On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 4 Reasons Why It’s Never Too Late to Do What You Love & 3 Ways to Start Today

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

If you enjoy On Purpose, you’ll love Jay’s Genius workshops and meditations. Go to https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGenius to learn more. What if your dream career was still ahead of you? What if getti...ng started was as simple as trying something new once a month? On this episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, Jay Shetty provides simple tactics for discovering what it is you love to do and how to turn it into a fulfilling career. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:22 Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'll get your podcasts. I'm Eva Longoria. And I'm Maite Gomes-Rajon. We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry for History. On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes,
Starting point is 00:00:41 ingredients, beverages from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories, decode culinary customs, and even provide a recipe or two for you to try at home. Listen to Hungry for History on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Brandon Francis Nuneum. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bond-vivant, but
Starting point is 00:01:06 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.
Starting point is 00:01:33 Hey everyone, welcome back to on purpose, the number one health podcast in the world, thanks to each and every single one of you that come back to listen, learn, and grow. Now, how many of you have felt a bit of pressure towards the start of this year already? Maybe you've been thinking, I thought he was going to be a fresh new start, but it feels like the same year. It says 2021 on the calendar, but it feels like 2020. And how many of you have been struggling to find your purpose?
Starting point is 00:02:06 Maybe you're worried you're on the wrong path? How many of you look around at the success with the satisfaction of others and feel like you're falling behind? Because you're just not experiencing that for yourself and you're not sure how to get there. If so, then today's episodes for you and also you're totally not alone.
Starting point is 00:02:23 So many of you ask me questions about figuring out your purpose or how to know if you're on the right path. So again, this is for you. I'm so excited about what I'm gonna be sharing with you today because it's going to help take a lot of pressure off you. It's going to help ease some of the exhaustion and anxiety and burnout you may be feeling over
Starting point is 00:02:43 trying to figure out how to find your passion and whether you're on track with your career. So after all that build up, let's get going, let's dive in. I want to start with a story. It's about a guy named Rich. Rich attended Stanford University, which you probably know is a prestigious and competitive school. When Rich was there, most of his friends would spend hours every night studying at the
Starting point is 00:03:04 campus library. Rich says the curriculum was so demanding that they'd be up there for around 4-6 hours at a time. Now Rich had a friend named Bob. Bob was like the poster person for focus. Every night he would cram his backpack with soda and blonde himself at one of the desks and just work and work. Probably not surprisingly, Bob went on to graduate with top honors and then he went on to Stanford Law and became a successful corporate lawyer. Rich, well let's just say he was not Bob. He tried, he went to the library and put in the hours, but he struggled to focus.
Starting point is 00:03:38 He'd look over and watch Bob scribble page after page of notes, but when he turned to his own work, he had trouble sticking with it for more than 15 minutes at a time. Eventually, he'd wander over to the periodical section and pick up a copy of Sports Illustrated magazine and read it cover to cover. Rich did okay at Stanford. He got mostly bees. After school, he spent a short time as an editorial assistant at a sports magazine, then worked as a security guard, then as a dishwasher. Compared to Bob,
Starting point is 00:04:06 most people would say Rich failed, that he had wasted his Stanford education. Maybe you're thinking the same thing, but let's fast forward 12 years. At that point, Rich was working as a technical copywriter, and he had a family and an okay salary. One day, Rich's friend Tony saw Rich creating a newsletter
Starting point is 00:04:26 on his desktop computer. Tony was ambitious and had been looking for a great idea that would land him fame and fortune. He asked Rich if Rich could design a magazine for him. Tony's idea was to create Silicon Valley's first business magazine. He took Rich's initial designs to avenge a capitalist who funded the idea and they were rolling.
