On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 4 Things Confident People Tell Themselves Every Day

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Jay shares four mantras for the moments we need them most, whether you’re struggling to find hope, learning to trust yourself, opening yourself up to new opportunities, or simply trying to feel more present. Through personal stories, from a decades-old journal entry written by his grandmother to the surprising origin of Post-it Notes, Jay explores how a few simple words, repeated daily, can shift the way you see yourself and the life ahead of you. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Built-in protections for teens. Try AG1 Now at https://drinkag1.com/JAYSHETTY JAY'S DAILY WISDOM DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX Join 900,000+ readers discovering how small daily shifts create big life change with my free newsletter. Subscribe here: https://news.jayshetty.me/subscribe Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast What I Discuss: 00:00 Introduction 00:25 What Does The Voice Inside Your Head Sound Like? 01:49 Shaping Your Inner Voice 03:30 What Is A Mantra? 04:10 His Grandmother's Journal Entry 06:24 How Hopelessness Can Shrink Your Future 09:25 This Is A Chapter, Not the Whole Story 10:50 The Butterfly In Its Cocoon 15:25 Trust Yourself With What Comes Next 16:30 The Post-it Note Origin Story 18:25 Recognizing Opportunities Are Already Around You 19:47 Notice What Is Trying To Find You 22:10 Making Room for the Unexpected 23:01 Carrying A Cup Of Water Through A Marketplace 24:29 Returning An Anxious Mind To The Present 26:10 Release The Past And The Future 27:46 Choosing One Mantra For Your Week 28:01 Learning to Trust Your Inner Voice Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, it's Jay. I don't know what your day's been like, but I was just thinking about you for a minute. And I hope you're being a little patient with yourself because you deserve it. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon. As we begin today, I want you to take a second to just hear the voice inside your head.

the one that led you to opening up this podcast, the one that may have started talking to you before you even opened your eyes this morning. When your feet touched the floor, it reminded you of everything you needed to do. When you looked in the mirror, it told you how to feel. And maybe as the day began, that voice began to whisper things about yourself that it would never say out loud about someone else. We all have a voice like this. It narrates our experiences so consistently, that we eventually stop recognizing it as a voice. We begin experiencing its words as facts. Nothing is ever going to change.

No longer sounds like a passing thought. It sounds like a prediction. I'm not capable of this. Begins to sound like a description of who we really are. Nobody really knows me. Feels like proof that nobody ever will. Think about how many times you speak to yourself in a single day. You hear your own.

own voice when you make a mistake, when you look at someone else's life, when you enter an unfamiliar room, and when you lie awake imagining everything that could go wrong, no voice follows you more faithfully than your own. And yet for many of us, it is a voice we have never been intentional about shaping. That is what I want us to change together today. I'm going to share a few mantras with you that will help you not only break free when that voice in your head starts speaking negatively, but will also help you completely change the tone of that voice overall. Each voice is different, so I have chosen four mantras all designed for different kinds of days because you don't need the same words in every season of your life.

There are days when you need hope, there are days when you need confidence, there are days when you need to open yourself to opportunity, and there are days when you simply need to return to the present moment. As you listen today, your goal is to notice which mantra feels as though it was written for you. It may be the mantra that comforts you most, or it may be the one you initially resist. Sometimes the words we struggle to say reveal the place within us that most needs our attention. So now, if you're walking, let your steps find a gentle rhythm. If you're sitting, allow the chair beneath you to carry a little more of your weight.

If you're lying down, soften the muscles around your jaw and let your hands rest wherever they feel comfortable. And later in the episode, if you feel safe, I'm going to invite you to repeat the mantras after me. You don't need to perform this experience correctly. All I'm asking is that just for the next 30 minutes, you have that inner voice, do something uncomfortable. Instead of speaking, you have it listen. For those who aren't familiar, a mantra is a way of consciously choosing the thought we want to practice.

The words we repeat direct our attention. Our attention influences our choices. Our choices create self-trust and that trust slowly changes what we believe is possible for us. You do not have to believe every word immediately. You only have to become willing to hear yourself say something new.

So now, take a slow breath in, hold it gently, and now let it go. Let's begin. For this first mantra, I want to start with a feeling many of us have experienced before. Hopelessness. Let me tell you a story.

