The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the Podcast author, or individuals participating in the Podcast, and do not represent the opinions of iHeartMedia or its employees. This Podcast should not be used as medical advice, mental health advice, mental health counseling or therapy, or as imparting any health care recommendations at all. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical, counseling advice and/or therapy from a competent health care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issues, health inquiry or matter, including matters discussed on this Podcast. Guests and listeners should not rely on matters discussed in the Podcast and shall not act or shall refrain from acting based on information contained in the Podcast without first seeking independent medical advice. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave, Netflix, and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,

abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the Internet and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23, so we'll see who stops by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel.

I auditioned for Frozen. What? For Kristoff. They said, okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get in. Well, you probably won. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more.

And I guess I can share that, uh... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.

I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Then I go to Ottawa, and then I kick off my American portion of the tour, picking back up April 14th in Iowa, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and then Des Moines, Iowa, and then Omaha, Nebraska. One, two, three, punch. Go to ChelseaHandler.com for the rest of the cities that I will be touring in, and we are picking back up my Vaccinated and Horny tour

after my brief ski respite. So we had a little dipsy-doodle skiing this week. First of all, good afternoon, everybody. Hi. Hi. Hi, Catherine. night joe coy does not like to ski in the trees and a lot of people are scared of the trees i love the trees but i try not to force him down the trees but i try to go in trees where there's space

so that he doesn't have to make any quick fancy moves and i take him in the trees a lot to practice so that he'll start to like the only way to get better at something is to continually do it right yeah anyway so we there's a huge huge snow dump in whistler and now i'm speaking like skiers there was a huge dump and we went through the woods and we were with my guide kelly who is an excellent skier and joe could not get his skis underneath him they just he was falling left right and center and he skied pretty much into a tree it wasn't a big tree so i was like honey stay there i'll come up because i was beneath him i had skied down i was down like 20 well probably 30 40 feet first i was like fuck do i take my boots off for my skis because that's a big no-no in skiing

like you never want to be in your boots because you don't know how deep the powder is going to be and then you could sink all the way down sure so you need your skis because they're like a boat so i was like fuck fuck so i took them off and i started to climb up i was like all right i'm strong enough i'm a mountain woman now i know how to do this i'll go get him and i could not like i did not have the stamina to step through the there was such deep powder and i was going up and so i called down kelly was another 30 feet beneath me and i was like kelly you got to go get him i can't She's like, I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming. So, and he, the whole time, I'm like, stop moving.

Because he's trying to navigate himself. He's trying to get himself out of the tree. And I'm like, it could be a tree well. In that situation, just stay where you are. Do not move. Wait for someone to come. Is that like kind of quicksand-ish? Well, if you move around too much, you could get stuck in it.

So if you're not stuck in it, just wait. You know, trying to get yourself out of it will help you get stuck in it. Got it. You know, that's a possibility. so she had to go up and get him it took this took like 40 minutes and when he came down he was like where were you he said where were you you know like that was bad and where were you and I was like fuck I was right down here Joe I was supervising the entire the entire thing and he goes you really need to think about that I needed you and you weren't there and I was like honestly

I thought I would be putting both of us in danger if I came up when I knew we had someone I go if we didn't have Kelly I would have come up and done it absolutely but we had Kelly and then I thought maybe I'm pushing him too far you know like I don't want him to get hurt or injured and it's funny to make him ski hard and he's by the way he's fucking great he's gonna be a better skier than I am by the end of this season anyway just a little story to tell where I really felt like a piece of shit because I was like he was right I should have been right by his side especially when I'm making him do something yeah well and it's nice to know that you guys don't just only have a perfect wonderful relationship like you have to work through some stuff too oh no he calls

me out on shit you know what's so funny when we went to Canada because I was so I was like do not get this Omicron before we left in December I was like you cannot get Omicron I have to get into Canada skiing is my happy place I need this time this year in order if I don't get into Canada because I test positive for Omicron like I'm gonna be pissed at you right so he's like and I'm on him He's on tour. He travels with a crew. So I'm always like, be careful, be careful. We get to we get to Canada. And my friend Ange, she was having us over. She goes, Oh, my God, I tested positive for COVID Omicron like seven days ago. She said public health has cleared me. They said it's only seven days. It's been seven days since my first symptom. It's seven days now. I shouldn't have it, but I will be testing positive for it. They said I could test positive for it for 180 days. I was like, Oh, fuck it. I don't care. We're here. Let's go. We'll go over to Ange's. I bring my own COVID test because I have them. Right. And we give her a test.

And Joe looks at me and goes, Chelsea, she's positive. And I go, Ant, go to the end of your garage. Like, just stand in the back of your garage. Like, wear your mask and stand in the back of your garage. As the night went on, like, different kids were coming down. She's like, you go upstairs. He's shedding. He's positive.

He's negative. I was like, oh, my God. We're, like, in the hub of the Omicron virus. So when we left there, like, it took, like, a week. But Joe goes, I need to talk to you. He goes, you're a fucking hypocrite. He goes, you made such a big deal about me and being safe on the road and on tour, not getting Omicron, not going to clubs, not going to anywhere without my mask. He goes, and then we arrive in Canada.

And the first thing you do is drop me in a den of COVID. And I was like, he goes, you have one set of rules for yourself. And then you have one set of rules for everyone else. And I was like, you're fucking right. I just looked at him. I go, everything you're saying is right. I'm a hypocrite. And you're right.

And then he kept going. Goes, but you. I go, Joe, you're right. I am. Everything is right. You're honest. I'm wrong and I don't have any excuse and I have no defense. Let's press forward. Yes. Well, Chelsea, this week I got a crazy, crazy email and I really just had to read it to you. So the subject line is, I knew I was alive when I heard Chelsea's voice. Dear Chelsea, I have an hour plus commute each way to work and your podcast has been a staple on my drive. I love your directness, your delivery, and always your humor. Your podcast

brings a much-needed positive lift to my day. To hear about other people's lives and listening to you and your guests' advice, all the different perspectives I truly appreciate. I was listening to your podcast on my way to work. I had 20 minutes of my drive left when another vehicle blew their stop sign and hit my car on the front right side. I was on a highway doing 55 miles per hour, and they had come from an intersecting highway also doing 55 miles an hour. It all happened so fast, neither one of us had time to hit the brakes. I remember thinking, this is happening, and then if this is how I go out, I'm going to be so pissed. The airbag went off. I remember going up in the air and the feeling of being pitched up like sitting in a rocket ready

to launch, and then silence. And then, when I heard your voice, Chelsea, coming from your podcast still playing through my car speakers, I knew I was alive and still in this world. My next thought was, fuck yeah, I'm here, and I was so grateful to hear your voice. I sit here today not knowing how I walked away from that experience alive. I have an upcoming surgery this week and recovery ahead of me, but I live another day to say thank you to the inspiring women out there like you, and I'm grateful for the love and support from my family and friends. Keep up your great work. Take care.

