On Purpose with Jay Shetty - I Was Lost, Lazy, & Unmotivated — Until I Did This.

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

What’s one small step you can take right now to break the cycle you’re stuck in?   Today, Jay shares a simple, science-backed method to help you overcome laziness, distraction, and burnout by focusing on consistency instead of motivation. Rather than waiting for the perfect moment or a burst of inspiration, Jay explains how lowering the bar, creating rituals, and going on a dopamine detox can help you rebuild discipline and self-trust, one small action at a time.   It’s not about working harder or chasing perfection, but about starting smaller and showing up consistently. Jay explains how to protect your focus, rewire your reward system, and break the patterns that keep you stuck. Over time, these tiny shifts compound into real transformation, helping you feel more grounded, confident, and in control.   In this episode, you’ll learn:  How to Start When You Feel Stuck How to Build Rituals That Replace Willpower How to Break Free from the Dopamine Addiction Cycle How to Embrace Boredom and Reclaim Focus How to End Each Day with Progress, Not Pressure   Change doesn’t come from motivation. It comes from momentum. When you choose to start small, stay consistent, and keep your promises to yourself, discipline becomes second nature.   With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty.    Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here.   Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast     What We Discuss: 00:00 Introduction 0:57 Lower Your Expectations  05:36 Build A Ritual, Not A Routine 07:42 24 Hour Dopamine Detox  10:58 Make Bad Habits Hard To Do 13:13 Be Bored For 10 Minutes A Day 15:10 Reward Effort, Not Results 17:24 Turn Your Phone Off For 60 Minutes  18:14 You Can Do Anything for 5 Minutes! 21:15 End Your Day With the 3 Minute ReviewSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity.

Listen to Aunt Crispur, the story of Jennifer. for Doudna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever looked at a piece of abstract art or music or poetry and thought, that's just a bunch of pretentious nonsense? That's exactly what two bored Australian soldiers set out to prove during World War II when they tricked the literary world with their intentionally bad poetry, setting off a major scandal.

We break down the truth, the lies, and the poetry in between on hoax, a new podcast hosted by me, Lizzie Logan, and me, Dana Schwartz. episode, Hoax explores an audacious fraud or ruse from history. Listen to Hoax on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just think the process and the journey is so delicious. That's where all the good stuff is. You just can't live and die by the end result. That's comedian Phoebe Robinson.

And yeah, those are the kinds of gems you'll only hear on my podcast, The Bright Side. I'm your host, Simone Boyce. I'm talking to the brightest minds in entertainment, health, wellness, and pop culture, and every week, we're going places in our communities, our careers, and ourselves. So join me every Monday, and let's find The Bright Side together. Listen to The Bright Side on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I was lost, lazy, and unmotivated until I did this. What I'm about to share with you today is a step-by-step formula for how to not be lazy,

to find motivation, to discover discipline, and actually make a shift in your life. Now, if you don't, you can often get into the spiral of feeling like you're ruining everything. Let me break it down for you. I'd wake up tired, scroll for hours, lie to myself about tomorrow, and still wonder why nothing in my life was changing. I wasn't broken, but I felt like I was wasting my potential every single day. The truth is, I almost let it all slip away. My purpose, my drive, the people I love. What I'm about to share with you pulled me out of that spiral. And if any part of this sounds like you, you need to hear it. Step number one, lower the bar. Way lower. The hardest part isn't doing the thing. It's starting the thing. Set the smallest possible action step. So,

small it feels ridiculous not to do it. Now why should you lower the bar? Everyone's always telling you to achieve more, to think bigger, to do more. Why is Jay telling me to lower the bar? Well, here's the truth. We don't fail because we're not capable. We fail because we set the bar so high we never get started. We imagine we need a perfect plan, a perfect morning routine, a perfect burst of motivation. But perfection kills momentum. And momentum, not motivation, is what actually changes your life. Now here's the psychology behind it. It's something known as the activation barrier. Behavioral science shows that the hardest part of any task isn't doing it. It's starting it. That first moment takes the most mental energy. So when you lower the bar, when you make the first