A friend of mine was helping clear out her grandmother's home after she passed away. The house had been lived in for more than 50 years, and every room held evidence of a life that had become too large to fit neatly into boxes. There were postcards from places her grandmother had visited, birthday cards from people she had loved, and photo albums filled with her own. holiday memories. At the bottom of a closet, my friend found an old journal. Most of its pages were empty, but near the beginning was an entry her grandmother had written when she was 31 years old.

The same age my friend was now. The handwriting was hers, but the person speaking through it felt like a stranger. Her grandmother wrote that she was scared, lonely and certain she had made the wrong choices. She had recently lost a job she needed. A serious relationship had ended, and several of our friends seemed to be moving forward without her. At the bottom of the page, she had written, I don't think my life will work out how I hoped. My friend sat on the floor and read that sentence again. She wished she could go back decades earlier and show her grandmother everything that came afterward.

She would show her the home she was currently sitting in and the kitchen where people always gathered because her grandmother made everything. everyone feel welcome. She would show her the friendships that lasted a lifetime, the places she eventually traveled, the garden she learned to grow, the husband who stood by her side till the end, and all the ordinary evenings where she laughed so hard, she cried. Most of all, my friend wished she could show her grandmother herself. She wanted to say, you haven't even met me yet, you have no idea how important you are going to be to someone who doesn't even exist. Her grandmother had written that journal entry from inside one painful day. She couldn't see beyond it, but her inability to

imagine what came next had never meant that nothing was coming. It only meant the rest of her life had not happened yet. Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at Instagram.com forward slash teen accounts. I think this is what hopelessness makes us forget. There may be people who will one day be unable to imagine their lives without you, whom you haven't even met yet. There may be rooms you will fill with laughter, places that will become familiar, and ordinary mornings you would give anything to see from where you are standing now. You are reading one page and trying to

determine the meaning of an entire life. But the page you're on cannot tell you who appears in the next chapter. We do this in our own lives all the time. When a relationship ends, the mind says, I'll never find love like that again. When an opportunity disappears, it says, that was my only chance. When we wake up carrying the same pain we carried yesterday, it tells us, this is how I'm going to feel forever. Hopelessness has a way of collapsing time. It takes something that is true in this moment and convinces us it will be true in every moment that follows. I don't know what to do today becomes I will never know what to do.

I haven't found my people yet becomes there is nowhere I will belong. This didn't work out becomes nothing. ever works out for me. Think about a difficult chapter from your past. Remember a moment when you couldn't see how your life could move forward. Maybe you were grieving someone, waiting for an answer, struggling financially or trying to recover from a choice you wished you could undo. At the time, the emotion may have felt permanent. Yet somehow the story continued. You met people you couldn't have known were coming. You had conversations you couldn't have planned. You adapted to reality, you once believed you could never survive.

You may not be grateful for everything that happened, and you don't need to pretend that pain wasn't there. But you're here standing in a part of the story that the earlier version of you could not see. Hope does not require you to believe that everything will unfold exactly as you wanted to. Perhaps you currently feel hopeless. I won't ask you to call it beautiful.

I won't tell you that everything happens for a reason, or press you to find a lesson before you're ready. I only want to remind you that one hard moment is just one hard moment. It's not the rest of your life's journal. Take another gentle breath in. As you breathe out, picture the pages of a journal resting in your hands. Imagine all the pages you've already lived resting beneath your left hand.

Now feel the weight of all the blank pages still waiting beneath your right. You do not need to know what will be written on them. You only need to remember that they exist. Repeat after me, This is a chapter. This is not the whole story. Again, this is a chapter. This is not the whole story.

Now think of the situation that is the whole story. Now, think of the situation that has been making you feel hopeless. You don't need to solve it. Simply hold it in your mind as you repeat the words one more time. This is a chapter. This is not the whole story. Use this mantra when your mind begins turning pain into a prophecy. Use it when you catch yourself using words like always, never, everyone or no one.

Let it interrupt the moment when your current. hardship begins to feel never-ending. Then take one small action that acknowledges the existence of another page. Step outside, make an appointment, answer a message, research one possibility. Tell someone that today is difficult. Your action does not have to resolve the whole story. It simply needs to demonstrate that you're still participating in the pages moving forward. Take a deep breath. And as you release it, try to let go of that hopeless thought, even just for a moment. As you breathe back in, breathe in the possibility of the best case scenario happening. Now, I want to move on to the next mantra, and this is one that I think many of us might need the most.