Starting point is 00:04:45 But then they were faced with the challenge. How to turn their idea into a magazine people would actually want to read. And to do that, Rich opened his mental file cabinet and turned his brain all the way back to those issues of sports illustrated he had read at Stanford. And I mean it, it was a lot of sports illustrated. And Rich hadn't just read them, he devoured them. You see, all that time at the library, Rich wasn't just procrastinating, he was actually learning,
Starting point is 00:05:13 he was observing and digesting in all of the elements of what made a great compelling magazine. Only he didn't know that at the time. It was only later when he was called on to create a great compelling magazine that he looked back on that experience and realized how much he'd learned. As Rich later wrote, those hours reading sports illustrated might have wrecked my grades
Starting point is 00:05:35 but curiosity made my career. By the way, the rich I've been talking about is Rich Carlgard, the publisher of Forbes magazine and author of the book Late Blumers, the publisher of Forbes magazine and author of the book, Late Blumers, the power of patience in a world obsessed with early achievement. If you're feeling pressure to hurry up and find your passion or to find the one thing that drives you and to double down on it as fast as possible, you're not alone. And sometimes this pressure has tragic consequences. At gun high school in Palo Alto, which is where Stanford is located, in the 2014-2015 school year, 42 gun students had been hospitalised or treated for suicidal thoughts.
Starting point is 00:06:16 And this isn't new, as car-guard rights and late bloomers for the last 50 years rates of anxiety and depression among young people in the US have been on the rise. A 2014 survey from the World Health Organization identified depression as the top cause of illness in disability among adolescents. Now this date is from 607 years ago and that means that a number of you were adolescents then. Even if you're a bit older, I bet those figures don't exactly surprise you. The pressure to find that one thing you're greater and to do it fast is something most of us feel. It's not wrong to want to find your purpose, it's to want to discover it with that speed and pace. Think about it. What do we ask kids all the time? What do you want to be
Starting point is 00:07:00 when you grow up? We're already being at that age told that we have to pick just one thing and pick it soon. And until we find that thing, we're failing, we're falling behind. But guess what? That's not true. Check out this study. An economist looked at the higher education systems in Scotland and England. In England, you've got to decide in your teens what you want to specialize in so that you can apply to university specifically for that. Scotland has a similar base level education system, except that you don't have to pick a specialization or a major so early. You can take a few extra years to try out and sample different areas of study. That means that in Scotland, students potentially
Starting point is 00:07:38 get fewer years of focused, specialized study. So who performed better? The early specializes right? That's what logic would tell us, but no, at least not in the long term. Indeed, those who had to pick a specialized area of study earlier were off to a faster start and experienced greater early career success, including financial success. But their catch was that late specializers were better at something called match quality. That's how well the work we do matches the work we want to do. When we have better match quality, we're more motivated and so we engage more deeply and are more successful as a result. And that's what the study showed.
Starting point is 00:08:16 Those who waited longer to choose their area chose better. And after about an average of six years, they caught up with early specializers in terms of financial earnings and then passed them. And they also stayed in those roles longer than early specializers. Interestingly, we're seeing this now with the trend of millennials choosing to get married later. They're still dating and living together, but getting married later. According to anthropologist Helen Fisher, that creates better match quality.