Tempe Vermeer. Oh, God, we're so happy you're alive, Tempe. Tempe? Tempe Vermeer. We don't usually share a last name on here, but what an excellent name. Oh, Tempe, thank God you're all right. I'm so glad that you heard my voice, and that was a good thing. Isn't that lovely?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it is. Thanks for sharing that and writing that. I love it. I love it. Yeah. so yeah just wanted to share and by the way here is the picture she sent of her car oh my god and she said p.s i'm attaching a photo of the car i walked away from and this selfie on sunday i made

my parents and fiance take with me because i'm alive to do so oh good for you good for you yeah you never know everybody listening when you're going to be there in a moment where somebody really will never forget or really needs you so it doesn't matter if you're famous or you're not famous or you have a big platform or you have a small one, you can always have an impact on somebody's life and it could even be a stranger's. Yeah. So don't forget that. Yeah. Our guest today is a New York Times bestselling author. He wrote a book called Think Like a Monk. He is the host of the number one health and wellness podcast. It's called On Purpose. I think I've been on that. Yes, I have. And he's Calm's newly appointed chief purpose officer on the Calm app.

He is going to have his own meditations coming soon or maybe already out. I don't know. Any minute. Jay Shetty. Hi, Jay Shetty. Hey, Chelsea. Thank you for having me. Oh, so nice to see you. It's so nice to see you. It's been too long. I'm really grateful to be here. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. Jay, this is Catherine, our producer. Hey, Catherine.

Hi. Nice to meet you. She co-hosts this podcast with me. I love it. Yeah, so we saw each other probably two to three years ago, the last time we saw each other. Yes, yes. And I came on your podcast. That's right, that's right. Which was pretty awesome because we were talking about meditation and presence and...

Therapy and we just met at Wisdom 2.0. Oh, yeah. That's where we connected. Oh, yeah. How would you... That's a good idea. Let's start with that. How would you describe that conference? So I was invited to speak at the conference and you were speaking at the conference, too. And Wisdom 2.0, I would define as a conference for introducing people to meditation, spiritual practices. And it's like a community of people who are looking or seeking alternative practices for their well-being. I think that's my best shot, but maybe you have a better one. Well, I always just describe it as like a bunch of different like, you know, neuroscientists,

neurophysicists, like, you know, just an esteemed group of doctors getting together to talk about what drugs are going to become legalized in the near future also, because it's a lot about LSD, psilocybin and microdosing and kind of guided meditation journeys through those things or without those things. So it's a panoply of different kind of areas, but it's all under the same umbrella of betterment, right, and well-being. And I think the last time I spoke to you, I think you told me that you and your wife have like a three, is it a three-hour, two-hour meditation practice each morning, right? Yes, that's right, yes. Okay, so can you talk me through that a little bit?

Absolutely. So it changes now because of travel and late nights, and so it's not always perfect. Are you partying a lot these days? Is that why you're having late nights? definitely no parties just just travel and work and whatever else it may be so it's not always in the morning but the practice consists of three types of meditation that i was trained in as a monk so you have breath work visualization and mantra so i start with breath work i could spend anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes uh practicing everything from analom velom to kapalabhati

breathing to make sure that i'm feeling connected and present with my body i'll then move into visualization this is something I pick and choose I'll do that if I have something that I'm going to do that I'm nervous about so I'll give you an example of where I used it recently I last year decided with my wife that we would do lots of extreme challenges together so we did everything from cold plunges to zip lines to skydiving our first time skydiving together so the morning before I went skydiving I visualized myself skydiving and I felt sick in the first seven visualizations, but in the eighth, it was gone. And then by the time I was actually jumping out of plane, I didn't feel sick at all. So I use visualization as a way of going through potential

pain that I'm about to face so that I can experience it beforehand or nerves. And then finally mantra, uh, chanting mantras has been a big part of my practice. Uh, there are some beautiful mantras out there and, and there are a few that I focus in on. So it will be broken up into like 10, 15 minutes on breath work, five minutes on visualization and about an hour and a half on mantra. And I know that you just teamed up with Calm, too. You're going to have your own meditation series on Calm, right? Yes. I'm so excited about that. We just announced, and now we have something called the Daily J on Calm. You can meditate with me every single day for seven minutes. I was going to say seven days. Seven minutes every day. And what it allows you to do

is combine story, breathwork, visualization, all these meditations I'm speaking about, and allows you to build your own practice for seven minutes. So you can get it right now. Great. Awesome. That's great because everybody on this podcast or all of our listeners are always attempting to learn how to meditate. So tell me, for somebody who's been meditating for how many years now? 17 years. 17 years. How has your meditation, how has your practice changed during that time? I think my practice has changed because in the beginning, it was very much about presence and stillness. And now it's also turned into a connection for me, like spiritual connection. And that's where it started, but it's definitely evolved in that direction. so for me meditation is connected to me feeling aligned with my purpose it's a place that I remove what I call weeds from my heart so I'll look at negative intentions or energies and I'll look at

meditation as an opportunity to actually take stock and take audit of where I am and use it to purify and cleanse myself so I'll look at like where did I feel an emotion this week that I wasn't happy with how I behaved or how did I speak to someone this week that actually doesn't make me feel good about myself? How can I purify myself of that? So to me, the purification aspect of meditation has become a big priority for me now, more than just the presence and stillness. That's in my personal practice. Yeah. I think it's interesting when you talk about, for anyone really, because like you have certain habits or maybe bad behaviors, you know, quick responses or reactions to things. And then over time, as you practice not reacting so much to those things,

when you do have a blip and you do react in a way that you're not happy with, it's very much on the surface right away. Like there's no denial or defensiveness, which is what got you out of it. And, you know, years ago for me, I'd be like, you know, I tell three people and they'd all tell me I was right. I'm like, all right, that's good. I did the right thing. Now it's like, I don't tell anybody. I know I was wrong and it's right there. And I'm like, oh, that wasn't the nicest way to respond to that. And if those things happen close together, I get nervous. I'm like, oh, oh, you're, you know, regressing, you better make sure, because I look at meditation now, I'm nowhere, you know, near what you're doing. I never trained or studied with monks or anything like that,

obviously, because they would have kicked me out. They kicked me out after three years too. Did they ask you to leave? No. They thought you were fully cooked though. It's not you, it's me kind of situation. It was like a breakup. Like it was like, I said to them that I think I should leave because I think I got the self-awareness that I don't think I'm a monk anymore. and they said to me yeah we think that's a good idea they said to me we feel you should leave so that you can share what you'd learned and that's that's how they said it yeah well that's what you're doing so trying my best yeah trying definitely yeah so i think with regard to making little blips or making little mistakes it's like you you kind of learn to navigate away from the

bigger ones and learn to be more sensible in your reactivity and you know what kind of you know the way you're communicating with people. But when it does come up, it's definitely an enlightened or more enlightened person is definitely much more hip to go, okay, oh, that's not a good thing for me to be doing or saying. Absolutely. Yeah, spot on. And so, okay, so what have you been up to professionally in the last couple of years? Because you're everywhere, you know, you're like Deepak Chopra Jr. Sorry if that's not one of your, if you don't look up to Deepak Chopra. Deepak's wonderful. No, I have so much respect for Deepak. I have so much respect for so many people who I think have come before me in this world of trying to serve, trying to share. And so

