The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Jay Shetty on Life, Love, and the Business of Podcasting

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Jay Shetty, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host of On Purpose, Chief Purpose Officer of Calm, and purpose-driven entrepreneur, joins Scott to discuss his journey from monk to media mogul, the business of podcasting, and the key to successful relationships. Follow Jay on Instagram, subscribe to his podcast On Purpose, and sign-up for his newsletter. Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Buy "The Algebra of Wealth," out now. Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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There are a lot of big stories in tech right now, and somehow it feels like every single one of them has to do with Elon Musk. All week on the Vergecast, we've been talking about Doge, and what Elon Musk and his merry band of engineers have been doing to the federal government, and we've been talking about Doge and what Elon Musk and his merry band of engineers have been doing to the federal government. And we've been talking about open AI, specifically everything new with chat GPT, Elon Musk's attempt to buy it and what might happen as AI takes over everything, including the government. All that on the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts.

What's up besties? On this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, I'm sitting down with Lexi Alford, aka Lexi Limitless, the youngest person to have been to every single country in the world. We chatted about how she turned her passion for travel into breaking a world record and transforming that momentum into a seven figure business. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on the Your Rich BFF YouTube channel. Episode 337-337 is the area code covering Southwestern Louisiana in 1937. J. R. R. Tolkien published The Hobbit True Story. My porn name was inspired by The Hobbit. Call me Dildo Baggins.

Go, go, go! Okay, what's going on? I am on vacation for the week. I am in Zermatt. Why am I in Zermatt? Because I can be. And that light at the end of the tunnel where my kids are no longer going to be, I'm so freaked out about all this data around 90% of the time you're going to spend with your kids is before they're 18 and my kids are barreling towards 18. So I'm spending most of my disposable time and money on spending time with them. Anyways, in place of our regular scheduled programming, we're sharing a conversation with Jay Shetty, the host of the world's number one mental health podcast on purpose.

I found Jay to be really nice and soulful in what you would expect from someone who has the number one podcast on mental health. We discussed with Jay his journey from monk to media mogul, the business of podcasting, and the key to personal growth and success. So with that, here's our conversation with Jay Shetty. Jay, where does this podcast find you?

I'm at my home studio in LA. That's right. I have been there. It's like a little bird's nest overlooking all of LA. Something that people consistently ask me in an age of AI and digital is, what is the key competence, what should young people be studying to find success in economic security? In my view is the only enduring skill is storytelling and I think of you as someone who has mastered storytelling. I'd love to hear a little bit of the origin story around

how you developed your skills as a storyteller. Wow I don't think I've ever been asked that before, I love that.. I don't think I've ever been asked that before. I love that. So I don't disagree with you. I think storytelling is such a powerful skill and such a powerful tool. My origins of storytelling, I'd have to go back to,

wow, I'm really having to look for that. I'll help. You were a consultant, right? Yeah, really having to look for that. I'll help. You were a consultant, right? Yeah, but it was long before that. I think, yeah, I found it. I found it. I found it. Thank you for that prompt.

I found it. I was fascinated by autobiographies growing up. So I spent my teens in the pages of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, all the way through to David Beckham, Andréine de Rock Johnson. And I found myself just completely captivated by the real life stories, not just the medals, the awards, the successes, but the depression, the doubts, the fears, the pain that people have gone through. And to me, those stories moved me, they stayed with me. I, even till this day, if someone tells me

something's based on a true story, I wanna watch it immediately. And so to me, my love for storytelling and my love for stories came from studying real life stories, true stories. I was never attracted to fiction as I was to nonfiction. I don't, haven't read much fiction in my life up until this point unless someone really recommends something. And so my love for storytelling comes from hearing about

the pains and challenges people went through. And there's a famous quote that says, I've never seen a strong person with an easy past. And I really truly believe that when we study the difficult tumultuous challenging pasts of people we admire, we in turn get the ability to build the strength, the resilience and the confidence through their journey. You actually get to ask yourself, what would it look like? What does life look like for someone who's aspiring towards great things? And going back to your point on what people are challenged by today, I think we don't study the stories

of the greats anymore. I don't believe we dive into the pages of people who've come before us. We're looking at what everyone is doing today, right now, in the moment on social media. We're not looking at what they did 10, 20 years ago in their childhood bedroom or in an interaction with a family member or whatever it may have been

that is their defining moment. So I think we get lost enamored by where they are today, where they live, what they drive, what they do, but you don't see the foundations of how they got there. Well, was there a moment, an aha moment, when you realized that you were good at it and that you might be able to make a living at it?