Starting point is 00:08:45 Only this time, instead of between you and a job, it's between you and a partner. Later marriages are less likely to end in divorce. And in addition to match quality, there's a concept called sampling. That's what you're doing when you date, right? You're doing sampling, finding out what quality is the most important to you in discovering who and how you act in relationships, that typically results in better, match quality, and the same thing is true for careers. But first, here's the big takeaway I want you to get today. If you're not sure what your passion is, if you're not sure what your purpose is, if
Starting point is 00:09:19 you think you may have two passions or twelve passions, or if you think your purpose may change over time, good. Please hear this. By trying different things or pursuing multiple paths, you are not failing. You are sampling. You're not falling behind. You're learning. And you're not off the path. Your path just doesn't travel in a straight line. And that's a good thing. It's not necessarily better than specializing early, but both are totally fine. Now, I can relate to this because I spend my whole 20s in one sense sampling. I started off in business. I lived as a monk for three years, which of course is for such a foundation for the rest of my life. I then went on to work back in management consulting, strategy consulting, digital strategy. I then went into working as a senior host and producer
Starting point is 00:10:12 at Huff Post. I've then moved into the world I'm in today. I got trained and qualified as a life coach and a purpose coach and a relationship coach and a meditation coach. And so I've sampled so much in my 20s and my 30s have become a real place of feeling real focused and purpose. But if you've spoken in my 20s, I was simply sampling. And it looked like I was failing. My friends were making more money than me. My friends were more in long-term relationships. My friends were getting mortgages on homes. But it's different. Now, I'm addressing this because I have a program
Starting point is 00:10:47 called Live Your Passion Build and Income where I help you discover this. And I've created a really healthy program in which to help you along your journey. And that's why what I'm trying to release the pressure off from you is that your purpose will change, it will evolve. That you don't have to feel the speed
Starting point is 00:11:04 of having to find it now, but you can start the process. That's how I want you to approach it. One of the reasons why we feel pressure is the people we put a spotlight on. If you take someone like Mark Zuckerberg, who started Facebook, while still at university, was one of the richest people in the world at age 30, or Katrina Lake, who is the youngest woman ever to take a company public. Now, Mark Zuckerberg is the exception not the rule, as it turns out, according to research out of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University,
Starting point is 00:11:33 among the fastest growing tech companies, the average age of the founders was 45 at the time of founding. Plus, a 40-year-old is more than twice as likely to have a start-up, be a success as someone who's 25. And when it comes to Katrina Lake, she was successful as a young entrepreneur, but that's not the whole story. She initially went to school intending to study pre-med. When she found that life at a hospital wasn't for her, she switched to economics because she loved data. After school, she wasn't sure what to do, so she took a job as a consultant, at a practice where she became interested
Starting point is 00:12:08 in the ways that technology might shape the retail world. From there, she went to work at a venture capital firm, then onto business school, and it was there after multiple career turns that she got the idea for StitchFix, which uses a combination of complex data analysis and actual human personal shoppers to send clothing picks directly to customers. Lake created the retail experience
Starting point is 00:12:30 of the future, and she did it by combining information and ideas she gained during years of sampling. Our twenties are seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, full in love, make mistakes, and decide what we want from our life. But what can psychology really teach us about this decade? 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, friendships, and much more, to explore the science and the psychology behind our experiences, incredible guests, fascinating topics, important science, and a bit of my own personal experience. Audrey, I honestly have no idea what's going on with my life. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Now streaming on the iHot Radio app, Apple podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:13:46 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 annoying 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
Starting point is 00:14:35 for this new season of Family Secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1680s, a feisty opera singer burned down an unnery and stole away with her secret lover. In 1810, a pirate queen negotiated her cruiseway to total freedom, with all their loot. During World War II, a flirtatious gambling double agent helped keep
Starting point is 00:15:05 D-Day a secret from the Germans. What are these stories having common? They're all about real women who were left out of your history books. If you're tired of missing out, check out the Womanica podcast, a daily women's history podcast highlighting women you may not have heard of but definitely should know about. I'm your host Jenny Kaplan and for me, diving into these stories is the best part of my day. I learned something new about women from around the world and leave feeling amazed, inspired, and sometimes shocked. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:15:48 There's a view out there that the world is kind of fixed. It's like a pre-written show, a scripted show, and we all have to discover our partner as soon as possible. The reality is that life is more like improv. We actually create and shape our experience as we live it. We talk about discovering ourselves and our passion, and that's not totally off base, but the four pictures that are satisfied, successful life is also about making ourselves,