I have only good things to say about Deepak, for sure. He's wonderful in person. Yeah. And I love, Eckhart Tolle is my, like, I love to listen to that because he seems so far removed from, well, real life. You know what I mean? It's almost like, you know, when I think about meditation, I think of like, oh, this is my time to like, be respectful to the universe and say I'm here to be still and quiet to make myself good for today you know to give myself the calm that I need for today and the focus and the good intentions and all of the things that come with it and I find his writing and his words to be they're very deep and a lot of people are not into that like how deep it goes yeah I feel like you know for me when I started my work my genuine goal

was to help build a pathway for people to go as deep as they wanted to go I was very fortunate to study the Bhagavad Gita and texts that are 5,000 years old. And I love talking about them and I love sharing them. And in my book, Think Like a Monk, I'll take out a verse and put it into a chapter. And I've seen people really be able to gravitate and appreciate it. But I also find that some people just want to feel better right now. And so with my work over the last two years,

and of course we can dive into different parts, but my ultimate goal is to help people bridge that gap from entertainment to education to enlightenment. and I think that's the journey that I'd love for entertainment to reach as many people in the world as possible education to reach those who want to take that step into their own self-development and personal growth and then enlightenment is a journey that people can take if they want that too and so I think building that bridge is so important because if I look back at how I was as a teen if you told me about any of that journey I'd be like give me the entertainment I don't want

any of the other stuff and so I feel like I'm trying to go back and connect with my younger self or anyone who reminds me of my younger self, where I grew up saying, well, why do I need any of this stuff? And as time has gone on, I've seen the value of it. And when you're doing what you're doing, because you're combining two worlds, right? You're dividing deep spirituality with also awareness and you're on a mission for that. So how do you kind of, when your ego is something that is so not necessary in spirituality, but it's kind of useful in this business, How do you reconcile the two? So it's really interesting.

I spoke to my monk teacher when I decided I was going to move to LA. And the first thing he said to me is, you're moving to the capital of illusion. And you should be very, very cautious. And here I was going, well, why are you not excited for me? Like, I've got so many opportunities coming my way. And I'm so looking forward to this. And he said, you should just be cautious of maya.

Maya is illusion. Another word for illusion in Sanskrit. He said, you should be careful. You should be cautious. and what I've realized is I'm really lucky to have amazing mentors he's 70 years old he's been a monk for 40 years I'm so fortunate to have these incredible role models in my life who I've seen display and embody humility and constantly remind me of its value so as a monk you're trained that the most admirable quality in anyone is their humility their groundedness and so we were like

That was repeated again and again and again to us every day. And then when you get to see it in someone, I think one of the challenges with ego and humility is that I would like everyone who's listening right now to genuinely think about how many people they've met in their life that they believe genuinely display humility. Not just groundedness or not just being not up themselves or not arrogant. Genuine humility.

And I think it's hard. I think it's actually very difficult. And I would say I've been really fortunate to have spent time with people that I think display it so deeply that they call it out in me all the time. So that's the first thing. The second thing I'd say is that I really enjoy the grapple with my ego. Like I really enjoy the wrestling process of it. I think one of the things we were trained in was to relish the battle. that if you don't relish the battle if you don't start enjoying the fact that you are going to come

up against your ego every day it's gonna wear you out like it's gonna tire you out and drain you and leave you on the street because your ego is the toughest boxer in the world your ego is Floyd Money Mayweather and your little old you and so if you don't enjoy that fight and the training it's gonna be really tough so I've realized that I love putting myself in positions where my ego is actually going to rise and then being aware and slowly coaching it out of it and guiding it and then working with it rather than being so detached from everything where you could think you've solved your ego but actually you just haven't tested it there's a beautiful story about Benjamin Franklin who had what I believe were called the 13 precepts which were 13 things that he aspired

for simplicity authenticity integrity and at the end of his life he was asked what was the one that he didn't accomplish and he said it was the 13th one and they asked him what's that and he said humility and I think humility is that constant pursuit yeah yeah yeah if that anyway I went off on a whole tangent I like it I love listening to you because I like what you said about ego I like the idea of challenging yourself having it rise up and seeing how you handle that because that comes up for me a lot you know obviously in my what I do it's like am I doing this for even a paycheck is ego it's related to ego even you know am i what are the reasons i'm doing this and to be practical because obviously i'm in this of this world and i have to you know

participate and make a living but i i like to check myself and go okay why is your reaction to this this and is that ego-based and if it is then remove that that's not the reason you're going to react you just you literally just there's an activity that i do where i have lots of different opportunities whether they be job opportunities or professional opportunities i'll write them all down and then on top of each one I'll write down my reason if I said yes or if I said no and whenever the answer is not love I know that there's some work to be done so often I'll write down the word ego like you said oh I would only do that from ego I'd only do that for money that doesn't mean I don't do it it just means I'm aware that that is why I said yes to that and let me be

really clear on that so that I'm not lying to myself because the honesty is what helps me break down my ego, not the dishonesty of feeling like it doesn't exist. And so for me, I'm always trying to see, can I write love next to that? Can I write love on top of that? And if I can, then that's beautiful. And if I can't, let's upgrade ego to love. Let's upgrade just money to love. Let's upgrade insecurity to love and keep working on that ladder. Two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell. Connection is everything.

When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

but these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on its head?

How about we flip the script? What if the surprise woman, who actually you think is the straight man, is actually the one who's acting weird? Adam Scott, this entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never let go of that. I have. I would never set expectations for something like that. It seems like if the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept, you know, Danny McBride.

Fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no.

Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're so stupid. Everyone's so dumb except for you. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us.

Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here.

It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know you wrote your own book, right? Think Like a Monk. What are some books that you read that are go-tos for you? Like, do you have anything that you constantly reference? Oh, yeah. So the Bhagavad Gita, which would be considered the timeless epic of India, the spiritual

text of India, is probably my go-to book. I find that most of what we read today is centered on the Gita in the betterment world and community. You know, there's so many chapters of modern day books that I could find as a core text inside the Gita. So that's a go-to guide for me, for sure. Or, you know, we just lost Thich Nhat Hanh, an incredible monk teacher who passed away recently.

And like his work was just absolutely phenomenal. You pick up any book by Thich Nhat Hanh, it will really speak to your, you know, speak to your soul. And then on the other end, I love behavioral economics. I grew up reading behavioral economics books. And so I like the sound of behavioral economics. Yeah, yeah, I like that. So like I grew up reading Malcolm Gladwell and Dan O'Reilly and all these incredible

authors who've just studied human behavior. And so my life has always been, how can I find the connection between behavioral economics and spiritual teachings? And so I'm always looking at the intersection of where do they meet? And they meet more often than we think. And where, like, okay, well, give us some examples of how they meet. So there's a brilliant book called Predictably Irrational. And it talks about how humans make predictably irrational decisions. one of the best examples in there that dan o'reilly provides is that if you want to get a

date tonight go with someone who looks like you but is a slightly less good looking version of you and he goes that's going to naturally improve your likability and people are more likely to choose you because we don't necessarily choose between a or b we're choosing between a plus and a minus so humans make predictably irrational decisions where we elevate someone in our eyes if something's close to it that feels less now that's fine when it comes to dating but he says that this is how we're completely manipulated by companies who give us three options they sell something for forty dollars seventy dollars and a hundred dollars but the hundred dollars is just got a bit more than that seventy dollars so you let go of the forty dollars and you go and spend

that hundred now when you look at that as a technique when you look back at the spiritual text they talk about how our senses are limited and how because our senses are limited we often make poor judgment if we only see through our senses and therefore there's this beautiful term in sanskrit called shastra chakshu which means to see through the eyes of spiritual text to see through the eyes of beyond our material vision so there's something like that another one that i love is the idea around purpose so a long long time ago like we would have just said oh yeah purpose is a fluffy term and maybe it's not real and maybe it doesn't exist all studies show today that when you live with purpose, you're happier.

