On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 6 Habits Successful People Use Under Extreme Pressure & Remaining Calm When You're Stressed

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

What’s your go-to response to stress? In this video Jay Shetty warns viewers against falling into overeating, additions, or zoning out. Instead, he gives six habits that have helped him and many other successful and creative people remain calm when they’re under stress and pressure. Watch the full video now to learn all six habits and how you can start implementing them in your life right now, starting with two breathing exercises he demonstrates in the video.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do a flirtatious gambling double agent in World War II? An opera singer who burned down an honorary to kidnap her lover, and a pirate queen who walked free with all of her spoils, haven't comment. They're all real women who were left out of your history books. You can hear these stories and more on the Womanica podcast. Check it out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. 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. 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 eight of Family Secrets on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We move away from the present moment because we either regret the past

or worry about the future and guess what? Regret and worry only create more pressure and stress. only create more pressure and stress. Hey everyone, welcome back to on purpose. Thank you so much for being here right now. Thank you for choosing to listening to this. It means the world to me. And I know that this community, we've already created over 12,000 reviews on the podcast app. If you haven't left a review yet, please, please, please, go and leave one. It means so much to me.

It makes such a difference for the podcast and it lets so many people know what they're going to get when they come here. And I have loved reading your reviews recently. They have meant so, so much to me. And I want to thank each and every single one of you that has actually taken the time to leave them and subscribe as well. So today, I wanted to dive into something that I hope is going to help you, especially at this time right now. And it's called the things that successful people do under extreme pressure and how to deal with stress proactively. Now, we're all in that position right now.

Right? No matter what our background is, what we did a few months ago, what we do for work and whether we're in a relationship or not, wherever we live, this is probably one of the first times, especially at least in my lifetime, where the whole world is feeling an extreme sense of pressure and stress together at the same time. And I truly believe that there are some habits, some tools that we forget at this time. It's really, really easy at this time to fall back into our bad habits. And let's really be honest with each other. You know, I want to be vulnerable and share with you as well the things that I struggled with in the beginning of quarantine and then how I managed to pull

myself out of it as well. But I think for so many of us, how many of us have found ourselves overeating at this time? Raise your hands. Not away while you're listening to this, right? We found ourselves overeating. It's so easy to just be eating a lot of sugars and a lot of carbs and eating more times per day because we're in our homes and our Kitchens for more time every single day. So so many of us have fallen into that bad habit So many of us have fallen into maybe addictions. How many of you may have turned more to alcohol during this time or how many of you like me Attemptive video games at this time right where it's just eating up your hours and your time. And so what I want to share with you today is some of the habits that really help me deal with this extreme sense of pressure and stress and what's really helping a lot of the

successful and creative people out there as well. And I really believe that I'm going to share with you six or seven maybe, but even if you can start going to do one, even if you can do one of these, it will be truly, truly life changing. Now, some of these things, maybe things that you've done before, there may have been things that you practiced, but the way I'm going to share it with you today is I'm going to give you much deeper methods of practicing them. So, the practical application of these methods will be something totally fresh and new that I haven't shared with you before.

So whatever you've been struggling with at this time, whatever it may be, I want you to know that there is a way through, there is a way out. And it's normal, like I was saying to you last week, for you to have this time to adjust and adapt. But I want to start by talking about these habits that successful people do and develop to deal with extreme pressure and stress proactively. Because remember, if we're just sitting here waiting for this to change, like we might be counting down the days and going, well, you know, in my city or state, this 30 days left, maybe there's 90 days left. And we're just waiting for the external situation to change. And that external change isn't necessarily going to make a difference in our life, right? Like that external shift isn't going to bring the shift that we currently need. That's going to be important to us right now. So these habits that I'm going to share with you today,

these are the habits that are going to actually help you grow at the pace you want to grow, not wait for the pace of the world. And I think that's what often happens is that our pace gets decided by the pace of the economy, the pace of the society, the pace of the system, right? The pace of the system defines our pace. And sometimes we're not going gonna be happy with that pace because we don't wanna be affected by it.

And it's important that we create our own pace. So the first habit that I want to share with you and I've been speaking about this a lot. How many of you joined my 20 days of meditation, round one and round two. So we did 40 days of meditation, around 20 million of you that joined me across those 40 days, it was absolutely incredible.

