On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 3 Strategies To Rapidly Improve Your Resilience and Mental Strength

Episode Date: July 3, 2020

In today’s episode, Jay Shetty reveals that the most important muscles we can develop are those of resilience and learning to use pain for positive growth. Whether you struggle with resilience or not, this podcast will serve you. You'll learn how to use pain for good, what it means to build resilience and how we can build a stronger legacy on the foundation of struggle. Shetty offers practical steps and encouraging insight on how hard times bring strength and beauty. Text Jay Shetty 310-997-4177See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Neum, I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bond-vivant, but mostly a human just trying to figure out what it's all about. And not lost is my new podcast about all those things. It's a travel show where each week I go with a friend to a new place and to really understand it, I try to get invited to a local's house for dinner. Where kind of trying to get invited to a dinner party, it doesn't always work out. Ooh, I have to get back to you. Listen to not lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I am Miyaan Levan Zant and I'll be your host for The R Spot. Each week listeners will call me live to discuss their relationship issues. Nothing will tear a relationship down faster than two people with no vision. Right. Because you all are just flopping around like fish out of water. Mommy, daddy, your ex, I'll be talking about those things and so much more. Check out the R-Spot on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. part-video app, Apple Podcast, or whatever you listen to podcasts. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast Podcast in each bite-sized daily episode.

Time management and productivity expert, Laura Vandercam, teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our bodies strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to before breakfast on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can actually break through pain. So what quality, what are you aspiring for, what are you so clear about, what do you have clarity

about that is pushing you in that direction? Because see, here's the thing, the opposite of humility is ego. Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. Thank you so much for coming back every single week to listen, learn and grow. It is a new day, a new week. And I am so happy that we have been so strong, been so resilient at this time together.

I know that you, each and every single one of you has stayed with me, has stayed listening, has stayed learning through this difficult time. And I just want to take a moment to help you realize how powerful that truly is, and how meaningful that truly is. And I want you to congratulate yourself. I want you to really recognize what an incredible statement that is

to yourself and to everyone else around you that when you choose growth even in tough times, amazing things can happen. Now today I want to talk to you about exactly that subject because we underestimate how much pain is useful. We underestimate how much pain is meaningful. We underestimate how much pain is meaningful. We underestimate how much pain is the path to progress and uncovering our potential and making a difference in our lives. And usually, we think of pain as extremely negative.

We try to avoid it. We try to get around it. We try to make sure that we're never in pain. Now, that is sensible. And that is the right thing to do. But as we know, even if we find a way to avoid pain, pain rarely avoids us. Right. Have you ever experienced that before before you may find every possible way to avoid pain But pain really avoids us. There's no one in the world who doesn't have pain in common Everyone has pain. Everyone has their pain and their version of it, but we all share pain and so instead of trying to avoid it, instead of just trying to

overcome it, instead of just trying to hope it never happens again, having the skill and the ability to navigate pain, to use pain, to make pain useful and meaningful seems like a pretty important skill to have. This is probably the number one skill needed in life because if pain is something that never avoids us and pain is something that is common to all of us, then knowing how to navigate pain, knowing how to process pain is probably

the number one skill needed, especially because we've seen what happens when we don't process it properly. Think about any time in your life where you think you haven't processed pain properly. The results have probably not been good. And you've probably observed people in your life, whether it's parents or family members or friends who haven't processed pain properly. Now, I'm not saying there's only one way to process pain, but there are certain principles that we can all adopt and use and navigate to get to that place. And especially seeing as the last four months have been full of pain for each and every

one of us in different ways. Maybe you've lost something, maybe you've lost someone, maybe you've missed out on some event or some important occasion or anniversary. Everyone has lost something and many people have lost some one and therefore developing the skill to understand and process pain is so vital. And that skill is resilience. That's what my definition of resilience is. The dictionary definition of resilience is the capacity to recover from difficult times,

the capacity to quickly recover from difficult times, or the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, like an elistic band, right? Like that ability. You've seen those things in your home that they just look the same. No matter how much you've put them through, how many of you have a bike that is extremely resilient? How many of you have a laptop that is, okay, this is the one. How many of you have a phone that is extremely resilient? How many of you have a phone that is not resilient, right? As soon as you drop it, it doesn't work anymore. But resilience, in my opinion, is the ability to understand and process pain effectively.