step laughably easy. You bypass resistance. Don't work out for an hour. Just put on your shoes. Don't write 10 pages. Just open the document. Don't eat healthy forever. Just drink one glass of water. Once you're moving, your dopamine system kicks in. Effort itself becomes rewarding. Action creates motivation, not the other way around. I can't express to you just how big a point this is. The goal is to get started, to do the smallest thing. If you're thinking, I need to start a business, well, the first step may actually just be registering a company or getting a trademark on a name or building the minimum viable product version, which may start with a phone call to a friend who could be a mentor. The point is to

write down what you want to build, and then write down every step to get there, almost thinking of it like a step ladder. And just like a step ladder, you'll now place one foot in front of the other and then the next. Another reason why this works is because it's called the Tiny Habits Effect. BJ Fogg, a Stanford behavioral scientist, found that habit stick when they start smaller than your resistance. When you make the bar low enough to which, even on your worst days, you train your brain to associate action with success, not shame. That's how you rewire self-belief. Lowering the bar isn't giving up. It's giving yourself a chance to show up. Now this affects your confidence loop. Every time you follow through on something

small, you build self-trust, and that trust becomes confidence. Confidence isn't built by big wins. It's built by micro promises kept. You start to think, I can rely on me. And that's how you shift from lazy to consistent, from overwhelmed to grounded. And here's the truth. We raise the bar to impress others. We lower the bar to take care of ourselves. One is performance, the other is peace. When you lower the bar, you start winning again. not in a way that looks good, but in a way that feels good. And the real result, lowering the bar isn't lowering your potential. It's raising your consistency.

And consistency compounds into results that perfection never delivers. One of my favorite quotes is that you should start so small, it's impossible to fail. And then repeat it until it's impossible to start. This leverages the Zegarnic effect. Your brain hates unfinished tasks and will naturally want to complete them once you start. Momentum before motivation. Remember action before enthusiasm. Just take one step forward. One small step. Do the easiest thing you can. Do the simplest thing you can. Do one thing. Not everything. Just one thing. Step number two, focus on building a ritual, not a routine. Routines rely on willpower. I remember times in my life where I just didn't have any willpower. I would just feel like I would break down even before starting. Rituals are different. They rely on association. You do the same queue before the same task every day. Same place, same playlist, same coffee money.

For me, I know that if I listen to meditation music from the moment I wake up, I can now lock into my meditation quicker after brushing my teeth and having a shower. I know that I work out straight after meditating, so my brain and body are already prepared and ready for that. Over time, your brain links that cue to productivity through classical conditioning. It's Pavlov's dog, but you're the dog and a bell. One creator lights a candle before for writing. The brain learns candle equals focus mode. The point is that you're creating a cue that leads you to that activity. I'll give you another example. You get home from work, you walk in through the door, and you have jazz music playing, because jazz music tells your body

it's time to relax and calm down. Otherwise, you walk into your home and you're still carrying all of that energy with you. That simple cue can make a shift. I remember one of my clients telling me that they loved leaving their yoga mat already rolled out next to their bed so they could literally roll off their bed and onto the yoga mat and start practicing yoga. Other people leave their shoes by the door, their running shoes, so that they remember to put them on and go for a jog, go for a walk, or maybe even a long run. What does this do?

It makes the cue and the association easier for you to follow through. right if you have your vitamins and supplements right near your breakfast every day you're more likely to take them if you have them in a bottle or a jar that's somewhere else in your bedroom or in your house it's going to take you forever to get there how can you make it easier and simpler on your brain and your body to make the shifts you want to make step number three break the dopamine addiction cycle. Laziness often isn't lack of motivation. It's dopamine burnout from cheap rewards, scrolling, snacking, streaming.