If you missed it, you can find the first 20 days on YouTube. But this is the number one thing you can do. And I'm not gonna say meditation. I'm going to say breathing, learning to breathe is an incredible skill when you're facing extreme pressure and stress. And you're thinking, really Jay, we've been told to take a breath before but hear me out. Some of the greatest athletes in the world, oh, their greatest success is in triumphs to using their breath. It is not breathing in and of itself.

It's what breathing allows. Slowing down your breath gives you more mental clarity. Clearing your mind gives you direction. Monitoring your breath brings you back into the present moment. How many of us are stuck worrying about the future right now? How many of us are going, oh no, what's going to happen in six months? What's going to happen to this? How's this going to change? Oh no, what am I going to do with, you know, restructuring? And we're lost in that future state. And how many of us are stuck in the past going, oh,

I should have started this last year. I wish I had this last year. And trust me, I've been through that too. My book was meant to launch in April 14th. I know so many of you pre-ordered it. And I'm so grateful to you. And if you haven't pre-ordered it, I really hope you will. It's at thinklikeamoncbook.com. And my book got pushed back. So my book got pushed back to September 8th

because the publishers didn't believe that it would actually get to everyone during this time. And so it's push-ful-aided this year and there was so much of me that was saying, oh, I should have launched it last year. I wish I launched in 2021. And we get lost in that. We move away from the present moment because we either regret the past or worry about the future. And guess what? Regret and worry only create more pressure and stress. That's the crazy thing about it. We're already stressed and pressured. And then we create more pressure and stress. That's the crazy thing about it. We're already stressed and pressured and then we create more stress and pressure by having more regret about the past

or having more worry about the future. And that just creates this vicious cycle, right? This circle that continues to repeat, this pattern that continues to go on and on and on. So what does breath do? and on and on. So what does breath do? Breath brings us back into the present moment because your breath is right here right now. And I often talk about this that one of the reasons why we feel so much tension and pressure in our lives is that our mind is ahead of our body or our body is ahead of our mind. Let me explain what I mean. When you wake up in the morning, or our body is ahead of our mind. Let me explain what I mean. When you wake up in the morning, how many of you have ever found this?

Your mind is racing around. And your body's like, ugh, I wish I was still in bed. Or how many of you experience the second inquiry where your body's racing around, like you know you need to do a lot physically, but your mind's like, ugh, I'm still in bed. So often we find that our body is ahead of our mind

or our mind is ahead of our body. And that lack of alignment creates friction, it creates distance, it creates tension and stress and pressure. But when we breathe and we bring our awareness to our breath, we bring our mind and our body back into the present, back to the same place. We align our body and our breath. When we align our body and our breath, our mind comes back into the same place. We align our body and our breath. When we align our body and our breath, our mind comes back into the same place.

We're bringing harmony, synergy, we're getting in sync into this space. So breath work is super powerful. After each, I remember speaking to Novak Jokovic, this was just before the lockdown started and he was in L.A., he was meant to be playing in the tournament and the tournament got called off and we luckily got to me and spent some time together

and if you didn't see it, we went live on Novak Jokovic's page last week to talk about everything that's happening and really how to deal with it. It was a brilliant conversation that we had and he's told me many times that breath is what he uses when he's in a really tense game. And he's under that stress impression to perform at Wimbledon at the US Open.

It's his breathing that brings him back in the moment. So we've seen people use breath at tough and stressful times to actually find balance. So I wanna share with you two breathing techniques today and we're going to do a couple of them as well as I progress in this podcast. So the first thing I'm going to ask you to do is I'm going to ask you to place your left palm on your stomach if you can. If you're walking you can do this, if you're standing, sitting, lying down, you can do this. Obviously if you're driving right now, don't do this, but place your left palm on your stomach.