And I think that this is a skill that you can apply to any area of your life. Today, we are going to develop that skill. Today, we're going to focus on that muscle in our lives And I am so so excited that we get to address this together because this is a topic that tons of companies right now are asking me to speak on And inviting me to do keynote song, but I wanted to record a very special episode for each and every single one of you to talk about the three reflections on resilience that will help you take care of yourself, take care of your family and friends and loved ones and make an impact on the world. To me life is lived in three key circles. Life is lived with ourselves. Life is lived with those

who love us and we love and life is lived in the world with the news, with everything else happening around us. And I'm going to give you one reflection for each of these circles that we live in so that you can deepen your resilience skill. Are you with me? Does that sound like a good idea? I hope that you're all putting your hands up, shouting out wherever you are. If you're on a run or a jog or you're walking a dog or you're Cooking or you're cleaning or whatever you're up to right now. I want you to know that I am so happy that you chose to Listen to on purpose and I can't wait to dissect resilience with you now. Let me ask you this question How many of you feel that you're resilient?

How many of you feel that you are resilient already? resilient. How many of you feel that you are resilient already that you've been through tough times and you know it and you want to refine that skill with me today, but you already have it. And how many of you are listening, going, Jay, I don't think I'm resilient at all. I, you know, I fall apart at the first hurdle. I'm one of those people that really, really tries to avoid pain and whenever pain comes up, I'm like, Oh, no, why is this happening to me? Right? Like how many of you are in that bucket? Now 83% of people think that they are resilient. That's a pretty high number.

I was quite shocked by that. When I saw this research, I was like, wow, that many people think they're resilient. Now, when those people did the resilience test, the studies came back and it shows that 57% of people are actually resilient. So a lot of us are less resilient than we believe, which means if we feel that we're resilient, there's probably blind spots. Now blind spots are these things that we all have. The areas of our life that are so unknown or we're so unaware of,

and they end up tripping us up. It's almost like you're walking through your garden and you didn't realize there was an uneven stone or an uneven twig or path and you trip over and imagine that's happening in your life. Now, you may say, actually, I'm fine, Jay. I'm pretty resilient. I'm pretty strong.

Well, then you need to listen to this for your family and friends. Because guess what? Inspiring someone to be resilient, helping someone else be resilient is also a big part of resilience. So if you're listening right now and you're saying, Jay, I've got this down. I'm resilient. Then I want you to listen to this for everyone else in your life. Because if only 57% of people are actually resilient, then there is a high proportion of people, 43% that are not resilient.

And resilience changes as we move down in generation. So this study showed that 67% of boomers rate themselves as resilient, but only 37% of Gen Zers. So you may have a child who's a Gen Zee. You may have a cousin. You may have a brother or a sister or a family member. If you know anyone who's a Gen Zeeer,

their resilience drops by almost half of the boomers. Now, I want to start with a brilliant equation that was shared with me by one of our very own on purpose guests. Now, this was a very, very popular episode. So if you haven't listened to it, I recommend you go back and listen to it. Maybe you can guess who it's from. But first, I'm going to share this equation with you. Pain plus reflection equals progress. Pain plus reflection equals progress. Write this down right now

and it comes from one of our podcast guests. Can you guess who it is? Now, I don't know what you're shouting out or saying, but if you haven't listened to this episode, I highly recommend it. This was said by none other than Ray Dalio. It's in his book, Principles, Brilliant Interview, one of our most popular, incredible interviews,

well with Ray Dalio, Pain plus reflection equals progress. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The depths of them, the variety of them, continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share 10 incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets.

When I realized this is not just happening to me, this is who and what I am. I needed her to help me. Something was gnawing at me that I couldn't put my finger on, that I just felt somehow that there was a piece missing. Why not restart? Look at all the things that were going wrong. I hope you'll join me and my extraordinary guests for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to season 8 of Family Secrets on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart.