I enjoyed it when I started speaking at colleges and speaking to small groups in London, I realized that I really enjoyed it. I really was fulfilled by it. But to me, it felt like something I would have to do on the weekends and evenings because I didn't know anyone in the world who could make a living off of it personally. So I really believed that I would have to work a real day job being a consultant at the time. And on top of that, I would do this on the evenings and weekends because it's what fulfilled me, especially

because what I would talk about was Eastern wisdom, which at the time especially was extremely niche, very small. Even till this day, I think it's still making its waves into the mainstream, but Eastern wisdom was something that was not high demand. And so I was very much ready and set for the life that I would work my day job that paid the bills and on the evenings and weekends, I would do something that was meaningful to me. It was only when I made my first set of videos and my hope was, you know, I was doing events where maybe five, 10, 20 people would show up.

And I was thinking, wow, if I did this video and maybe 100 people would be affected by it, how amazing would that be? And it was only when my first four videos, when shared by the Huffington Post, did something like 250 million views across platforms, did I really believe that there was some momentum behind the message? But you know, at one point in my life, I had roughly 250 million views and I was four months away from being broke. So it took me a long time to realize that there was something real here. And I think a big part of that is because I just never knew anyone who had built a career

out of sharing wisdom, telling stories and sharing insights. I didn't know anyone in my personal life. And what was the first medium where you monetized it? Was it books, videos, podcasts? Like give us the, the universe of Shetty. Like how have you figured out how you've built a small, what feels like a small media empire, like where, what is the flywheel here? What do you do for awareness? What do you do to, for, you know, academic heft

or intellectual heft and how do you monetize it all? Yeah, so I made videos for two years before I could actually monetize them online because I started primarily on Facebook. My videos were posted to YouTube at the time, but we didn't have ads turned on. And then I was working for the Huffington Post. So I was a salary employee while making videos Facebook, my videos were posted to YouTube at the time, but we didn't have ads turned on. And then I was working for the Huffington Post, so I was a salary employee while making content

for their platforms. And then when I left and I was making content for my own platforms, Facebook didn't allow you to monetize until 2018. And I started making videos in 2016 or something like that. And so those first two years, I was just making videos because it was what I love doing. It's what I enjoyed. It's what was so meaningful.

In 2018, that shifted when Facebook was able to build their monetization. And so that became a very early form of monetization of storytelling. And that was videos I was creating anyway. It was amazing. We were making videos that were getting hundreds of millions of views at the anyway. It was amazing, we were making videos that were getting hundreds of millions of views at the time.

It was really, really a special time in connecting with so many people. At the same time, I was learning from my audience what they wanted from me and what I found was that a lot of people wanted coaching and meditations and insights and they wanted to learn these practices. And so two things came from that. One was we launched my Genius app and my Genius community, which was a membership platform,

a membership platform that exists today, seven years on since we launched it, where every single week I'm live wherever I am in the world for 40 minutes, teaching a workshop. So I was just in Mexico for a friend's weekend this weekend, and I'm live on the channel and this week I'll be in LA and I'm live on the channel wherever I'm in the world, I'll be live 52 weeks a year. And we found that to just build an amazing connection with my community. And it was built on the three practices that I believe are needed for transformation. So there's coaching, consistency and community. I believe that if you want to change an area of your life,

you need all three. And most of us are trying to change our life with just one. So if you have coaching, it means you know what to do. But if you don't have consistency, you don't know how to repeat it. And if you don't have community, you won't be inspired and motivated to keep going. If you only have community, you have lots of people around you that want to get there, but you don't have coaching, you don't know where you're going. And if you don't have consistency, you don't have the habit building. And so Genius, my app was built around coaching, consistency and community. And we've had thousands of members from over 140 countries in the world that are members of that platform. And then I saw the value in meditation and I was getting a lot of mentions from a lot of friends of mine that at the same time, 2016, 2018, around those time, there was this app that was having this massive impact. It was called Calm. Of course, everyone knows it now. And a lot of my friends were telling me about Calm and a lot of other people were telling the founders of Calm about me and my work. And everyone

kept telling us we should meet. So I met with the founders of Calm, I think probably the first time in 2018, somewhere like that, with Michael and Alex, who went on to become very good friends. Michael and Alex who went on to become very good friends. And I love their vision of making meditation and mindfulness available in the most accessible, relevant, practical ways. So they have meditation stories read by Matthew McConaughey or meditation series by LeBron James. And so we built together something that they wanted to call the Daily J, which is where people can listen to me for seven minutes every single day, five days a week for the last three years. And that program was around $42 a year for the subscription. So that became an amazing, amazing investment of my time and energy where we scripted a unique meditation. That last seven minutes was seven

minutes because we wanted to create something that you could do while washing the dishes, doing the laundry, drying your clothes. You could do it while packing your breakfast in the morning, whatever it was. We wanted to create a meditation that you could practice on top of your already busy life. And that's had tens of millions of downloads now that meditation series. So I found myself partnering with amazing brands that I was proud to be a part of. I found myself creating ventures like Genius.