And as you breathe in, I want you to feel your stomach go out and as you breathe out I want you to feel your stomach go in. Breathe in and let you stomach go out and breathe out and let you stomach go in. Try that once more breathe in and let your stomach go out. And breathe out and let your stomach go in. This is something I was taught when I had some vocal and throat challenges many years back. And I was introduced to this concept of diaphragmatic breathing, which I was told that singers, athletes, musicians that play wind instruments are all trained in how to breathe and diaphragmatic breathing

is our optimal breathing. So monitor your breath in that way and even if it feels alien in the beginning, just take a few moments every day where you breathe that way. And the next thing I want to add to you is what's known as the 47 8 breath. It's very well known, not practiced. And what I want you to do is you want to try and breathe in for four, hold for seven and out for eight. But we're going to start with something simple. What we're going to start with is 4, 2, 4. So what I want you to do is place your left palm on your stomach again, breathe in for a count of four, hold for two, and out for four.

Again, give yourself a beat of two, and then breathe in for four, hold for two, and out for four. Again, give yourself a beat of two and then breathe in for four. Hold for two and out for four. So let's do that together. Breathe in at your own time, in your own pace. One, two, three, four. Hold, one, two and breathe out. One, two, three, four. Breathe in one, two, three, four. Hold one, two, and breathe out one, two, three, four. Try that once more yourself in your own time, at your own pace. So I want you to practice this breathing and you can do this in the morning when you wake up or before you go to bed. And I also want you to do it just throughout the day, whenever you feel like you're getting stressed out or there's too much pressure, just go to this breath, like let it be an instant

connection that you just go back to. One of my other favorite grounding techniques is something in therapy that's recommended a lot. It's called the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method. And that's another way of connecting back into the present when your mind gets lost in the past, the future, what you have to do is five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things that you can hear, two things that you can smell, and one thing that you can taste.

It's another way of bringing yourself back into the present moment and I highly, highly recommend it. So that's habit number one that's successful people use to keep themselves focused on the common pressure and actually just to deal with it. And like I said, many athletes have used that technique as well. Now, the second one I share with you is one that you may already do in some shape or form, but I really want you to do it this time. And this is journaling your feelings. And there are three particular questions

I want you to answer. This is why I'm not just telling you to journal. I'm going to share with you some frameworks and structures on how to journal more effectively. So the first question you want to ask yourself is how do I feel? Because often we find that we may not want to approach our friend and tell them how we feel or maybe no one's asked us this week or maybe we're like, oh, wow, that may take a long time. So it's important that we have this conversation with ourselves. And it's important that we ask

yourself, like, how do I feel right now? And no feeling is a good or a bad feeling. Like if you're feeling stressed and tired and overworked, say it, write it down. And if you're feeling good and happy and motivated, that's fine too. And I think one of the biggest challenges people have right now is that some people are sad about what they feel glad about. So some people are actually saying, oh, I'm actually happy that things have slowed down and I'm happy to have more space. And some people are feeling obviously distressive. I've lost my job or I don't know what's going on. And neither of them are right or wrong feelings. They're all situational based on your circumstances.

It's so important to really feel and understand your emotions and your feelings and to really reconnect with them at this time, because otherwise what we tend to do is we just hide them away. So ask yourself the first question, how do I feel and write it out, or voice note it to yourself? The second question is,

why do I feel this way? So after asking yourself, how do I feel? It's really important to say, why do I feel this way? Because your answer maybe, because I'm not working hard enough for, I'm not trying hard enough for, I'm not trying hard enough for, I'm spending too much time on social media or for me, it was, you know, I'm spending

too much time on video games and that's why I don't feel creative. So my answer was, how do I feel? I felt uncreative. And then why do I feel that way? Because I was spending too much time on video games. And then the third question to ask yourself is, how do I want to feel? And what do I need to do to feel that way? So these are the third and fourth questions. Really important. How do I want to

feel? So how do I want to feel? I want to feel rested. I want to feel not rushed. I want to feel creative. So I improved my sleep. But what do I need to do to that? I need to sleep earlier, right? What else do I need to do to not feel rushed? I need to space out my days. And what do I need to do to feel creative? Maybe I need to have more conversations. Maybe I need to read more books. Maybe I need to expose myself to other ideas and thoughts. So, journaling that way, four questions. How do I feel?

Why do I feel this way? How do I want to feel? And what do I need to do to feel that way? And you can voice note this and you can write this, either one that works for you, but journaling in this way, starting this conversation with yourself is so important. Now, he's the thing, right? You know, I don't know how many of you've been playing game night or whatever it is with your friends right now. And when you play game night for fun, right? You know, I don't know how many of you've been, you know, playing game night or whatever it is with your friends right now. And when you play game night for fun, right?