I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities, like does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagleman, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save your retirement? Well, you're not alone

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Now think about this for a moment. When we spoke about this, he spoke about the value of pain. Pain is expected. But see, if you remove reflection, and if you've written this down, I want you to cross out that word reflection. If you've written down pain plus reflection equals progress. If you cross out the word reflection, all you left with is pain. Pain doesn't equal progress. Pain plus reflection equals progress. So if you take away the word reflection, you're just left with pain. And it creates more pain.

And most of us, when we're in pain, when pain is trying to make us pay attention, we're usually trying to do one of three things with pain. We're trying to avoid it. We're trying to distract ourselves from it, or we're trying to distract ourselves from it. Or we're trying to numb ourselves to it. How many of you have tried one of these methods at least? How many of you have ever tried this before?

That when you're going through pain or you're about to experience pain, you try to avoid it. You try to distract yourself from it. Or you try to numb yourself to it. So many of us do this. Right? We distract ourselves with another project or another activity. We numb ourselves by doing some numbing activity, whether it's some lazy form of entertainment. Or of course, we try and avoid it. But instead, Ray Dahlia said, if we choose to reflect, we can actually rapidly grow and evolve and help those around us do

the same. But guess what? We all find it hard to reflect in pain. How many of you have stopped your toe and someone looks at you and says, everything happens for a reason. And you're like, what are you kidding me? My toe isn't so much pain. Or how many of you have had someone say to you when you're going through a really tough time? When you're going through the toughest time ever and someone says to you, you know, everything happens for your own good. And you're like, what? I'm going to show you what happens for your own good. When we're in pain, it's hard to reflect. And so you may not be able to reflect and pain immediately. But the point here is that at one point, we have to reflect because we turn pain into progress when we reflect. And therefore reflection is

one of the biggest skills in building resilience. You may not have thought that, but reflection is one of the biggest skills that we are never trained in that can lead to perspective, it can lead to gratitude, it can lead to resilience. Reflection is an incredibly powerful, powerful skill. So our first reflection is learning and I want us to learn about self-awareness. This is a great time to become more aware and have more clarity and simplicity in our lives. I want you to ask you about what have you learned about yourself at this time? And I'm going to ask you two questions because I'm going to give you more specificity. During the pandemic, during the uprising for the past five months,

these are your two questions to reflect, to learn and guide yourself towards self-awareness. What's one thing you value more? What is that one thing that you value more because of the last four to five months? Is it your family? Is it your friends? Is it your personal time? Is it a place that you go to? What is it that you have learned to value more because guess what? That is it that you have learned to value more? Because guess what? That is such an important reflection to build resilience because you realize that pain has value. Pain has value when it gives you value.

How does pain give you value? When you reflect on it. When you reflect on it, how does it give you value? Because it gives you a gift. It shows you something. When pain can show you something, it has been a value, which means now you realize that when you're in pain, there is something valuable to be gained there. Whereas if you always feel that pain adds no value to your

life and you feel pain is negative and pain is bad and pain shouldn't be experienced, then you will not see value in it. And therefore the thing that makes you see value in pain is reflection. Does that make sense? So reflect for me. What's one thing you value more? And the second question, what's one thing you value less? Pain has this amazing ability to also make us realize what we value less. What's meaning less to us right now? What's purpose less to us right now? What's useless to us right now? What is it that you value less at this time? Now you may not be able to answer these questions right away, but I want you to reflect on these because we are strengthening your reflection muscle right now.

That's what we're doing, right? Reflection is like a muscle and sometimes we procrastinate and overthink. And there's a difference between reflecting and procrastinating and overthinking is almost like being in a maze and you're just guessing and trying to find out where to go, whereas reflection is saying, okay, I've been through this pain. What have I learned from it? What have I gained from it? What have I lost from it? Like that's reflection.