And then of course, as we went and built the podcast, which we launched in 2019, that's an interesting story in and of itself because I invested everything I had in 2018 to launch the podcast in 2019, put all the money I had into production, editing, all of that kind of stuff. And for anyone who's launched a podcast, you know you can't monetize for the first six to 12 months because you have to have a consistent record of downloads and data. And so we didn't start monetizing the podcast probably until late 2019, early 2020, but that turned out to be one of the best investments in my life. Uh, because of the success of the podcast that we've had now.

So I looked at everything from partnerships, platforms and all of it came from a place of passion. I did the podcast because I had people in my life that I was coaching clients or friends that I was having these amazing offline conversations with and I thought, how amazing would it be to have them online? The Calm app was because I loved what they were building and I'm so grateful to be the Chief Purpose Officer of Calm. And then Genius was a need. Our audience was saying, Jay, I want you to coach me. I want your insight in my life. And so all of it was built around passions. We got so many other offers for me to build everything from apps that I didn't want to build through to this field and that industry.

We said no to so many things because they weren't things we were passionate about. I think there were plenty more opportunities that we've said no to than the ones we said yes to. So you're both in subscription and ad supported. Do you have any advice? I mean, we are constantly, it feels like every three or six months we toy with the idea of putting some, some or all of our content behind a paywall.

Because sometimes you read an ad and you think, I mean, for example, we no longer do crypto ads, because I read this ad and I think, I don't have the time to do diligence on this. And I just don't, it just doesn't feel right. And I actually enjoy some of the ad reads, but we always toy with the idea, wouldn't it be nice to kind of go more artisanal? I have a lot of respect for Sam Harris. I know you've built a big subscription business.

Break down the pluses and the minuses in your view of kind of the ad supported model and the subscription model. And do you have a preference for one or the other? I'd say that to me, when I look at anything, I have a three step checking system. So whether we're choosing an ad partner to come on our platform, whether we're looking at a partnership,

and it's always been called ESM. And the E stands for energy. The first thing I look at is, do I think we're energetically matched? So when I met Michael Acton SmithSmith and Alex, who founded Calm, I really like those guys. They're great people. And so if I can, I'm always trying to sense energy. I loved it when you came into the studio.

I felt we hit it off. I hope we can do lots more together. I'm someone who likes to live in an energetic space. The second is strategy. Do I really believe, now that we've passed through the gate of energy, do I really believe that strategically this partner, this brand, this idea, whether it be a venture, is it strategically accurate? Do we actually believe this has a plan? Does it strategically make sense? Do we understand the market? Do we understand demand? And I always do that second. And that's an important second gate for it to pass through. And the M stands for money. Finally,

financially, does this stack up in terms of my investment in time, in terms of what I believe our value is, that person's value is? Are we aligned financially? And so to me, ESM has always been my model. And because I think in initial times, the energy would be great and you just rush into a relationship and it's almost like bad dating. Where like, you're like, oh, we energetically get along. We should build something together. And then, you know, three months down the line, you realize it wasn't a good fit. And so ESM has protected me and helped me make better decisions.

Not that I've made perfect decisions, but it's definitely been a supportive technique. When I look at both of the methods you've talked about, I love the fact that 99% of what I create is free. So the podcast is free. We post to Instagram every day for free. We post to YouTube every week for free. 99% of what we create on a yearly basis is absolutely free. Now, like you said, there's an ads space there. We have ads on our podcast, of course, but they're brands that we choose very intentionally and carefully through our research and the best we can. That to me, I love because my goal was always making wisdom go viral. How can we make wisdom accessible, relevant and practical to everyone? That's where my true heart is. That's what my joy is in knowing that someone in the middle of a country that

I've never visited can watch my video and it can help them. That makes my day, like that really fuels me. At the same time, what I found is that there were people who wanted to go deeper, who wanted to learn more, who wanted more commitment. The Genius App being a great membership platform, we found that those were people who wanted to commit an hour, two hours, three hours a week to do the work. Now, in order to give them something that's a value, I also needed to put in more effort. I also needed to be able to build a platform.