And then all of a sudden you go, all right, now we're going to try, you know, now we're going to play, you know, we raise the stakes almost like we're going to have points now or scores or whatever it is. You automatically start focusing. You start becoming effective, right? You start becoming organized. You kind of get your team focusing. You start becoming effective, right? You start becoming organized. You kind of get your team together. You motivate each other. But up until that point, you relax.

And that's why it's so important to journal in a way that you're measuring your growth, you're monitoring your progress. Such an important thing to focus on. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life. I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen, or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun bite.

I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in. It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. You're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs.

They left their lives behind so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building armed with machetes. And we've heard all sorts of things that you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think, all, all this for a damn bar of chocolate.

Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate, on the I Heartio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Our 20s 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? life. But what can psychology really teach us about this decade? I'm Gemma Spake, 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.

Join me as we explore what our 20s are really all about, from the good, the bad, and the ugly, and listen along as we uncover how everything is psychology including our 20s. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Spig, now streaming on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts or whatever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Shatekater and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're gonna get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention.

Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop! But just what I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good, There is risk to father. Am I whole view on astrology? It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer,

I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Number three is a habit that I think is so underrated. How many of us ask the wrong people for advice? When I say the wrong people, I don't mean that they're bad people. I don't mean that they're toxic people.

I don't mean that they're negative people. I mean that people have never been through what we're asking them. I'll give you an example. If you're speaking to a friend and you're trying to raise money for a business where you're speaking to someone who's never raised money for a business, how useful do you think they're going to be?

It's a competence question. It's a credibility question. If you're trying to launch a website or a video and you're speaking to your friend, who's never launched a website or a video in their life, or maybe they have, but it's not being a successful one. How useful is that going to be? It's so important that we look to the right places and the right sources, speak to someone who's been through it before, speak

to someone who's going through it, and that applies to everything. It applies to absolutely everything. Right, speak to an expert or someone who's been through it. Now, they can't always be an expert about everything because something's new in first times and you may not have access to that, but you can't speak to someone who's done it before, who's been through that before. It's so important if you're stressing out about, you know, eating food that's not great for you, you wanna speak to someone who's eating food,

that's right for them, right? And you wanna ask them for their help, their guidance, their coaching, that doesn't mean you have to follow their advice, it doesn't mean you have to achieve what they've achieved. It means that you're allowing yourself to recognize that there's a way out. And that feeling is so important because half the thing that blocks us and keeps us in stress, the prison of stress and pressure, right? The prison of pressure is created and lived in when we don't believe someone's ever

got out. I'll give you an example. If, you know, I don't know if you're into these movies, but you know, these movies about like, secret prison facilities, whatever, if you've never ever, you know, if there was a prison and you told no one ever gets out, then you were like, oh, no one's ever gonna get out.

But if you knew that there was a prison where someone had got out of it, you'd be like, oh, that's fascinating. I wanna know that story, right? You wanna know about it. That's the same thing. You've got to start realizing that we're all living in this prison of pressure and there may be someone who's who's broke through for me. How can you seek them out? How cool is that that they found a way out? I think this is one of the biggest reasons why coaches are so powerful

and important because they don't only help you understand where you are, but where you want to go and have the advice and guidance to actually help you move forward. So that's step number three. Now step number four is strengthening your mind. And strengthening your mind comes from four steps. And this is something I actually developed when I lived as a monk. And we would learn these ancient stories of incredible leaders

and teachers and sages and gurus and guides and monks. And this was a principle I read because sometimes I would read these stories. And sometimes you may read stories of famous or successful people or happy people or courageous people. And you may think, wow, that's not for me. Or, you know, and sometimes I would read these incredible stories of sacrifice and think, wow, that isn't applied to me. That's tough, you know. But this system really helped me understand it. So if you're reading a book or listening to a podcast, this is how you study the lives

of people to strengthen your mind. The first thing that you ask yourself is, let me understand what this person went through. Let me just look at the scenarios and the positions they went through, right? That's the first step. The second step is what principle can I learn from how this person operated? So let's say someone went through struggles. So first of all, let me look at this person and what they went through. So the first P, the person, what did they go through? They went through struggles.