Before we dive in, I want to share a story from biology that have always found fascinating. When a butterfly is ready to emerge from its cocoon, the process is a little bit of a story. looks almost cruel. It doesn't simply unfold its wings and flow into the sky. It struggles for hours. It pushes against an opening that seems impossibly small. Watching it, your instinct is almost always the same to help it. In fact, people have tried. They've carefully cut open the cocoon, thinking they're giving the butterfly an easier beginning. But what scientists discovered is surprising. That assisted butterfly almost never survives. By removing the struggle, they also remove the process that strengthens it. That effort of forcing its body through that tiny opening

pushes fluid into its wings, allowing them to expand and become strong enough to fly. Without that resistance, its wings never fully develop. The butterfly doesn't develop the wings it needs before leaving the cocoon. It develops them by leaving it. Maybe we're not so different. What if confidence isn't the prerequisite for change? What if the very experiences you're trying to avoid because you don't feel confident enough are the experiences that build the confidence you're waiting for? Every difficult conversation strengthens your ability to have the next one. Every time you walk into a room where you don't know anyone, you become someone who's a little less intimidated by strangers. Every risk you survive becomes evidence that you'll find your footing, even when it's scary. That's the kind of confidence

that lasts. Not the confidence that comes from believing the world will be easy. The confidence that comes from knowing you've become someone who can meet whatever the world. This episode is brought to you by Apple Watch. If you're like me, constantly trying to better understand your body, you should check out the new Apple Watch Series 12. The Vital's app puts your key daytime and overnight health metrics right on your wrist, including HRV, which is heart rate variability, a signal of how your body's handling stress and bouncing back from it. And it's now backed by the most accurate heart rate sensing in a wearable,

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Discover Coffee Plus on Nisprosso.com. Asks of you. Many of us are waiting for the cocoon to open for us before we trust ourselves, to take action. We want to know a job will make us happy before we even apply. We want proof that a relationship will last before we allow ourselves to fall in love. We want to know our idea will succeed before we decide to share it. But confidence and certainty are not the same thing. Confidence says whatever happens, I trust myself to meet it. Certainty depends on the world behaving as we expect.

Confidence remains available even when the world surprises us. Think about the last time, you did something for the first time. Perhaps you began a new job, move somewhere unfamiliar, traveled alone or spoke honestly in a hard conversation. Before you did it, your mind probably, presented a long list of everything that could go wrong. What your mind couldn't show you was the version of you who would exist on the other side of the experience. That version of you know something you could not know beforehand. They know how you can learn, how you can adjust,

and who might help you along the way. You wanted evidence before beginning, but the evidence could only be created by beginning. Confidence is rarely the absence of a doubt. Confidence is rarely the absence of a doubting in a voice. More often it is the decision that the voice of doubt will not be the only one speaking. You already have more evidence than you realize. You have survived moments you once dreaded having. You have found your way in places where you initially felt lost. You have made mistakes and continued living after them. You have experienced days you never want to repeat, and those days did not destroy you. There may have been times when you broke down, asked for help, change direction, or admitted that you didn't know what to do. Those moments also belong in

your evidence. Self-trust does not mean believing you will handle every challenge perfectly and independently. Sometimes trusting yourself even means knowing you will reach for support before you disappear beneath the weight of what you're carrying. Now picture yourself inside your cocoon, scared to take the step you know you need to take. Notice the part of you that one, guarantees. Here the questions it is asking. What if I fail? What if it's hard? What if I'm not ready? Let those questions be present without answering them. Let them drift by. And now repeat after me. I do not need every answer because I can trust myself with what comes next. Again, I do not need every answer

because I can trust myself with what comes next. One last time, say it as though you are speaking directly the version of yourself starting to take the leap. I do not need every answer because I can trust myself with what comes next. Confidence grows when we keep small promises to ourselves. If you want to strengthen this mantra, choose one promise that can be completed today.