The reason these are cheap rewards is that they feel good in the beginning, but they feel terrible afterwards. This is known as something called Rajas, or the mode of passion in the Bhagad Gita. When you do things in the mode of passion, they feel amazing at the start, but they feel like poison in the end. We all know what that feels like when you've wasted so many hours scrolling. You've just been eating junk food for the whole weekend. You've flooded your reward system with micro hits. So real work, which pays off later, feels impossible. Here's what I want you to try. Do a 24-hour dopamine detox. No endless scrolling. No junk food or background noise.

no passive consumption. Your brain reset sensitivity to effort and reward. Suddenly, reading, writing, or lifting doesn't feel like pushing a rock uphill. And you'll actually notice how even your taste buds changed. I've noticed that if I go a week without sugar, my taste buds are rewiring. If you go a week without junk food,

it doesn't even taste as good afterwards. Because what we have to recognize is you have to recognize is you have to notice what's numbing you. Ask yourself, what do I reach for when I'm bored, anxious or tired? That's your cheap dopamine. Usually your phone, snacks or endless scrolling. You can't change what you don't notice. The next thing you need to do is do that 24-hour detox. One day, no social media, no junk food, no background noise, just a reset. And you'll be amazed how quickly your brain gets quiet again. Here's a tip. Delete the apps for a day. Not your accounts. Just delete the apps. Lower the barrier to starting. Remember that point number one.

The next thing you have to realize is we have to replace the quick hits with real ones. One of the biggest mistakes we make in habit change is we try to cut out the bad stuff, but we don't replace it with anything. When you cut the fake dopamine, you need real reward. move your body instead cook something walk outside call someone don't forget that point you want to do activities that feel good after not the ones that feel good before cheap dopamine numbs you now and drains you later real dopamine costs you effort but gives you energy it's so interesting to me how so many of us are numbing ourselves from pain the escape rather than than elevating, energizing, and being able to cope with it.

I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14. years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke and he got down and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay,

this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Kurt Brown-Oller. And I am Scotty Landis, and we host Bananas, the Weird News Podcasts with wonderful guests like Whitney Cummings. And tackle the truly tough questions. Why is cool mom an insult, but mom is fine?

No. I always say, Kurt, it's a fun dad. Fun dad and cool mom. That's cool for me. We also dig into important life stuff, like, why our last names would make the worst hyphen ever. My last name is Cummings. I have sympathy for nobody.

Yeah, mine's brown-olar, but with an H. So it looks like brown-holer. Okay, that's, okay, yours might be worse. We can never get married. Yeah. Listen to this episode with Whitney Cummings and check out new episodes of bananas every Tuesday on the exactly right network.

Listen to bananas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The risks they took would be unthinkable to any doctor today. But odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine, and this is Cardiac Cowboys, a podcast that tells the gripping true story behind the birth of open heart surgery and the maverick surgeons who made it happen.

It changed the way we live. It changed the life expectancy. of people throughout the world. I should be dead. The repair that he did when I was six years old saved me. A rag-tag group of surgeons united by a common mission.

Some appeared on the cover of Time magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine. It's as if a man landed on the moon and nobody even told the story except this is more important.

Listen to the Cardiac Cowboys podcast starting February 6th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is brought to you by eBay. You know, there are certain books that don't just give you information. They shift the way you see the world. I remember reading one when I was younger that completely changed me. It was the first time I felt like someone had put into words what I was feeling inside. The confusion, the hope, the search, I felt like the author was speaking directly to my soul. Years later, I found myself thinking about that book again. I wanted the same edition back. Not a reprint, not a different cover, that exact one,

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It's not just a marketplace, it's a place where stories live, where you can rediscover the pieces of your past that still inspire your present. Shop eBay for millions of finds, each with a story, eBay, things people love. step number four is add friction just like we wanted to make good habits easier make bad habits a little harder to do keep your phone in another room while you work this has worked wonders for me when i'm trying to go do deep work i will be on my laptop which is not connected to any of the apps and I will leave the phone in my bedroom. This has transformed my life. Truly has transformed my life. I can actually do deep work again. I can actually sit there and write and process my thoughts without something buzzing every 15 seconds and grabbing my attention