It's very specific. Whereas procrastination and overthinking is just like, oh, I don't know what's going on. Like this thoughts on my mind. It's aimless. It's meandering aimlessly. So that is your first reflection, which is learning and All about self-awareness. Now the second question I have for you or the second reflection, sorry, is all about Leadership. Now you may say, Jay, I'm not a leader in my company or maybe you're listening and going, Jay,

Yep, I'm a leader. I'm a manager. I'm a leader. I lead people, people depend on me. But the truth is we're all leaders. We have family that depend on us. We have partners that depend on us. We are also dependent as well. But everyone in the world is a leader to someone or in some way. And as leaders, there is such a need for us to realize

and never forget what our aspiration is even in pain. See, even in pain, leaders are able to know what they are working on. And this is what we all get upset about in leaders. How many of you have watched leaders? And you're just saying, well, you're not a leader. You're not acting like a leader. So ask ourselves, how can we ask in our own lives? How can we improve leadership in our lives? Now, let me explain to you what that means. There's a great story about Benjamin Franklin.

And in this story, it said that he carried with him a journal of sorts. And inside he had 13 virtues he was working on. These virtues included everything from silence, to cleanliness, to tranquility, and sincerity as well I think. And he jokes that he often felt short and made mistakes like us all like we all do. He ate too much and drank too much. He says he spent too much money. But as the story goes, in his final days, he was asked which of the 13 did he not accomplish? And he said it was the 13th one.

You want to know what the 13th one was? Humility. It's ironic because obviously if he said that I achieved humility, then maybe it's not possible to. But what I love about this story is that as a leader, he was very clear on what qualities he was working on. And I can imagine being Benjamin Franklin, he went through a lot of pain. He had a lot of challenges, but leaders have this ability to build skills even in pain. And I ask you and I want to invite you to ask yourself this question, where can you develop more humility or where in your life are you working on equality? Are you working on vulnerability? Are you working on openness? Are you working on vulnerability? Are you working on openness? Are you working on generosity or gratitude or

genuineness? What are you working on right now? Because that's what builds resilience. Resilience means having a vision of what you're building and not letting go of that just because there's some pain. If I told you that hung the goal of your life on the top of this tree is, is what you've been wanting your whole life, I'm sure you would climb, you would get through the thorns,

the branches, the leaves, you would get there because it was valuable. So when you hold that vision, you can actually break through pain. So what quality, what are you aspiring for? What are you so clear about? What do you have clarity about that is pushing you in that direction. Because see, here's the thing, the opposite of humility is ego. And what ego does is that it eliminates gratitude out. It eliminates genuineness out. It eliminates generosity out. So ask yourself, what qualities are your friends and family around your demanding? What qualities are your

ask yourself, what qualities are your friends and family around you demanding? What qualities are your children demanding? What qualities? And maybe not even demanding, but just need. And how can you rise? How can you grow? How can you keep that vision so clear that you are full motivated? Because guess what? You can stretch more than you even know. That's the truth. We can stretch more than we even know. And I have experienced this in my personal life where, you know, the comfort zone is, is a scary thing, but if you don't stretch it, you just never know. And the third reflection I wanted to share with you, the third and final reflection is about legacy. And I want you to really think about this one. And I really want you to put yourself in the shoes of what I'm about to paint the picture.

If you're in a safe environment, close your eyes and just go with me on this. Imagine a history class in 2030, or let's say in 2040 or in 2050, in 10, 20, 30 years time. And let's say your children go to this class at school, however school looks in 10, 20, 30 years, and your children or your grandchildren, they go to this class, and after that class, they come up to you and they ask you about the historic year of 2020. And they ask you about their school assignment. And their school assignment

is to ask their parents or their grandparents who are alive in 2020, what did you do? How would you like to remember this year at that time? This is a great reflection because by future pacing, you can make the right decision now. How do you want your children and grandchildren to remember you and this year? And How do you want your children and grandchildren to remember you and this year? And how do you want to remember this year? Do you want to remember this year? Because you got stronger, you got tougher,

you got more powerful, you got more focused. Do you want to remember this year? Because you rested, you refueled, you calmed, you learned to meditate. But do you want to remember this year just like any other year, where you just let it go by? We've got to start doing now what we want to feel in the future.