They went through bankruptcy. Okay, what principle can I learn? I can learn that in this time when they lost their job during a recession or they were through, they went through struggles, they went through bankruptcy. Okay, what principle can I learn? I can learn that in this time when they lost their job during a recession or they were struggling, they found their passion or their opportunity or their potential in that moment. That's a principle. Now the third piece, what's the practical step?

What did they do in order to get that? Did they ask a mentor? Did they get a coach? Did they move forward? What did they do? So that's your three-piece formula to strengthen your mind through someone's inspirational story. First, find the person whose story that you're inspired by. It's so important to tell yourself these stories and expose yourself to these stories, after we're not exposed to enough stories

of incredible people that inspire us. So first, do that. The second is, what principle can you learn from that person's life? Because often we try and apply the same thing as they did, but it's a principle, it's not imitating, it's emulating. And the third and final step is, what's the practical step? What did they do? What was the actionable item in their life

that they actually followed up on and took a decision on that brought about this positive change in their life. Right? Is that make sense? That's how you break it down. When you hear an inspirational story, you don't just go, okay, now I wanna be an entrepreneur, this is the process you go through.

When your mind just gets lost in the lala land of it all in terms of like, oh, how exciting would this be? I'm gonna, you know, I'm going in that direction. This is a great way to get started. Now, step number five, movement and exercise guys, there is no substitute for it. And I have to be honest and say that my wife's the reason why I've been able to do that, but just virtual workouts, workout with a friend, join an Instagram live dance party.

Get that exercise in run, get out of your head, garden, dance, yoga, whatever it is. There are so many lives right now. I just want you to join one a day because that movement is so powerful and so important for you. I cannot stress it enough. It will reduce your stress and pressure. Dance it out, guys. Dance it out. Even if you don't like the gym, make that time. I don't enjoy the gym.

You just gotta push yourself. That's one, you just gotta push yourself to do. It will make such a difference. You'll feel the benefits, and that's when you'll feel all the change, right? You feel all the change through the benefits. I really, really want you to do that one. Now number six is something that I think is underrated. People don't often think about it. I know a friend who plays the piano to calm him down. If you can play an instrument like that,

that's pretty cool. I was joking earlier this year that, you know, I can't play the piano like John Legend and Sing for Everyone. So that's why I teach meditation. But, you know, the truth is that you can play an instrument, pick it up, get into it again. A laughing is so powerful. There are some great comedians out there right now. I'm as in prime as a ton of great content.

And I know I'm not usually recommending stuff like that but it's so good to laugh. It's so so so important to laugh. I can't stress it too enough. I only realized that when I married my wife and I realized how funny she was and how much she makes me laugh and I'd love for you to add more laughter to your life. Telling jokes, sharing jokes, making funny videos, watching funny videos, watching comedy, laughter is such, such powerful medicine. And I think it's highly underestimated and especially at a time of right now, sometimes we feel guilty of laughing,

but we're not laughing about the situation. You've got to remember that, but it's laughing about whatever it is that that creator is talking about. I think it's a really, really powerful way. And I want to share one more thing with you is this idea that going back to your routines and schedules is always a good idea, getting things in the calendar. If it's in the calendar, it will happen.

And you have to treat your personal life and your professional life in the calendar. Because if your personal life isn't in the calendar, your professional life takes over. And if your professional life isn't in the calendar, your personal life takes over. So you have to have both your personal and professional life in your calendar and space it out. There's a beautiful quote by Bill Gates where he says, we overestimate what we can do in one year and we underestimate what we can do in 10 years. And for so many of us, we are tryingimate what we can do in one year and we underestimate what we can do in 10 years. And for so many of us, we are trying to get too much done in a week when actually spreading it out could make such a big difference. Thank you so much for listening to today's podcast.

I really hope you enjoyed it. I want you to share which principle are you going to practice? Which step are you going to take forward? And I want you to tag me in your Instagram stories, let your friends know to listen to this episode. Thank you so much for listening and share it to everyone. Have an amazing week. So good to be with you today.

So great for spending this time with you. Thank you for listening to On Purpose. 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. Listen to on purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon.

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 20ss hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Brendan Francis Nunehm. I'm a journalist, a wanderer, and a bit of a bon 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'll have to get back to you. Listen to Not Lost on the iHeart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.