We have teams that running all the behind the scenes. So if you ask me which one I prefer, the truth is I like both models. I think entrepreneurs should be open to both models because I think free is a great way to scale and membership is a great way for depth and I value both scale and depth because scale allows me to reach someone who may never have a thought about wellness and depth allows me to reach people as deeply as I want to take them and so to me as someone who's fascinated by both scale and depth I'm not I'm not excited about the fact that someone listens to one episode and then never changes their life because I don't believe that you're going to transform your whole life without

habits and community. At the same time, I'm not someone who's just inspired by taking people on a long journey and not reaching people in the corners of the world. So my values are both scale and depth. And I believe there was a Ted talk a few years ago that called it, I can't remember who it was by, but it was called Mass Intimacy. So this idea of how do you scale an idea, but then have really intimate experiences with people? So membership to me is intimacy and social media and podcasting is scale.

And when you break that down further, what we realized after running Genius for what was it at that time, probably like, we were running Genius for two to three years, and we found that people needed to become leaders. So we launched my certification school because we found that now people who'd been through the program, they were saying,

Jay, I want to be a part of this mission. I want to help others. I want to serve. I want to give back. I want to be involved. I don't just want to be a student. I want to be a teacher and a leader. And so we built our certification platform to help people actually develop the skills. It's a full hundred hour program. So a lot of our development of products and services has been based on listening to our community and I think that's what I would be doing when you're making your decision is if you're hearing people say, Scott, I really want a membership. Like I want to learn more from you.

I want to have more access to you. I don't just want you talking to all of us. I want you talking to a small group of us. I think it's listening to your audience and community that makes us make amazing shifts. So for us, everything we've developed has been constantly, consciously listening intently to what our audience wants, what they need, how we can make it better. And I think that's the fun of being a creator that you're not just building your vision, you're building the vision that your audience wants. You're also, I mean, you're

definitely, you're going, my sense of what I've read is you're going multi-channel, that you're building the vision that your audience wants. You're also, I mean, you're definitely, you're going, my sense of what I've read is you're going multi-channel, that you're actually taking your podcast on tour, is that correct? That's right, yeah, I'm so excited. It's the first time we're ever taking the podcast on tour. So two years ago, I went on a nearly 40 city world tour, which was a one-man show led by myself,

but this time I'm actually getting to interview guests on stage. And I just felt that the podcast is now what six years old. And it felt like the right time to go out there. And I was thinking all these people are trusting us with their ears every day. And I was like, I want to meet the people who make on purpose what it is. I always say on my podcast, Hey, if you see me on the streets, come and say, hi, if you listen on purpose, tell me that you listen to the podcast. Yeah. And I get lots of people coming up to me. So I thought, how awesome would it

be to actually travel, bring out guests that people also are excited to see in the flesh. I hope maybe you'll come out to one of them and be a guest for us. That would be amazing. Uh, and I think also giving people the opportunity to ask me questions, ask the guests questions, I think it's a dynamic experience that you don't get to do on a podcast. So I'm excited to take it on tour. So we're starting with North America,

and then hopefully we'll take it across different parts of the world as well. It feels to me like podcasting, I mean, the original guys, the Mark Marons, the Alec Baldwin, there were some kind of initial people in podcasting and Joe Rogan has endured, but there's a constant reshuffling. I have noticed, for example, I think Joe Rogan is about to be displaced either by Mel Robbins or a kid here named Stephen Bartlett.

There's just a constant disruption in the podcasting space. And because I'm obsessed with affirmation of other people and I'm always feeling economically insecure, I check the rankings every day and I can't get over just how dynamic the rankings are right now. Meaning that I would bet in the top 100 podcasts, 30 of them, and it feels like 50, weren't there six months ago.

Which means 30 or 50 that were in the top 100 are no longer there. What are your observations? I mean, I think people think of you as a very spiritual guy and a podcaster, but you're also a business person. When you sit down with your team and you think about the dynamics of the business right now,

what do you see out there? What do you think is shaking up the industry? So yeah, it's a really interesting question and I love talking about these things. And I really believe that talking just suddenly to the point that you mentioned about spirituality and business, one of my favorite thoughts from Martin Luther King is those who love peace need to learn to organize themselves as well as those who love war. And so when I look at my strategic mind and when I look at my business mind, I've become

extremely organized about spreading wisdom because I believe that if I'm not, this wouldn't even exist. I wouldn't even be around today. I started creating content nine years ago. And the fact that we still exist is only because we've had to be thoughtful and mindful about how we build. And I think mindfulness and strategy are more aligned than people may think. So anyway, to answer your question more directly, there's a couple of things. The first thing is when a lot of us started out, I mean, I can't speak to Joe Rogan because there was so many more years before me.