The thing that will fill others will hope. Because if you do that, you know you're going to be okay right now. Therefore my three reflections for you are to learn with drive, lead with humility and leave a legacy. These are the three reflections that I want you to take time on right now and after this podcast. The first one, as I said was to ask yourself the two questions about what you value more and what you value less. The second one was leadership, knowing how you can lead others. What do you need to aspire for? What's your vision to help others? And finally, legacy thinking, 10, 20, 30 years ahead and asking what can I do?

Because the truth is, these are the three top questions we can ask ourselves on how to help ourselves with the first question, learning, how to help others with the second question leadership, and how to help the world in the future legacy. Because everything else is a distraction. And I want to tell you a story about a distraction, a brilliant story that I heard recently about a study. And it's called Steelig's five dollar challenge. And in a class at Stanford, the professor Steelig came in and said to the Stanford students, they said, I'm going to give you five dollars, just five dollars. And in two hours, you have to turn this five dollars

into as much money as you can. Now, what would you think? Right, what would you think? How? What would you think? How would you do this? Think about it right now. They're giving you five dollars and you've got two hours, you've got to turn it into as much money as you can. And then afterwards, the professor said, and then afterwards you've got to present what you did and why you did it in three minutes to the audience, three minutes back to your class. So all these Stanford students, lots of them ran out and they started buying equipment

for a lemonade stand or a car wash. They got some, you know, makeshift goods, makeshift stuff. As you can imagine, they ran out pretty quickly. I mean, how many cars are you going to wash with $5? How many, you know, how many lemonade are you going to be able to make with $5? And how much is that going to make in terms of a profit? So they failed very early on. A second group of students realized

that actually they said, you know what, this $5? It's actually a distraction. That doesn't make any sense. Like really what we have a value is the two hours, right? Turning $5 into more money, you're never going to turn $5 into lots of money, but this two hours, that's valuable. What can we do in two hours that right? Turning $5 into more money, you're never gonna turn $5 into lots of money, but this two hours, that's valuable. What can we do in two hours?

That makes the most money. So this group of students, they went and they booked reservation at fancy restaurants that corporate companies wanted to go to and they started selling the optimal time slots to these companies. They made a lot more money because these companies had a high demand for sending their clients and their employees to din companies. They made a lot more money because these companies had a high demand for sending their clients

and their employees to dinners. But now they didn't do the best either. A third group of students, they realized that the $5 was a distraction, but also the two hours was a distraction. They realized that the most valuable thing they had was this three minutes in front of a Stanford class, and they realize that a company would pay top dollar to have three minutes

in front of a Stanford class. They sold that three minutes for $650 and won the competition. So smart, right? When you hear it that way, you're like, oh, that makes complete sense. But notice how the first two groups got lost in the distraction. The most painful thing was three minutes of presenting what you did and why you did it. But that became the thing with the greatest potential. Don't get distracted by everything else that's out there. Often the thing that we're running away from can give us the most value. So I hope today has been another enjoyable podcast. I hope it's expanded your mind, extended your learning. And again, I want to thank you so

much for your ears and for listening to this podcast. I'm so grateful each and every one of you. Thank you so much for tuning into on purpose. Make sure you tag me with your biggest learnings, your biggest lessons. What you love from this podcast, make sure you recommend it to a friend and tag me on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, everywhere. Because I love seeing what you learn. And I can't wait for next week. Thank you so much. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering

new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing. I can't wait to share ten incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. Listen to season 8 of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade, our time to be carefree, make mistakes, and figure out our lives.

But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Gemma Speg, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money, and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The Psychology of Your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. The one you feed explores how to build a fulfilling life

admits the challenges we face. We share manageable steps to living with more joy and less fear through guidance on emotional resilience, transformational habits, and personal growth. I'm your host, Eric Zimmer, and I speak with experts ranging from psychologists to spiritual teachers, offering powerful lessons to apply daily. Create the life you want now. Listen to the one you feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

feed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.