Starting point is 00:16:11 about exposing ourselves to new and different things and seeing what captures our imagination or our focus. But how do we do that? Today I'm going to share with you two tactics to develop your range, whether you're already in a career you love or you've been in a long-term career you definitely don't love and you're still searching for your passion and your purpose. The first thing we need to do is try and reprogram our thinking about achievement and what our
Starting point is 00:16:38 career path is supposed to look like. That's no small task. I know, but we can do it. As David Epstein writes, most specialist parts look more like a straight line from point A to point B, whereas generalist parts tend to be squiggly. Maybe they have a few loops and curves and travel from point A to point Z, which stops at many points in between. But those multiple stops weren't diversions, and they definitely weren't failures. They were part of learning and sampling. At each of those stops,
Starting point is 00:17:08 generalists learned or did something that brought in their thinking or reasoning and their ability to work across disciplines where they've realized they are not. So where we can start with all of this is by stopping comparing ourselves with others. Perhaps one or more of your friends are early specialists and you're still searching. Great, but don't confuse efficiency with effectiveness. And as David Epstein and Rich Karl-Garde report, lots of people who experience early success
Starting point is 00:17:37 either end up switching careers later because they're not fully satisfied or because they've gone as far as they are happy going in their current career. Many of them even take a step or a few steps back to start over in another area. The Gallup Organization reports that nearly 70% of us are disengaged at work. The outside world may see us as successful, but we're not fulfilled. So instead of scrutinizing other success and comparing how you measure up, focus on
Starting point is 00:18:03 your own experience and what you're learning. The key to that is to make your experiences meaningful, meaning equals learning and learning equals value. Let me repeat that again and write this down meaning equals learning and learning equals value. The first strategy to create range in your life is to shift your mindset about sampling. And to do it, you're going to write down three jobs you've had, or activities you've done that you don't think apply to your current or desired profession. Maybe it's a hobby like reading or woodworking or a past job like waiting tables. List out three of these things.
Starting point is 00:18:42 Now for each list, one skill or piece of information you learned from that hobby or interest or that job that could be broadly applied. So I'll give you an example. One of my first ever jobs was work experience at an organization called the Business Design Center in London. It was an advertising marketing and events company and it was the first time I learned how to call call. It was an incredible experience. I was about 16 years old. I remember having to pick up the phone to executives, pick up the phone to seasoned business people and explain to them what we were doing. I got such amazing
Starting point is 00:19:15 training and what it really gave me was the confidence to reach out to people I didn't know, right? Now, maybe waiting tables help you learn to interact with all kinds of people more effectively or help you learn more about human behavior. Maybe reading has helped improve your focus. Maybe woodworking helped you learn how to solve problems creatively or it's helped you develop patience. Those are all valuable skills and qualities
Starting point is 00:19:39 that I could see being really useful. So again, three hobbies, interest or jobs, and one thing you learned from each. Another job that I had earlier on in life was working at Morrison's. Morrison's is a grocery store like Walmart or Trader Joe's. And one of the things that really helped me with was being able to remember where things were in compartmentalized things. So when people would ask for bread, I knew it was an aisle 12. When people would ask for cheese, I knew it was an aisle 12. When people would ask for cheese,
Starting point is 00:20:06 I knew it was an aisle six or whatever it may be. So I was so aware of where things were. And it really helped me get organized and systematic in my memory. This is going to get you reflecting on all the broad skills you may not realize you've developed or started to develop and start to reprogram how you assign value to different experiences,
Starting point is 00:20:26 what you interpret as meaningful and useful. Okay, strategy number two for building your range is also simple. It's one word, sample, and my word for sampling is experiment and keep sampling and keep experimenting, try new things. Before this purpose to expand your range, I don't just want you to try any new things, like coloring your hair orange. I want you to try something you're generally interested in. Try something you're curious about. It can be learning a skill, learning knitting, or how to play the guitar,
Starting point is 00:20:53 but I'm going to give you a real framework for how to do this. Every month, take one weekend that is dedicated to trying something you're interested in. You may enroll for an online course, you may try a Zoom class, maybe in your area you're able to go to a physical class, allow yourself to go and experience something with a coach, an expert, a teacher, a community, a group, a guide.