But when you look at my content journey on social media, whether it's Facebook, where we have 30 million followers, Instagram, where we have 16 million followers, TikTok, where we have four and a half million followers, the podcast where we do, you know, a hundred million downloads, you know, hundreds of millions of downloads every year. The, what I re what the difference is, is that it was all organic. And what I, what I mean by that is we never did any paid advertising. And what I've noticed in the last six to 12 months is a lot of the rises come from paid models, more strategic models, the industry getting smarter and sharper, giving people the ability

to pay to play. And so I'm noticing that a lot of the charts, and for those of us that understand that well, a lot of the charts aren't necessarily accurate. A lot of it's become pay to play. And so the charts are accurate and inaccurate in that they're incomplete because there's so much more to it behind the scenes. So there are platforms now where you can pay money based on however many episodes that you want to launch that will boost your subscribers, not artificially, they're real people. But it will boost you in the charts because you just got more subscribers that week. That doesn't mean you actually got more listens than Joe Rogan, just to give an example. And so I think we have to be very careful as creators

when we're watching those things. And to me, the pay to play has changed the industry of podcasting. I think the exclusive deals that now have gone non-exclusive have changed the deal. So none of the big platforms right now, Spotify, et cetera, want to do exclusive deals again. So they don't want to do that either. So that's changed the market. And the third thing that's changed the market is the incorporation of YouTube and video

views. So audio as an industry has only ever valued. So when I came into podcasting, we worked really hard on downloads because that's where the value was financially from a business point of view. But today the shift is happening slowly. It's not happened yet, but in the next 12 months, you're going to see video views being married to audio downloads as part of valuing the strength of a podcast. Hence, when you look at the success of, you know, Stephen, who's, you know, a friend and coming over for dinner tonight, or Mel, who's also a friend, has been on the show. Like when you look at the success Stephen's had on YouTube,

that value hasn't even been accounted for yet. And in the next 12 months, you're going to see that be accounted for in a really valuable way, from a financial business point of view. So I think those are the three things, pay to play, non-exclusivity, which is really helpful for people to be on every platform and gain the distribution that platforms weren't allowing. And then the third thing is the valuing of YouTube as a big, big, big player. And if I'm not mistaken, the biggest consumption of podcasting happens on YouTube. And so I think those three things have really shifted up the industry where

back in the day, you didn't have pay to play. It was purely organic. Platforms are exclusive. So you had podcasts that weren't competing for their rankings. And thirdly, YouTube wasn't included, not that it's included in Apple or Spotify rankings, but it wasn't included from a business point of view. We'll be right back.

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Select podcast in the survey and select our show in the drop down menu that follows. Support for ProfG comes from the MPR podcast up first compulsively reading depressing upsetting and enraging news all day long does not feel good. You don't need to tell me that. Oh my God, help me Calgon take me away but it can be hard to find the right balance between protecting your mental health and staying informed. That's where NPR's podcast Up First comes in. Up First covers the three most important stories of the day in just 15 minutes, so you can learn what you need to know and then move on with your day, from the current

administration to business and the economy, all the way to immigration policies. Up First is the go-to daily habit for the news consumer who wants to stay informed but is forever strapped for time. And every episode gives you what you need to be informed without compromising your sanity. I listened to a recent episode and I found it really crisp and kind of gave me sort of an overview or the cliff notes of the day. And by the way, NPR, they just do a fantastic job at almost everything they do. The production quality is really top notch. If you're looking for more news and less noise, you can listen to the Up First podcast from NPR today.

I want to kind of move more towards your domain expertise. And I'm going to start out, I want to talk about a couple of things. I'm going to talk about anxiety and I want to talk about finding love. And I'm going to, so just so you know, my guests are nothing but a vehicle for me to talk about myself. So this is that part of the program. The, I struggle with anger and depression. I've been able to manage it without pharmaceuticals. I do it through exercise, time with my boys, trying to eat clean.