Spend 15 minutes beginning the project. Answer the email you've been avoiding. Agree to the plans you've been pushing off. The plan may change, life may change, but your confidence does not have to come from controlling any of these things. It comes from remembering that you have wings you haven't even used yet.

When we find ourselves feeling more hopeful, more confident, we begin to feel that we are capable of abundance. and that's what I want to go into with this third mantra. Let me share another story. This is a true story from back in 1968. A scientist named Spencer Silver was experimenting with adhesives for his job at a company called 3M when he discovered something unusual. He found that the tiny adhesive spheres he developed could make one surface lightly stick to another,

but the bond wasn't especially strong. You could attach a piece of paper, remove it without causing damage, and use it again. Silver knew he had created something different. He just couldn't explain to anyone what it could be used for. For years, he shared the adhesive with other teams at 3M. He gave presentations, spoke to colleagues, and tried to find someone who could see a use for it. People found the discovery interesting, but interesting is not the same as useful. The adhesive remained what Silver would later describe as a solution waiting for a problem.

Then another 3M employee named Art Frye one day encountered a very ordinary frustration. Fry sang in his church choir and used small pieces of paper to mark the songs in his hymnal. Every time he opened the book, the bookmark slipped out or moved to the wrong page. He needed something that would remain in place without permanently sticking or damaging the pages. And then he remembered silver's adhesive. Fry applied it to small pieces of paper, creating bookmarks that could be attached, removed, and repositioned.

The invention silver had carried for years finally met the problem it was capable of solving. Even then, the product didn't become an immediate success. It took years of experimentation, internal advocacy, prototypes and imperfect market tests before Post-it notes became the small yellow squares now found on desks around the world. I love this story because nothing new

entered the room at the moment the opportunity appeared. The adhesive already existed. The paper already existed. The problem had happened before. The opportunity emerged when someone noticed the three ordinary things, previously understood separately, belong together. This is often how opportunity enters our lives.

It rarely arrives as a complete plan with its importance clearly labeled. It may begin as a skill you haven't found a useful, a person you met before you needed their advice, an idea that returns every few months or a frustration you dismiss without asking what it might be inviting you to create. We often assume we need something new to appear before our lives can change. But sometimes the real invitation is to look differently at what has already appeared. The experience that seems unrelated, the idea that feels incomplete, or the conversation that led nowhere may just be waiting for the right problem, moment or connection

to reveal its purpose. Spencer Silver continued sharing an invention nobody knew how to use. Art Fry paid attention to a problem most people would have accepted as a minor annoyance. The opportunity existed somewhere between persistence and recognition. That is why the mantra I'm about to share is not everything I want is on its way to me, you have much more agency than that. The mantra is, I am ready to notice what is trying to find me. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Think about a morning ritual that takes almost no thought, but gives you a moment to choose yourself before the day starts choosing you. That's the idea behind

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I am ready to notice what is trying to find me. It reminds us that opportunity is not only something we chase. Sometimes that abundance is already around you, waiting to be recognized. Attracting opportunity does not mean remaining still and expecting life to locate you. It means becoming available to life. Availability asks us to become visible, curious and willing to participate. It may mean telling someone what we hope to create instead of waiting for them to guess. It may mean applying before we meet every qualification,

sharing work before it feels perfect, or accepting an invitation before we know exactly what it could become. Consider how many opportunities in your life began without announcing what they were. A casual introduction may have become a deep friendship, A disappointing breakup may have made room for a love you hadn't previously thought possible. A hobby may have revealed a talent. A conversation you nearly avoided may have changed the way you understood yourself. Very few opportunities arrive holding a sign that says,

I am about to change your life. More often they arrive as a person to call, a place to visit, an idea that keeps returning or a small opening you decide to take a chance on. There's also a part of opportunity that begins inside us. When we believe nothing is available, we behave as though nothing is available. We stop looking, asking, sharing, experimenting, and introducing ourselves. The belief becomes a filter,

and the filter eventually creates the empty world it expected to find. A mantra can change that filter. It cannot guarantee that every door will open, but it can help us notice doors that pessimism taught us to ignore. It reminds us that openness is an active state. So now, repeat after me. I am open to paths I haven't considered. I'm ready to notice what is trying to find me.