There's an amazing study by Yale and Amy Rosniewski. And they did a study on what they believed was the most difficult job in the world. Now, the most difficult job in the world is not what any of us do. It happened to be hospital cleaners. And I think we can all agree with that. And that was before the pandemic.

So I can only imagine how tough it is today. So they went and interviewed hospital cleaners and they asked them, what do they do? And they were like, we clean beds, we clean toilets, we clean dishes, we clean up after people die like it's a really tough job and so they then went and interviewed some other hospital cleaners these cleaners described themselves as healers and they were like why are you healers they worked in the same hospitals they did the same job they said because

we see cleaning an environment as completely directly related to a patient's healing journey we think that if we have a clean room people's families will have deeper time there they'll spend more time there. They'll be able to feel love and energy and positivity. They were happier in the same jobs, in the same most difficult job in the world. This is what techs have been telling us always. Wayne Dyer said it. When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. That is a spiritual truth, but we can see it through behavioral science now. Oh, wow. I love that. Yeah, that's so true. I mean, once you change your lens, you know, it's like being attracted to someone. It's like falling in love with your friend,

which was what happened to be all of a sudden, you know, he was my friend for years and years and years. And I never looked at him in that way. And then after therapy and after getting like a kind of new way to look at everything, I was like, Oh, this is my guy. He's been standing here this entire time, but I just, my lenses were dirty. That's amazing. That's foggy or filled with cannabis. Yeah. It's a spiritual lens. I love that. That's a great example. I want to ask you a personal question about your relationship because you've been married for how many years now we've been together for eight and married for six this year okay and so does i i would one would assume that all of this living with monks and all of your spiritual practice up until now would

prepare someone pretty well to be in a married relationship is that is that a fact i would say that it does if you apply it at the essence and the core but if you apply it immaturely then no but yes, I would agree with you. I would agree with you. So that if any, when things come up and, or if there's any sort of discourse or that's unpleasant, like that you're able to, you and your wife, cause she practices as well, that you're able to handle it with a little bit more aplomb than a regular couple. Yeah. So I, when I wrote think like a monk, I dedicated to my wife and the dedication reads, uh, to my wife, who's more monk than I'll ever be. And, and I really meant that. And I wrote that because I wanted people to realize that she never trained

as a monk she does meditate every day and she does have the similar practices to me but you know she just naturally has some of that in her life but at the same time she'll be the first to tell you she gets so angry when i'm really calm when we've just had a fight or she's saying something i'm like really still and i'm like this is how we're gonna deal with it this way we're gonna and she's like she gets even more angry so yeah no i i think that my self-awareness that i gained during my time as a monk allowed me not only, and the way you said it, you said this beautifully just now,

that since I left being a monk, my wife's the only person that I've been with and, you know, dated and now of course married to. And I felt that my self-awareness of my values, what I believed in, grew so clear that I could clearly see that we were going to work on this. Now, that doesn't mean it's been easy ever since, but I definitely feel that I have the tools.

One of my favorite tools is called the austerity of speech. So this is an old Vedic concept of the austerity of speech. So it says that you should speak words that are truthful, words that are beneficial, words that don't agitate the minds of others, and words that are aligned with spiritual knowledge. So the fourth one's hard, but the first three,

truthful, beneficial to all, and don't agitate the minds of others. Now, that third one is really tough. Oh, for me especially. That third one is so tough. You can't say you're annoying. me it's i'm feeling very irritated exactly and it might have something to do with you but probably not that's exactly and it's like how do you learn to shape your language so those are called the

four austerities of speech i call them the four gates before i say something how can you walk through those gates how can you actually take a journey and filter what you're about to say not because you're trying to be politically correct or trying to do a technique you're doing it because you actually believe that what comes out of your mouth is now going to have more power. When you say to someone, you're just annoying me. In one sense, you distance yourself from that person. Whereas when you actually have a healthy conversation, you actually can become closer through that conflict. And so I think some of the, I mean, there's plenty more examples I can give, but those are the first two that came to mind. Well, you're going to have an opportunity to do

that because we're taking callers. Sometimes we get submissions. They could be email or they could be on the phone on a zoom you'll get to see them and they're calling just asking for typical life advice amazing and it's pretty cute i mean it's such a good idea yeah especially from someone like me you know who has no business giving advice but is totally willing to do it yeah well let's take a quick break and we'll be back with some callers and emails get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details and to check availability bell connection is everything when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped

and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it

takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having i'm gonna have to look up this story i'm obsessed i'm obsessed from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments nothing is off the table it's

Like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.

I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip,

I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.

Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman. Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on its head? How about we flip the script? What if the surprise woman, who actually you think is the straight man, is actually the one who's acting weird? Adam Scott.

This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect. Let go of that. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. like if the universe allows for something like that to happen i'm open to it i'm always going to accept you know danny mcbride fine yeah it's all this fragile masculinity exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know

what a circle is you know what i mean like they're like oh what's this david everyone's so dumb except for you fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts And we are back from break with Jay Shetty today. Hi.

Hey, thank you for having me. We're ready to rumble. Oh, yeah. This has been so fun already. Well, it's about to get maybe a little bit harder because there's some serious questions today. So our first email comes from Caitlin. She says, Dear Chelsea, I've been in a funk since becoming a mom. It doesn't seem to be postpartum depression or anxiety.

I didn't really know what to call it until recently when I saw one of the Britney Spears documentaries. And although our situations are quite different, I can relate to the feelings of being confined, trapped, surveilled, and controlled. That's totally it. I've lost my autonomy now that I'm a mother. I can't walk freely from one room to the other without announcing my departure and announcing my return. I can't go to the bathroom without someone watching me. I essentially need someone else's permission to take a shower because I can't just leave my kid unattended. I really like being a mom, but this is the hardest part for me to adjust to. Since the situation itself is not going to change,

I think the only solution is to change my own mindset and reframe the way I think about my new reality. Do you have any advice for me? Caitlin. Yeah, I think so. Well, what do you think? You go first. First of all, I want to say, Caitlin, thank you for being so honest.