I have a bunch of tricks to try and, or practices to keep me sorta even keeled and hating my life less and less every day. But things will trigger me and I'll go down a rabbit hole. And that's happened to me recently since the election or since the inauguration. And whether that those feelings are justified or there's something deeper, I've

really struggled with trying to disassociate or separate or maintain some perspective around what's happened recently in the US. And this isn't a political statement. I'm not saying that my anxiety is warranted or in any way justifies or indicts what's happening. But what advice would you give to me to say, okay, Scott? And for me, meditation is like flossing. I lie about it. And that is when my hygienist says, do you floss? I lie and I say yes. I very rarely

floss. And when people ask me if I meditate, I lie and I say yes. And the reality is I don't. I really don't do a lot of meditation. So given that I'm a newbie, given that I'm struggling a little bit with anxiety, given the state of the world, give me your best shot. Like give me your, give me your download on, all right Scott, these are some best practices, some initial steps you should be taking to manage your anxiety? First of all, Scott, I want to validate your anxiety by saying that I'm not surprised that you feel the anxiety that you feel. I think we're living at a time. I was reading an article that said we digest or consume more tragedy in 24 hours than we used to do in our whole lifetime 25 years ago. And if you think about that for a second, the amount of news,

information, negativity, noise, notifications that a human consumes today is not something we've upgraded to yet. It's not something that we've figured out yet. And so anyone who's listening right now, which I think will be all of your audience that feels anxiety about something in their life, it's because we're so overexposed. Me, you and everyone, we're all overexposed. You know what's happening halfway across the world before maybe even someone who's in that area,

in that vicinity if you're logged in and tuned in. And so I think the challenge we're having is we are exposed to more negativity, noise, news, notifications than we ever have in our lifetime. Now accepting that, and we have to accept that because I think if we don't accept that we can get very judgmental, we can get very harsh with ourselves, we can get very critical with ourselves. If we just think, I'm weak, I'm not strong enough, I'm not, you know, maybe there's something wrong with me.

It's like, no, no, no, some things have changed, things have shifted and they've shifted fast, and you might even have missed it. So what do we do with that? it. So what do we do with that? I think it's really important. The first thing I'd say is, before we even get into meditation, is we've got to be really careful with our digital diet. If your digital diet means in every gap of your day, you take out your phone and you scroll on TikTok or Instagram, and you allow yourself to discover the latest piece of news around the world, it's literally like going to your refrigerator or your snack cupboard and picking out a bag of chips every single part of the day where you have a break. Now, if you did that, if every single break you had, you went and grabbed a fizzy soda, a Coke, you went and grabbed a bag of chips,

if you went and grabbed an unhealthy snack, no wonder your diet would be terrible. You'd be highly inflamed and you'd have massive health issues. But that's what we're doing to our mind. And so the first step for me is being really clear about where you get your news, how you get your news, and how often you get it, that to me will solve half of our issues. I don't think people are curating how they consume difficult information. If you think about it, like if you were diagnosed, one of my friends recently sadly was had diagnosis of cancer, when his doctor was telling him he had cancer, the doctor would say to you, take a seat. I've got something to share with you.

Do you mind coming in? They might even call you and say, Hey, do you mind coming in? Take a seat. Hey, this, this is what's going on. That would be the environment in which you consume difficult information. Now, not that all the information we consume on a daily basis is about us, but if you're going, Oh my gosh, I just heard that someone got shot down the road and, oh my God, I just opened up the, whatever that, you know, the ring app.

And I know that someone got burgled like a mile away from me. And then, oh my gosh, there's fires happening over here. And it's all of a sudden you're not informed, you're overwhelmed. And so I would really ask people to differentiate between what is your definition of being informed and what are the newsletters you follow, what are the news accounts you follow, how often do you look at it? And that digital diet has to become everything because otherwise your anxiety is going to be constantly triggered because by the way, these platforms are told to do that.

They know that they've got to have breaking news every moment. And I know so many people who just have a news channel on in the background of living their day. No wonder you've got all of this anxiety just seeping in moment to moment. Studies show we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day and 80% of those are negative and 80% of those are repetitive. So you're not just having lots of different negative thoughts, you're having the same negative thought again and again and again, which means you can disrupt that

pattern, which means you can change it. So how do we do it? You were saying you struggle with meditation and I could give you loads of great meditation advice and here's the thing Scott, until I lived with you for seven days, maybe 30, and sat next to you every single day and meditated with you, chances are it would be hard for you to truly internalize it because that's the kind of pattern shift that your life would require or anyone's life would require. So what I'm going to say is this, you can't control 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day. You might not even be able to meditate for 10 minutes a day. But here's what I want you to do.

I want you to master the first thought and the last thought of every day. Because usually what happens is our first thought is repetitive and our last thought is repetitive. Think about it. You go to sleep and you say to yourself, I'm so tired. You wake up in the morning and the first thing you say to yourself is, I'm so tired. You somehow make it through to 9am to get your morning coffee and you're thinking, I'm exhausted. Then you get to 12 noon and you're thinking, well, lunch is going to be a bit late, I've got a couple of meetings. I'm exhausted. And now it makes it a 6pm. You're like, I'm exhausted and now it makes it a 6pm, you're like I'm so tired but I've got to work a bit

and somehow at 10 37 pm you get the courage to click next episode and watch another three hours of your favorite show and the cycle goes again. So we're used to repeating the thought I'm so tired and that thought's useless, it doesn't help because we're not making it useful. So how do we master the first and last thought of the day? You set an alarm at night to wake up in the morning. You don't set an alarm in the morning. Right? You don't say I'm going to wake up at 730 and when I wake up at 730 in the morning, I have it on my alarm.