Again, I'm open to paths I haven't considered. I'm ready to notice what is trying to find me. If this is your mantra, create one opening every day this week. Send a message to someone whose work interests you. tell a trusted friend what you're hoping to find. Apply for something that excites you. Visit somewhere outside your routine. Accept one invitation you would normally decline.

At the end of each day, ask yourself, what did I notice today that I might ordinarily have missed? Perhaps it was an opportunity, but perhaps it was information. Maybe you noticed that a certain environment energised you, that a conversation kept returning to the same subject or that you felt curious about something you had never considered doing and perhaps the place you need to start

is just to be more open to the people around you which takes me to the fourth mantra I want to share with you there's one final story I want to share with you today it's an old story a mentor once shared with me that has stayed with me ever since he told me a student traveled across a wide desert to study with a teacher known for his extraordinary sense of calm. The teacher lived beside a river, and the student expected to find him meditating

in complete silence. Instead, he found children playing outside his home, merchants calling to one another across the road, animals moving through the yard, and pots clattering in a nearby kitchen. The student asked, how can you remain peaceful with so much happening around you? The teacher filled a cup with water until it reached the very edge. He handed it to the student and asked him to carry it through the crowded marketplace without spilling a drop. The students stepped into the market. People moved around him from every direction. Musicians played, sellers called out their prices, and children ran between the stalls.

He walked slowly, keeping his attention on the cup. When he returned, the water was still level with the rim. The teacher asked, did you hear the musicians? The students said no. Did you hear what the merchants were selling? The student said no. Did the marketplace become silent? The student again said no. The teacher then told him, the world did not become still. But you discovered that your attention could. Many of us are waiting for life to become quiet before we allow ourselves to feel peaceful. We tell ourselves we'll rest when work is complete, relax when decisions have been made, or breathe when an uncertain phase passes. But life rarely finishes making noise. There's always always is another message, memory, responsibility, or problem asking to enter the mind. Grounding is not the ability to remove every demand from your life. It is the ability to return

your mind to the place where your life is actually happening. An anxious mind travels constantly. It revisits a conversation from yesterday. It enters tomorrow and rehearses a disaster that hasn't occurred. It crosses into someone else's mind and tries to determine what they think of you. your body may be sitting safely in one room while your thoughts are living in five different places the past can contain valuable information and the future deserves thoughtful preparation but neither is meant to become our permanent address

we can visit them without living there so for the next few moments think of my voice as that cup of water this is all you have to focus on right now allow your shoulders to fall away from your ears unclench your jaw let your tongue rest down take a slow breath in through your nose

hold it gently now breathe out slowly you do not need to repair the past in this breath you do not need to predict the future in this breath nothing is being asked of you in this moment except to be here so now repeat after me I release the past

I release the future I return to now again I release the past I release the future I return to now now notice one sound near you notice one physical sensation in your body notice what this present moment feels like

this moment may not be perfect it may contain fear sadness or something that still needs to be addressed. Crowning does not require us to call a difficult moment peaceful. It only asks us to meet the moment that is here, instead of simultaneously carrying every moment that came before it and every moment that could come next. If this is your mantra, connected to your breath throughout the week,

when you begin replaying the past, breathe in and say, I release the past. when you notice yourself rehearsing the future breathe again and say I release the future then look at something physically present a tree your hands the light coming through a window

and say I return to now I return to now you can return as many times as you need becoming distracted does not mean the practice failed the return is the practice we have now moved through four different inner landscapes. You do not need to carry all four mantras with you this week.

In fact, I don't want you to. When we try to transform everything all at once, even healing can begin to feel like another list of responsibilities. Before we finish, bring your chosen mantra into your mind. Say those words silently to yourself, allowing your inner voice to change. One day that voice will tell you there is more to your mind. a story, that you can trust yourself, that possibility is still approaching, or that you can

return to the present. It will no longer sound like a voice you're trying to imitate. It will sound like you. Thank you for watching. Remember, I'm forever in your corner, and I'm always rooting. My rec league goalie says he plays for the love of the game. You gave up six goals last week, Steve? Maybe play to win, huh? Like with Bet365, I get paid the second my team goes up big, with early payout and can cash out at any time before the game ends. Come on, Steve. Bet 365, the home of winning early. Must be 19 and older, Ontario only.

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