Starting point is 00:21:21 Do one of this every month and you will have tried and sampled 12 things in in 2021. Now, you may say, Jay, I actually have more time for this. I'm going to sample every other weekend or I'm going to sample every weekend. That's what I've tried to do for so many years, where I'll adopt a new skill or a new habit by sampling and experimenting with the weekends that I have available. If you allow yourself to experiment every month with a new thing that you're fascinated by, a new thing that you're interested in and you go and experience it with a coach,
Starting point is 00:21:55 I'll give you an example. Last year, I really wanted to work on my fitness and so I was trying to find what worked for me. I went on hikes, I went on runs, I tried to work with a personal trainer, I did online classes, I worked with equipment in my home, and then I discovered tennis. And I realized tennis has become my favorite way to exercise, but it was through sampling and experimenting
Starting point is 00:22:20 that I recognized that I had no clue that tennis was going to be the way that I like to exercise. And that's the point that you don't know yet, but you have to sample in a systematic strategic way. So you take one weekend and the Saturday and Sunday, or even just the Saturday are dedicated to this new activity. Now, what are you looking out for
Starting point is 00:22:39 when you do this new activity? The first thing that you're looking at is how much enjoyment and at how much happiness you get from doing this activity. The second thing that you're looking at is how much enjoyment and at how much happiness you get from doing this activity. The second thing you're looking at, do you have a natural skill set? Can you pick this up? Is this something that you could actually do? And of course, with tennis, I'm not trying to go and play at Wimbledon, I don't have those skills, but if you're talking about finding your passion, you want it to be something that you're determined to get good at. Right, that's what you're looking for. The key is, are you determined to become a pro at this thing that you're really excited
Starting point is 00:23:09 about? At one point in my life, I was very new to social media. I didn't know anything about social media. And I spent hours on weekends studying social media and understanding how it works. Today, I'm considered an expert in the field, but it wasn't always that way. So you have to give it that time and that energy and that focus to really try and build it up.
Starting point is 00:23:32 I am Mi'amla, and on my podcast, The R-Spot, we're having inspirational, educational, and sometimes difficult and challenging conversations about relationships. They may not have the capacity to give you what you need. And insisting means that you are abusing yourself now. You human! That means that you're crazy as hell, just like the rest of us.
Starting point is 00:24:01 When a relationship breaks down, I take copious notes and I want to share them with you. Anybody with two eyes and a brain knows that too much Alfredo sauce is just no good for you. But if you're going to eat it, they're not going to stop you. So he's going continue to give you the Alfredo sauce and put it even on your grits if you don't stop him. Listen to the R-Spot on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it.
Starting point is 00:24:50 Kobe Bryant. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Kevin Hawke. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying our best to create change. Luminous Hamilton. That's for me being taken that moment for yourself each day,
Starting point is 00:25:05 being kind to yourself, because I think for a long time, I wasn't kind to myself. And many, many more. If you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw, real-life stories behind their journeys,
Starting point is 00:25:19 and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHAR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. This is what it sounds like inside the box card. I'm journalist and I'm Morton in my podcast City of the Rails. I plunge into the dark world of America's railroads, searching for my daughter Ruby, who ran off to hop train.
Starting point is 00:25:47 I'm just like stuck on this train, not where I'm gonna end up. And I jump. Following my daughter, I found a secret city of unforgettable characters living outside society, off the grid, and on the edge. I was in love with the lifestyle and the freedom this community. No one understands who we truly are. The rails made me question everything I knew about motherhood history and the thing we call the American Dream.
Starting point is 00:26:15 It's the last vestige of American freedom. Everything about it is extreme. You're either going to die or you can have this incredible rebirth, and really understand who you are. Come with me to find out what waits for us in the city of the rails. Listen to the city of the rails on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or cityoftherails.com Now, after you've done that sampling, you're going to do this. You're going to take your list of all the things you've sampled sampling, you're going to do this.