I mean, that's really difficult. I know a lot of moms. I work with a lot of moms. I'm you know obviously I'm not a mother and and can't be one and so I can't say I understand how you feel but thank you for being so honest I think it's really hard to say what you just said so I really want to acknowledge that the second thing I'd say is that you already have the answer that you want the way you ended that question was the answer now the idea is how do you reframe what do you reframe so I'm just simply going to give you some suggestions according to what you think is

the right way of doing it. The first thing I'd say around reframing your mindset is part of having children, as far as I know, is the ability to extend our love, compassion, an opportunity to practice. And kids are teaching us something difficult. Now, I know this because I've been thinking about having kids for a long time, but I've been putting it off for pretty much a similar reason to what you've just said, because I recognize that I am going to lose my independence and I am going to lose my autonomy. Now, I know it's very different for a woman. There's even more pressure.

When I look at the studies, they suggest that women are taking on even more of those responsibilities. So when I think about that, I go, how can you use this as a experiment in increasing your love, increasing your compassion, increasing your joy in being shared with someone else? We've been so used to experiencing our autonomy

and getting joy from that, which is a beautiful model, which by the way, I completely understand. but how do we now switch our joy from being from autonomy to being this relationship with this individual and I know that when you allow yourself to go there as you said you already enjoy being a mom and I don't think autonomy is just going to come back around as you said so to me using it as an experiment and increasing your compassion increasing your empathy increasing your love is a beautiful way and the second thing I'd say is definitely still find time even if it is trading places to create that autonomous time. I think it may be less now, but if you can find that one

evening a week, or maybe it's one day a month where you can carve out that time to be completely free and allow yourself to really explore that. Yeah, that's all great. Yeah, I would say that too. I mean, it sounded like you already have the answer there yourself. You're just going through a little bout of growing pains, acclimating to the life of being a new mom, which, I mean, I just had this conversation with a girlfriend yesterday and Colleen who was on our podcast recently was talking about when you have a child you become a slave to that child for the next five to six years but what Jay is saying is absolutely right you just you have to own that you know what I mean instead of letting it happen to you you know make it happen make it what you want it to be make it

the relationship you want it to be and carve out that time for you whatever you can afford to carve out if you can afford to have a babysitter one night a month even if you could go on play dates with other people who have the same age children so it's taking some of the pressure off so there's a group of people around because that way you can also commiserate with other people and that's a good feeling to a remind yourself that you're not the only one and that you're not alone but to rise above this moment and to move forward after this moment is a huge opportunity for growth and a huge opportunity for you to become the mother that you always wanted to be so you have a vision and a visual in your head of the kind of parent you want to be like this is the time to start getting

ready to become that parent you know and saying goodbye to your old self because that's that's not who you are anymore now you are a mother you're still that person but now you have a child so that's not like the end of the world it's the beginning of something really really beautiful and it's just about embracing the moment that you're in and being there and being present in every moment with your child that you that you're that you can allow yourself to be present because that's going to give you so much in return, instead of focusing on all the time you've lost for yourself, focusing on all of the things that you have now with another person. And what you said is you're already there. So you just needed us to nail that hammer in or nail, I guess,

nail that nail in. I'm really not good with tools or any sort of home improvements. Neither am I, so I'll stay away too. And another thing you can do if your family can't afford to have a babysitter every weekend or as often as you might need to sort of have some alone time. You know, what you can do is find someone else, maybe they have a child a similar age to yours, but find somebody else who maybe it's another mom or another couple who also needs a date night, also needs some time away. And just say like, hey, let's make a plan. Maybe it's every week, maybe it's once a month or whatever. But make a plan to say, hey, you guys need date night and so do we. You take the kids

on Friday we'll go out we'll take the kids on Saturdays and we'll go out or just I'll go out and I think it goes back to what Jay said too about like the hardest job in the world or one of the hardest jobs in the world is motherhood and having that reframing yeah it's like they don't give you a psychological like warning they just yeah well no a warning like this is how you're gonna feel and you're gonna have to adjust because I've always said it's like nine months is not long enough to prepare for a baby for sure no time is long enough to prepare because one day you can leave your house and then the next day you can never leave your house again until you have to make sure somebody has your baby so yes it's an adjustment for sure and some people make it

seem effortless and others it's not as effortless for so yeah and in about like 13 years they won't want to be with you at all yeah remember that you know there's a time limit yeah it's funny how that happens right like parents are always like oh my god this is all encompassing it's time consuming and then when they're teenagers they're like what the what the fuck happened to my baby so it's like you better remember it messes with you by the time you're hip to whatever happened it's over you know it's like once you realize that you're lucky to be young and yeah you know like you know when you're young and people like oh well when you get older you'll know i'm like i'm never getting older don't fucking worry about it they're like you're not going to be able to do

what you do or act like you act when you're older you won't be able to drink like you did when you were in your 20s. I was like, of course I will. I can't. And then I'm like, God, why didn't I believe that when it was happening? Why didn't I take advantage? All of that stuff. So everything that everyone says is true. Problem solved. Let's leave it at that. Yes. Well, our next question comes from Anthony, and he's on the phone with us. Dear Chelsea, I'm a 28-year-old living in Los Angeles. I'm a bartender in hopes of making it in the entertainment industry. I've experienced seasonal depression for a few years now, and until recently I was at such a high. Every day felt good and I thought I was on the right path. I started therapy, meditation, journaling, and even your

podcast was a medicine for me. Around November is when I started feeling those moods come around and it just got worse and worse, but now we're a few weeks into the new year and I'm at the standstill and I don't know where to go. I'm sure I'm going to get back into my happy days, but then I'm concerned they'll fade once again. I guess my question is, how can I get happy and stay happy? Anthony. Hi, Anthony. Hi.

Hey, Anthony. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you guys. Hi, this is Jay, and Catherine is here, who you've spoken to already. Hi, Jay. Hi, Catherine. Nice to see you again. Hi. Hi, Chelsea. Big fan. Oh, hi. How are you? I'm doing good. How about yourself?

We're good. Thank you. We're just talking about the merits of parenting. And and then the downside, which is a long, lengthy list. Anyway, over to you, though. So did you say you're in therapy? I was last year. I stopped right around October. OK, and do you take medication of any sort?

I don't. I've never I've never done that. It's something that I'm not opposed to either. I just have not gotten the chance to get in that conversation with anyone. OK, so what you're feeling like you feel like you can go like what what duration of time is it typically do you seem to have like a mood last for? is it weeks or months or seasons? Like the good moods or the bad moods? Either. So I guess recently my good moods were for like, like three months, but then it just,

it's been now been three months where they're more down moods. So it really is all over the place. Okay. And what, and so you do meditate, are you physically active and all of the things that help you kind of stay up? Yeah. When I was up, what I noticed the most was that I was meditating, I was hiking. I was listening to podcasts such as yours. I was going to therapy and slowly I stopped doing those as much. It wasn't like a daily thing anymore. And so, yeah, I was doing that, but they slowly stopped. Yeah. I would say right off the bat, you're allowing the way you feel to dictate your mood rather than allowing your activities and your practices to dictate your mood. You know, like when we're feeling down or we're feeling low, that's when we really need