You go the night before, I want to wake up at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Let me set my alarm. Let me set the mindset I want to wake up with tonight. What is the coding that I'm going to put into my brain, into my mind? I am going to wake up rejuvenated, rested and fueled. I am waking up feeling rested, feeling calm and not being distracted from my phone. What is it that you want to program yourself to do? You'll find that if you do that intentionally,

of course, if you ideally sleep at a decent time, you'll wake up in the morning and you'll find that if you planted that thought deep enough, it will be the first thought of the day. And all of a sudden you won't reach for your phone and allow the news, negativity and notifications and the noise to come in. And you'll say, you know what? I'm to go on a little walk get some sunlight go and take my morning coffee

what morning tea whatever it is for you and yeah in 30 minutes I'll look at my phone and by the way I won't just look at my phone I know the newsletter I'm going to look at or the page I'm going to look at so I would encourage you to master your first and last thought of the day as a preliminary practice to meditation, because to me, those thoughts are the ones that are repeated, and meditation ultimately is a repeated thought. And so that's where I would start. And I would have never gotten there on my own. This is virtue signaling, but I'll do it anyways.

Finally, I'm older than you. I'm at a point in my life where I want to catch up from all that I've taken. And I'm starting to give away my money and it's something I find really rewarding, but I want to be intentional and purposeful about it. And I met with someone who was so insightful around giving and they said, what are your passion about? And my passion is, is helping struggling young men like, well, what would you do for them if you could do, if you had a group of young men and you wanted to do something for them, what would it do?

What would you do? And I said, well, number three, in reverse order, I'd want more male involvement in their life. And that's, you know, you can solve that. Big brothers, there's some stuff that's more complicated, ranging from family court or different types of legislation. Number two, more economic opportunities. So you can think of things. You can think of legislation. Number two, more economic opportunities. So you can think of

things. You can think of legislation or vocational programming. But the thing I would want to do for young men, and my question to you is, if I could give anything to a lot of young men, it's that one in three young men are in a relationship and two in three women under the age of 30 in a relationship. And you think, well, that's mathematically impossible. It's because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. And when I look back at the most important things in my life as a young man, it was having the joy, the love, the camaraderie, and quite frankly,

the guardrails of a romantic relationship. It was just so important to have someone who was crazy about me and then not crazy about me, to get my heart broken, to learn resilience. It just, that partnership, saving for a house, it was just so, more I think than money, more than anything, it just shaped me as a man.

And so few men are finding this at a young age. And you've written a lot about this, but how could you advise a young man to be more successful with respect to romantic relationships and finding love? And I know that's a really big, I know we're gonna need a bigger boat, but are there any practices for a young man who thinks?

I remember thinking, I didn't have a girlfriend till I was well into college. I remember thinking I'd be the best boyfriend if someone would just give me a shot, right? And I think there are literally millions of men out there who are thinking the same thing. Anyways, your thoughts. That's, yeah, it's a huge huge question. I'm so glad that you've

focused your life on this. I was very fortunate enough in my younger years to mentor a group of 20 young men in my spiritual community who I've seen grow up. I've probably mentored them for around 15 years now at this point. And it's been an incredible journey watching them, you know, become phenomenal young men, find love, settle down. Some of them have started to have children now. It's been one of the most meaningful investments in my life that I probably didn't realize how deep it was going to be then. And these men are my younger brothers, you know, they've become very, very close friends. So it's something very close to my heart. The first thing I'll say when it comes to love and for young men, which is probably counter intuitive and probably one of the hardest things to train, but I do believe it's so valuable, is sense control. Because sense control, this is what I was fortunate enough to learn in the monastery. Sense control is the greatest

confidence booster and builder that you'll ever, ever have. You can't be a master of your senses and not be confident. It's just not possible because you've conquered the hardest thing. You've built a relationship with the part of you that pushes you and pulls you whenever it feels like it. So how does a young man do that in today's world that's bombarded by porn, bombarded by exposure to too many things, too many, uh, sensory images, sounds, everything else, what do you, how do you do that? sensory images, sounds, everything else. How do you do that?