away. Don't look at your phone first thing in the morning. You would never let a hundred people walk into your bedroom before you've brushed your teeth or washed your face or put on makeup. but you will happily let 100 people walk into the bedroom of your mind before you've even woken up. It's like someone's telling you to reply to this report. Someone's telling you to reply to this message. Someone's telling you what you didn't do yesterday. Imagine everyone crowded around your bed screaming and yelling at you. That's what it feels like. Turn off notifications. Log out every night. If scrolling takes five extra seconds, you'll do it less because your phone is away. It's in another room. It's that simple. And look, here's the thing. I know it's hard to leave your phone out of the room. I know it's hard to focus and do the work. I'm not saying it's easy. It's actually been built against us. The algorithm is designed to target our flaws and weaknesses. The algorithm's goal is not to make you happy. The algorithm's goal is not to make you successful. The algorithm's goal is to

keep you glued and keep scrolling. It's going to keep showing you things that are engaging. It's going to keep showing you things that it thinks are going to keep you there because it kept your friends there. That's how the algorithm thinks. You're not going to beat it by willpower. You're going to beat it by distance. When you have distance from this, you can actually detox. The next step is to relearn boredom. boredom is not the enemy it's a reset button let yourself be bored for 10 minutes a day no phone no music just quiet that's where your brain remembers how to focus again i remember youva noah harari coming on the podcast and we talked about maybe around five years ago now six years ago the

importance of boredom. We have filled our spaces of boredom with apps, with social media, with distractions, not realizing that boredom can lead to curiosity, rest, and breakthroughs, allowing yourself to practice boredom for 10 minutes a day. You're not reading a book. You're not distracted by the television. You're not on your phone talking to someone to truly do nothing for 10 minutes a day. And notice how in the first day, you will feel pretty uncomfortable. Day two, you might actually be going crazy. Day three, things will start to settle. Day four, you might actually feel more alert. Day five, you might have some amazing ideas. Day six, you'll think, why didn't I do this earlier? And day seven, you will have reset yourself. See, so many of us are making

mistakes in our life because we haven't reset. We keep making the same mistakes again and again and again because we've never reset. Allowing yourself to truly reset the system, think about your devices. When they've been overused, overworked, overwhelmed, they need to reset to refresh. Humans are the same. We do it every night when we sleep, but we also need to do it away from all of these devices. The next step is reward effort, not outcomes. You finished a task? Take a walk. Stretch.

Write it down. Small wins release dopamine too and train your brain to crave effort instead of escape. So many of us stop doing things that are good for us because we don't remember how good they were. You'll remember when you went to work and there was traffic, there was an accident, your brain actually holds on to it. But when the road was smooth, you never remember it. You don't remember how you felt after you worked out in a week. You do remember the stress you feel before you go to work out.

The brain holds on to negative experiences. We have a negativity bias. Because as, you know, back in the day, if you missed a berry, it didn't matter. But if you missed a tiger, that meant life or death. So you're wired to notice negativity more. we remember the bad times more than the good times because when something bad happens we cry for a month and when something good happens we celebrate for one night

we don't know how to deeply immerse ourselves in what's going well so it's so important to recognize small wins to recognize small moments of growth to really take a step forward and give yourself an honest acknowledgement of the amount of work you're putting in, we don't give ourselves enough credit. And when you don't give yourself enough credit, you don't give yourself the momentum, inspiration, and enthusiasm to continue.

But hey, we're the quickest to blame ourselves. We're so quick to guilt ourselves. We're so quick to shame ourselves. But notice how we're not as quick to credit ourselves. We're not as quick to notice our growth. we're not as quick to acknowledge the steps we've made forward and it's because of that that we stay held back it's because of that that we can't move forward because we don't recognize that we've already been taking steps the next step is to protect your first and last

hour no phone for 60 minutes move stretch or go outside at night your screen off 60 minutes before bed. Let your brain rest and reset. You'll sleep better, focus faster, and feel human again. Starve the fake dopamine so you can taste the real kind again. You're not lazy. Social media is truly addictive. You're not unmotivated. The algorithm controls you. You're not broken. You're being manipulated. You're not failing to focus. Your attention is being farmed. You're not the problem. You're the product. So let's take our ownership back. The next thing I want you to try is use the five-minute rule. Now, what's the five-minute rule? It's simple. Commit to doing something for just five minutes. Then you can stop if you want.