to lean on our toolkit the most because feeling good is great, but you don't need a lot of help there. Right. So it's important on the days where you don't feel like exercising, where you don't feel like meditating to get those in so that the, the, the feeling remains consistent. You know what I mean? So that shouldn't feel so black and white with your ups and your downs. And maybe there is a, there is a, you know, diagnosis of some sort that you might need to seek out from a professional, you know maybe you are slightly depressed and maybe it is a mood disorder but I would say you know three months like nothing is I'll let Jay speak to this but nothing lasts forever you cannot expect to be in a great mood every single day when you wake up and you also can't feel like

when you aren't in a great mood that that is going to be the way it's going to be for the next three weeks or three months because you're resigning yourself and you're almost capitulating to something that doesn't exist yet you know you're in charge of your happiness you're in charge of your moods and as long as you're doing everything you can to keep like all the things that you know that work which are meditation exercise listening to podcasts that make you feel good or make you think and kind of filling yourself up with that you will have more control over those moods and if at that point you still are feeling a little bit off and it's a if it's more of a medical thing then yeah absolutely i'm sure there's a medical professional or a therapist or a psychiatrist

psychiatrist that will be able to kind of experiment with prescribing you something, but it probably may not even come to that. Do you want to speak a little bit about impermanence? Yeah, definitely. I think Anthony and I agree with everything that Chelsea just shared right now. I think it's great advice. I think one of the biggest things you just explained yourself, Anthony, was that when your habits stopped, your happiness started to go down. And what I always say to people is like just because you ate a great meal today doesn't mean you don't eat for the next three days right let's say i ate a lot of food today i wouldn't stop eating for the next week and hope that i stay full and sometimes with our mood and our happiness we do that we feel really

good today and we're like okay i did a lot of meditation today i did a lot of sleep this month i don't need it for the next seven days or the next seven months so i would definitely work on those habits at the same time i think we have created a mindset in society that we should always feel happy and that happiness is a sign that we should do things. I would actually say that the biggest skill we can work on is developing the ability to do things when we don't feel like doing them. So as Chelsea was saying, when I go to work out, and I, by the way, experienced this today, I've had four hours sleep the last three nights because I've been traveling, moving, things have been happening. And I managed to go to the gym and I know for a fact that I feel better

because I went and so what I've realized is good habits they feel bad before you do them but they feel amazing afterwards and bad habits they feel great before you do them and they feel terrible afterwards and so it's tricking our mind to recognize well wait a minute when I'm actually going I don't want to meditate today I don't want to exactly what Chelsea said that's exactly the time I want to dial in and the impermanence part this is where I want you to switch your north star so in your question happiness and happy days were very clear as your north star that was your focus i want you to change your focus point to meaning and purpose and i'll and i'll explain why when when i trained as a monk we learned that looking for happiness makes life very difficult

because there are so many things that happen in your daily life where you won't be able to find happiness but meaning and purpose is something you can always find what i mean by that is when you ask yourself what can i learn from this what did this teach me why do i think this came into my life when you start asking yourself those questions you actually build your resilience you build your muscle and now you can deal with the challenges that come in the future whereas when you go why am i not happy that creates this real gap of expectation and now you're chasing this illusory thing or impermanent thing that doesn't stay with you so for example i lost my I lost one of my greatest spiritual mentors in my life in 2020 to stage four brain cancer I couldn't

go to his funeral in London because obviously all the flights were shut down and that was at the peak of the pandemic I couldn't get back and losing him there was no happiness in that moment whatsoever like genuinely there was no happiness but there was meaning there was meaning I started to think about like what's the meaning of this I can't be with him and I thought wait a minute I can try and live what he taught me. And that way he'll live with me every day. I can try to become everything he wanted me to be. And so I could always extract meaning in even really painful situations when happiness is something that you can't always extract. So even when things are good, don't look for happiness, look for meaning. Because if you can extract meaning from good

things, you'll be able to extract them from bad things. That makes so much sense. Yeah, I hear that. Jay, what would be your advice for somebody who is in a depression where they're just like so in a funk they're like i can't even get out of bed today like what is that first step that you would have them take in order to get to the point where they can meditate or go to the gym or yes so in that situation i would say what chelsea was saying earlier i would go and do a medical examination see a professional the reason why i'm saying that is if you're saying that you can't even get out of bed that's a reason to go and see someone like i don't think that's something you sit and solve on your own just as if i couldn't get out my bed in the morning because my legs hurt

I wouldn't try and figure that out on google I would pick up the phone and call my doctor and say my legs are not working today and I woke up If you're waking up in the morning and you go I just can't get out of bed I would go and see someone i'll give an example of even something very small a lot of it's biological as well like Recently, I was talking to my health coach And she had me do my you know My nutrients test and my vitals and my medical exam and she told me that my vitamin d level was at a 10 She was saying that the average is 60 and the ideal is 100

and she said to me she goes jay i don't even know how you get out of bed in the morning let alone live your life now i don't feel that emotionally but i started working on improving my vitamin d i promise you i have never felt more energy in my life and it can be biological sometimes we get so heady about it we think it's all in our head and like it's all mental it's not sometimes it's truly biological you're you know and we have to go and get those tests done so yeah that's a great point too yeah i had the same thing with an iron deficiency like i was so sluggish i was so it could be something as simple as that you know so that's another reason to explore that Anthony do you feel like there is a chance you suffer from some depression do you feel that way

yeah definitely throughout my high school life I definitely started feeling depression and I think it's gone into my adulthood so I've definitely done the practices like therapy meditation but I'm at a point now that I'm like maybe I do need to see a professional to get some type of advice or maybe medication because that's something that's a route i have not gone down yet it's just tiring to do all the work and get to the good part and then come to a standstill once again after putting all the work and being like wow what was all that for if if i'm back to this low point yeah but doing all the work doesn't guarantee that you're not going to have low points i i do understand life is not all about being happy there's always going to be low points but what

What I mean is that it's such a big difference. Like I'd be at such a high point and then like a month later, I'm at such a low point too. And it's such a different lifestyle for me then. Then I'm not doing anything towards my future, towards what makes me happy. So yeah.

Anthony, I'd also add that, you know, I really want you to take a moment today to just own that you have felt really good and you have done the work. Like I want you to take a moment today and sit back. When you said to me, I meditate, I go to therapy you know when you were

listening on your question I was thinking wow this person's amazing like the fact that you've made time the fact that you have prioritized the fact that you've

actually done that and you felt great for it I want you to take a time out today to just celebrate that be grateful to yourself and acknowledge yourself for having done the work

because it sounds like when you were doing the work and you were owning it you were feeling great and I just want you to remember that because sometimes we forget that

actually there was a time when I was doing the work and I was feeling great, let me go back to doing the work. So I want you to take our time today to celebrate that, to be grateful, to honor it. And by the way, Anthony, we've all been on such a rollercoaster for the last two years

that the way you're feeling should not be seen as unnatural or strange. Like we don't even know how we've all been affected in the last two years. So the fact that in that time, you were able to practice meditation, to go to therapy, to take advice, hats off to you.