Starting point is 00:26:45 You're going to take your list of all the things you've sampled, but you're going to choose one. Just one, because I know most of you are busy and you want to be able to explore this topic or hobby in a meaningful way. So choose one and spend at least 30 minutes per week for the next month doing it. That's two hours over the month. Then at the end of the month, ask yourself, am I interested enough in this that I want to explore it more? And if so, spend 30 minutes per week for the next month exploring it and ask yourself that question again, am I still
Starting point is 00:27:17 interested enough to keep going? Maybe you are or maybe you've gone as far as you want to, in which case you can switch to something else on your list, or maybe you've gone as far as you want to, in which case you can switch to something else on your list, or maybe you've developed a new curiosity and you can switch to that. But at each stage before switching you want to reflect on what you've learned, so go back to tactic number one and write down at least one broad idea or skill or concept you learned in your exploration. So when I tell you to take a weekend in a month and you try it out, if that becomes your thing, you don't have to do a new thing every month, you take that, you do 30 minutes per month,
Starting point is 00:27:50 then you do 30 minutes per week, and at one point you'll start doing 30 minutes per day. I have a friend who always wanted to learn Arabic. No particular reason for that. She's just always been curious to try it. But she was so busy with work and then raising young kids it just never happened. Then DuLingo announced it was adding Arabic and she thought, Hey, I can find 10 to 15 minutes a day
Starting point is 00:28:10 and she did that by cutting out the time she spent scrolling on social media. Instead when she had a few minutes, she opened DuLingo. Recently, she hit 500 days in a row of Arabic lessons and she couldn't be happier. Learning Arabic doesn't have an immediate payoff in her life in terms of career or finances, but it gives her something that's in some ways more important. She's doing something just for herself, just for the joy of it. And you know what, that's causing her
Starting point is 00:28:36 to enjoy other things in her life more as well. Plus, she's growing her brain literally. That's another huge benefit of sampling. We're literally creating new neural pathways in our brains, and that improves our brains overall cognitive health. If you're not sure what to pursue or what you're interested in, go to a library. It may be a virtual library, and just start looking around until something catches your eye.
Starting point is 00:29:00 Or go to a bookstore, go on Amazon, and just look at some books and see which areas peak your interest. Or go to a site like Masterclass where they have loads of instructors and topics and see if anything catches your attention. Or think back to something you used to do that you enjoyed and just don't make time for now. Like one of my friends used to play the cello and just picked it up again after about a 25-year break. The point is that you do not need to know where any of these things are going to lead. And I don't want you to fall into a trap of thinking that your curiosity has to be monetized. Though the reality is that with exploration, this may even start shaping your future. So those two to three tactics are not only about broadening your horizons
Starting point is 00:29:44 and expanding your skill, sir, but also loving and embracing who you are right now. And the past you've traveled to this point, no matter how indirect and looped and curved it may be, you are creating a masterpiece out of your life. Today, I wanted to share with you the statistical and data approach to why range is so important from this incredible book that I've been sharing from. It's really important to realize this and I keep sharing science and insights and ideas with you because I want to show you that these aren't just ideas and concepts. These are proven
Starting point is 00:30:14 when you're looking at human behavior, when you're looking at our lives and you're looking at the way we function. Now I'd love to hear what you come up with, what skills or abilities did you realize you learned? So tag me on Instagram at JSheddy, make sure you leave a review, it makes a huge difference. We have over 14,000 five star reviews. I'd love for you to leave one as well, and I can't wait to see you again next week. Thank you everyone.
Starting point is 00:30:51 Hey guys, this is Jay again, just a few more quick things before you leave. I know we try to focus on the good every day, and I want to make that easier for you. Would you like to get a short email from me every week that gives you an extra dose of positivity? Weekly wisdom is my newsletter, where I jot down whatever's on my mind that I think may uplift your weak. Basically little bits of goodness that are going to improve your well-being. The short newsletter is all about growth and sending positivity straight to your inbox. Read it with a cup of tea, forward it to a friend and let these words brighten your day.
Starting point is 00:31:19 To sign up, just go to jshetty.me and drop your email in the pop-up. If you have trouble finding it, just scroll to the very bottom of the page and you'll see the sign up. Thank you so much and I hope you enjoy my weekly wisdom newsletter. This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions. Our executive producer from Dust Light is Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Julianna Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer.
Starting point is 00:31:52 Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the Duslight Development and Operations Coordinator. I'm Jay Shetty and on my podcast on purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Hart, Lewis Hamilton, and many, many more. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real-life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours.
Starting point is 00:32:28 Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. 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
Starting point is 00:32:45 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 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 Jermis Beg, the host of the psychology of your 20s.
Starting point is 00:33:21 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. ever you get your podcasts.

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