That's it. You tell your brain, I'm not doing the whole thing. I'm just doing five minutes. I'm not doing a one-hour workout. I'm just doing five minutes. I'm not going to write for an hour. I'm just doing five minutes. The trick, once you start, you almost never stop. Here's why it works. It bypasses resistance. The hardest part of any task isn't doing it. Psychologists call this the activation barrier. The mental energy needed to shift from thinking to doing. Five minutes is too small to trigger fear, perfectionism, or overwhelm. Your brain says, fine. Five minutes is nothing. I can do that. But once you're in motion, inertia takes over, and it's easier to keep going than to stop. The brain resists starting, not continuing.

Listen to that again. The brain resists starting, not continuing, which is why if you convince yourself to do a five-minute workout, you might do a 10-minute workout. But if you convince yourself to do a 60-minute workout, you might not even show up. Research from behavioral activation therapy shows once you start a task, your motivation. increases because of the task, not before it. One of my favorite quotes from Zig Zigler is you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. So make starting easy.

Don't make it optional. Here's how you do that. Step number one, choose one task you're resisting. Something specific. Answering an email, working out, cleaning your room, writing. Step two, set a five-minute timer. physically set it. The act of seeing the countdown helps focus. Step number three, tell yourself you can stop when the alarm rings. Give yourself full permission to quit after five minutes.

And step number four, start and watch what happens. Nine times out of ten, you'll keep going. If you don't, no problem. You've still built momentum and self-trust. And if you really want to make this work, create accountability that hurts. We overestimate self-discipline and underestimate social friction. Make the cost of inaction visible. Tell a friend your goal. Post a daily update on social media. Bet $20 against your friend as to who's going to get there to the gym. We're wired to avoid loss. Loss aversion is 2.5 times more powerful than reward-seeking. so make doing nothing painful here's the rule if it's easy to skip you will make skipping expensive and here's the final step end each day with a three minute review write down three things

you did write no matter how small this trains your reticular activating system to notice progress not problems so many of us will end the day and think of all the things we did wrong all the mistakes we made all the things we should have done could have done would have done this rewires us to notice what we did right so we can be better tomorrow progress equals dopamine dopamine equals momentum momentum equals motivation celebrate consistency not perfection when you're focused on perfection you'll never feel like you're moving forward. When you focus on the word healed or fixed, you'll never feel like you're healing or growing.

When you focus on growth, which means 1% better every day, one step further every day, your life will start to change. I really hope this helps you take action. I really hope this helps you get out of feeling lazy. And I really hope this helps you shift. Remember, I'm forever in your corner.

and I'm always rooting for you. Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. If you enjoyed it, you'll love my chat with Adam Grant on why discomfort is the key to growth and the strategies for unlocking your hidden potential. If you know you want to be more and achieve more this year, go check it out right now. You set a goal today, you achieve it in six months,

and then by the time it happens, it's almost a relief. There's no sense of meaning and purpose. You sort of expected it, and you would have been disappointed if it didn't happen. Hey, guys, it's AZ Fudd. You may know me as a gold medalist. You may know me as an NCAA national champion. You may even know me as the People's Princess.

Every week on my new podcast, Fud Around and Find Out, I'll be talking to some special guests about pop culture, basketball, and what it's like to be a professional athlete on and off the court. Listen to Fud Around and Find Out, a production of IHart Women's Sports and partnership with unanimous media on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Cats.

It may look different, but native culture is alive. My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture. Somewhere along the way, it turned into this full-fledged award-winning comic shop. That's Dr. Lee Francis IV, who opened the first Native comic bookshop. Explore his story along with many other native stories on the show, Burn Sage Burn Bridges. Listen to Burn Sage Burn Bridges on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Do we really need another podcast with a condescending finance brofe trying to tell us

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