I'm impressed by you, honestly. I genuinely am. And I want you to feel impressed by yourself. And I want you to own that. I will. Thank you very much. I'll definitely do that. Okay, Anthony. Well, I hope you feel better soon and keep us posted. Okay, let us know if you discover something new. First, get that blood work done before probably even you go to like a psychiatrist to see if you have some sort of deficiency. Check all the boxes. So you have all the information that you can get. And that's and then that becomes another tool. I definitely would do that. And I wanted to say thank you so much to you because your podcast inspired me to do my own podcast with my best friend.

Oh, I love it. We talk about mental health and therapy and all that stuff. So I appreciate your podcast a lot. Great. What's your podcast called? It's called How's Your Heart? Oh, cute. I like that. I like that. Congrats. Well, thanks, Anthony. And yeah, keep us posted on on how things go. Thank you so much for your time. Yeah, you too.

I hate that desultory feeling where you're like, you could tell by the look in someone's eyes, you know, it's just like you're exhausted and you're listless. And that feeling is no fun at all. No, definitely not. No. Yeah. Yeah. I like that book. I talked about this book before, Letting Go. Have you read that, David Hawkins? I love that when you're down, how to pull yourself up. Like when you're down, if you're in ego or shame or depression and how to bring yourself up through courage to get to like the higher levels and vibrations um that always reminds me that like you know you always have to we're in charge of clearing out our cobwebs and bringing ourselves back up to a place of action rather than reaction yes absolutely yeah

get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details and to check availability bell connection is everything when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club part group chat for thought daughters pop culture obsessives and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse i'm eli rallo and every week

we're connecting the dots between books the internet and the conversations everyone can't stop having i'm gonna have to look up this story i'm obsessed so obsessed from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments nothing is off the table it's Like, if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.

Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman.

Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on its head? How about we flip this around? okay what is the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird adam scott this entire time you've been expecting adam sandler to come to visit the show i i would never let go of that i have i would never set expectations for something like that seems like if the universe allows for something like that to happen i'm open to it i'm

always going to accept you know danny mcbride fine yeah it's all this fragile masculinity exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity ben stiller no because a lot of times in out of context people don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean They're so stupid. Everyone's so dumb except for you. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life.

I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind,

or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our next question comes from Sydney. Dear Chelsea, I am 46 years old, single mom to a sassy 15-year-old girl, and have, for the most part, had a great life. I didn't have much luck with love in my 20s or 30s, a bad marriage, occasional boyfriends, and casual relationships, but that never kept me down. I have the best girlfriends who have filled my life with laughter, love, and crazy girls trips.

In my early 40s, I finally found love. I met an amazing man and we had a little over three great years together until he was devastatingly diagnosed with stage four cancer. He passed away eight months later in June of last year. I'm working through my grief and the trauma of his illness and death with the support of therapy, friends and family, but I'm honestly just so sad and lost. I'm generally a positive and strong person, but now I'm left feeling like, now what? Given I've spent most of my adult life single, it's not like I can't be alone. But after experiencing deep and easy love, I'm craving that feeling and hoping it's possible again. I just don't know where to start and wonder if I'm too broken to even consider another

relationship. Any advice you can provide or just make me laugh? Sydney. Hey, Sydney. Hi, Sydney. Hello. Nice to meet you. Hi, this is Jay Shetty. He's our guest today. Nice to meet you, Sydney. I'm so sorry about your loss. Oh, God. So the good news is that you were able to have this relationship, right, in your 40s, in your early 40s,

where a lot of women think that it's a wrap and they're never going to meet anybody. so it was shown and demonstrated to you that that is possible that that was alive and well and you had a beautiful love affair that ended tragically but you had a beautiful love affair and that's your hope you know that is your hope right there that's all the hope you need it happened to you once it can happen to you again and you might not be I don't know what what state of mind are you in right now like you know I don't know if you're ready to date you tell us how are you feeling these days? I'm just feeling like I need to be distracted, which is crazy. I'm in full grief right now, right? And I'm sad. And so I'm being distracted by friends and, you know,

the odd event here and there, although lockdown's not a good time. But so it's like part of me looks to like, I want that again. I want that again. I know now's not the time, but I also just want to be able to hope for it. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think absolutely. And I think hope is sometimes better than the reality. You know what I mean? The idea and the fantasy is sometimes a better elixir than the actuality. So like, it is a great opportunity for you to hold on to everything that you had with this wonderful man that came into your life. And thank God you were in his life so that he had someone to leave this life with, right? Knowing that he was loved and knowing that he loved you. So these are all beautiful, beautiful things. Obviously, it's

not an ideal situation but what you can take out of it can bring it back into your life again I think and now is probably not the right time to be going on dates and doing all of that if you're grieving and you're dealing with this heavy loss and there is a respectful amount of time that you want to spend mourning somebody so I think the idea that you're even talking about moving forward is so healthy the idea that you're even talking about possibly meeting somebody you know there are so many people who are like it's never going to happen that's it I got my last thing like no There's no reason not to be greedy and say, I get more, you know, I deserve more. I deserve another love, you know, a different love or something just as powerful.

Who knows? But I think holding on to hope is a great survival tool and it's a way to help us all through grief and honoring all of the wonderful things that he brought into your life and honoring all the beautiful love that you had and having that just be sacrosanct, you know, in your in your mind and really paying respect to that. And you're going to know when it's time to put yourself on a dating site or to agree to be set up with somebody. You're going to know that but there's nothing wrong with going through the emotions of grieving. That is the way to get healthy again. Thank you for that. I agree. Like I've thought about dating sites, but I know it's

for unhealthy reasons, right? It's just that I want something else to distract me. So the fact that I'm not doing. It goes to show that I'm not ready. Yeah. And where do you live? In Canada. What part?

Toronto. Oh, well, I can give you a night of laughter. You can come to one of my shows in Toronto at the end of March. We're going to hook you up

with free tickets, okay? All right. All right. That'd be amazing. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That'll be a great night. You can bring a girlfriend or bring a couple girlfriends,

whatever you want. We'll sort it out for you. But I'm performing there at some point in March. So we will hook that up. awesome jay what did you want to add i i just again i agree with everything chelsea said and sydney you know i i think the biggest thing i want you to remember is don't feel guilty for wanting to be distracted or don't feel guilty for just trying to stay busy because i think that is

part of your grieving process and so allowing yourself to just be like i have just gone through something that is really painful it's you know it's really tough but i'm gonna allow myself to to feel that distraction I'm going to allow myself to feel that I think putting the pressure on yourself to be like oh well I you know want to get back to life as usual that kind of trying to run away from a situation almost makes you run towards it even quicker and so I think giving yourself that space and grace I literally just I mean I had no idea I literally just spoke to our previous guest and I was saying that and not comparing at all because it wasn't a love affair but I I lost my spiritual mentor who I've known since 12 who's like a father figure he spoke at my

wedding and he died of stage four brain cancer in 2020 and i couldn't see him and i couldn't be with him in those last few months because of the pandemic so i couldn't get back and when i was in that situation for me it was just like well what did he give me that he would be really proud that i carried on living on like what were the gifts that he gave me whether it was love whether it was mentorship whether it was guidance whether it was you know being confident with me always i want to go and give that to others and i really found that that's really helped me when i'm grieving is giving to others what what that person gave me when I can go and pass on and share those gifts that gives you such a sense of that person's present with you in the right way and that you're

actually continuing to serve that relationship I love that that's a great idea because he he gave me so many gifts and the gift of hope that I even have today so I love that excellent thank you oh you're gonna be just fine it's gonna be okay i hope so i hope so well you know what chelsea this show is distracting me a lot too good good well that's a good distraction yeah you're like my girlfriend on the weekend that i can listen to as i you know do my housework and stuff so thanks so much for that absolutely my pleasure okay okay take care thanks sydney bye everyone bye wow that's a lot our last question comes from julia dear chelsea absolutely love the podcast and how real you are when giving advice i would love your insight when it comes to

developing boundaries with an addict my dad is an alcoholic has been my entire life over the years our relationship has become strained due to his addiction and his behavior while drunk but i just had my first child and although i don't have much contact with him by choice I feel an odd sense of guilt not letting him around my child. I know it's for the best, but I can't shake the feeling that I need to give him an opportunity to have a relationship with his grandchild. Should I leave things as they are or give him an opportunity to form a relationship, obviously, with boundaries? Thanks, Julia. Yeah, you just have to create boundaries so that he's only around your father when he's sober or your daughter or son is around your father when they're sober.

But if you have that feeling, then that's your strongest indicator that you should move forward with it. You know, if your relationship has become strained, that's totally understandable with somebody with addiction. But it's also it's not your son or daughter's fault. And you can give him a little bit of room and see how he responds to that. It might actually help his drinking. You never know. You know, he might be inspired and want to be a bigger presence in your child's life. And it might have that impact.

I mean, don't go in there with that hopefulness. But go in there just, you know, with your eyes wide open. And I think you'll get your answer sooner than later of whether or not it was a good decision or maybe, you know, you need to pull it back some more. But I think it will probably turn out for the best. I don't think there's anything negative that can happen when you're, you know, wanting to just spread love with your family, within your family. And we all have those kind of familial obligations. you don't want to use the word duty but a lot of times family is duty it's like you owe it to your child and you owe it to your father and then just see what happens I would say what do you think no I can agree more I think the thing with barriers is that you want to make sure that they're really clear for you and for others and so if you are going to set barriers which it sounds like as Chelsea was saying that you need to and it sounds like you must create barriers that are really clear for you, really outline them, be so aware and so sure about when yes, when no,

because that allows you to free yourself of the anxiety and stress. Because I know that those moments can be so like full of just nerves and stress and pressure that the only way you let go of that and say, well, I've just set really clear guidelines for myself to follow. So there's something in psychology called if then, so like if this happens, then this is what we're going to do. if this happens then this is what we're going to do and I think creating a what if or if then plan is really important in your scenario because it sounds like there may be multiple different versions of how this could play out and I would just take a bit of time up front to set those barriers so that there's not too many surprises and if something beautiful happens like what

Chelsea recommended then you're actually just grateful for it and see it as a bonus but you set yourself up to make sure that you're not stressing yourself out in those close connected family connections. Yeah. That's an easy one to find out, you know, soon enough, whether it's a good decision or not. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Jay Shetty and Chelsea. when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting voice next to my ear saying

shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.

I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility.

Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip,

I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, a.k.a. the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman.

Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on its head? How about we flip the script? What if the surprise woman, who actually you think is the straight man, is actually the one who's acting weird? Adam Scott, this entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never let go of that. I have.

I would never set expectations for something like that. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept, you know, Danny McBride. Fine. Yeah. It's all this fragile masculinity exuding. exuding i could smell it walking down the hallway to be honest with you i was like is that weed nope it's fragile masculinity ben stiller no because a lot of

times in out of context people don't get it or even know what a circle is you know what i mean like they're like oh what's this everyone's so dumb except for you fake right fake and and also not interested or just like oh i've got my life i don't care about your life and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us oh and by the way will ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode but he's just so busy listen to hollywood handbook on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we are back we are back jay i believe this is the time in the show where you are supposed to ask me for a piece of advice i know and i have so many things i want to ask you like literally i've been

sitting here this whole time i was sitting before when i was thinking about i was like what do i want to ask chelsea for advice what do i want to ask chelsea for advice i think the advice i'm going to ask you for chelsea uh i'm gonna i'm gonna take this opportunity to be selfish uh to ask a question for me personally great well that's what this is about oh good okay all right so then i'm then i'm just following the advice but my my question would be you've been in this industry for a long long time uh you've done so many different things you've won so many different hats what has made you happiest and most content on this journey? And how would you advise as I work and continue to create my work and purpose that you see me doing? What would be your advice for how I can

stay truly aligned to my purpose and continue to seek that contentment and happiness in that journey? I think that's probably a different answer for different people, right? I know for myself that having an identity independent of my identity in the world is always been the most valuable thing in my life that I have a life that's outside of Chelsea Handler that I have a personal life that I have hobbies that I'd love to ski you know that's something that I just said to myself as a young kid I was like I'm just going to become so successful that I'm going to pay somebody to teach me how to become the best skier like those things that give me so much joy and that are independent of my career because I think in the beginning you think you can just be

both things at the same time you can have your personal and professional and just blend the two and I I think I would urge everyone to reconsider that and to spend as much time making as many deposits as you can into your outside life as you do to your professional life you know it's like filling up your filling up your jar right that is such great advice thank you so much I really appreciate that. I mean, that's why I'm doing this podcast. I'm just spreading wisdom. It's really good advice. Left, right, and center. It's just catch it if you can. Catch it if you can, people. Well, Jay, where can everyone find you? I would love for everyone to come and listen in to On Purpose, which is my podcast where I've interviewed Chelsea before. We had a beautiful

conversation. And of course, on the Daily Jay, exclusively on Calm, where you can meditate with me for seven minutes a day if you want to start a new habit. And on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok and every social media platform out there. And don't forget his book, Think Like a Monk. Great. Thank you, Jayshay. Thank you. That was awesome.

I mean, I'm so amazed by how you allow people to come on the show and really sit with them and their challenges and pain. I was really blown away by that. Oh, nice. It was really special. Thank you. It's a lot.

It takes a lot to actually sit down with that energy. So, you know, people shared heavy stuff. It wasn't, none of it was superficial. It was all real stuff. So well done for doing that. One woman called in for advice about breastfeeding. And I was like, I don't know if you've never heard anything I've said, but I'm not the person to ask. And I would appreciate no more breastfeeding questions.

Thank you so much, Jay. Have a wonderful rest of your day. I'm so grateful I could come in. And if you'd like to get advice from Chelsea and one of her guests, please write in to DearChelseaProject at gmail.com. i survived nine months in captivity and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files every week i'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable abducted stalked controlled and nearly silenced these are stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor

Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers book talk creators and plenty of overthought opinions listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts did you hear the new episode of the hey jonas podcast we are at d23 so we'll see who stops by the cast of frozen stopped by

kristin bell josh gad and adina menzel i auditioned for frozen what for kristoff they said okay what are you going to be singing today i said i don't know that must have been why you didn't get it Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars, and more. And I guess I can share that, uh... No way. Listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita trading the pity for possibility listen to solita on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicist for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.