I think it's really powerful when men can build up a healthy relationship with spending time alone by themselves. And I think that comes through doing something hard. It's not sitting alone with your thoughts. It's not sitting around where you are. It's picking up a sport, a habit, a practice, a workout regime, whatever it is that you're passionate about reading, going there and

building a strength and commitment by focusing on doing something hard. When I say sense control, I don't mean every single sense of yours is mastered and you never feel any urge. I mean, how can you do something that's truly hard? How can you do something that's truly challenging? And how can you do something that's truly hard? How can you do something that's truly challenging? And how can you do something that's measured, right? How can you do something where it's like, okay, I'm black belt now, I'm blue belt now,

I'm yellow belt now. How can you do something where it's like, okay, I'm able to play this pace of tennis. I'm an amateur, I'm semi-pro, whatever it may be. I think taking on a challenge that can be measured is critical. And I think taking on something younger is ideal. I was very fortunate. My parents were so scared that I was going to be so shy and insecure growing up. They forced me to go to public speaking school. And so from the ages of 11 to 18 for seven years, I took exams in public speaking. I went to nine

hours a week, public speaking training. I went to drama school. I did a ton of training at that time and it was hard. I was terrible. My friends would laugh at me. It wasn't cool to go to that. And when I look at any success I have today, it's because of those seven years of working, working really, really hard on a skillset that I didn't even know how

I was going to use. I didn't know podcasting didn't exist. Social media didn't exist. It wasn't how I was going to use. I didn't know podcasting didn't exist, social media didn't exist. It wasn't like it was a strategic investment. It was just the idea that there was something that I could do that was hard. I didn't enjoy going, I was forced to go. But there's power in that.

So don't resist something that's forced. That would be step one. The second thing men can do for romantic love is be really aware whether you like someone because you just wanna be liked. I think a lot of young men, like you say, they say they're gonna be a great boyfriend, but it's because they wanna be a great boyfriend.

They wanna be known as being a great boyfriend, not being a great partner. And I think that's a big, big, big challenge as to why young love is so hard because we're doing the right thing Not to be a good person But because we want to be a seen as the person who's doing the right thing We want to be seen as the guy who does all the right stuff and you may realize three months from now

You don't even like that person that much and so I'd be really really clear on Am I doing this to be liked or do I actually like this person? If I like this person, let me really invest in this. Let me really be building something powerful here, but let me not do this because I'm building my self-worth off of someone else's praise of me doing the gimmicky thing because I think it's going to make them like me. That's going to end up messing their life up and messing my life up. And the third thing I'd say in love is be really conscious of how your past pain creates present problems. And so reflect on where you're hoping your partner, I call it the gifts and gaps.

We're often wanting our partner to fill the gaps our parent left or to repeat the gifts that our parents gave. Be really aware of those. I'm not saying either is right or wrong or they can go either way, but to be really, really conscious and aware of where they're coming from, because what often ends up happening is we've ruined something great because of something terrible in the past. And it's because we're so unaware of what triggers were taking forward with us.

I mean, I could talk about this for hours, but those are three things I'd think about. We'll be right back. Support for PropG comes from Redwood Outdoors. We'll be right back. things, Redwood Outdoors lets you experience the transformative benefits of both. It's called contrast therapy and their backyard sauna and cold plunge can be an investment in longevity and vitality. A Redwood Outdoors backyard sauna seats two to eight people. You can experience deep relaxation, reduced muscle tension, as well as improve circulation, sleep mood, and more. And it doesn't just feel great on your body, it can add more opportunities for peaceful moments and connection with your loved ones.

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We hope to see you at the Austin Convention Center soon. Visit voxmedia.com slash S-X-S-W to learn more. That's voxmedia.com slash S-X-S-W. On Today Explained, way back in the mists of time, 1998, a new beauty store hit the scene. Its appeal was choice. It would put hundreds of these carefully curated beauty brands in a single store. And as a customer, you were free to roam the aisles and test all the products that you wanted to your heart's content.

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loser. We're going shopping. Listen every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with more from Jay Shetty. I love the way you think. You think in threes very much like a consultant and give us your top line thoughts on what you've learned with your partner and the relationship advice you would provide or give to more men who are in a relationship, a monogamous relationship.

One of the things that was really hard for me to get over Scott was as someone who's a, you know, someone who's on stage, a public personality. And I think men have this regardless of whether you have a public profile or not. I think men, we want to be admired, we want to be appreciated, we want to be respected, especially by our partners. And some men I know want to be celebrated, want to be adored, want to be fanned over to some degree. And I was really fortunate because my wife, by her own admission, I would say isn't the number one fan of my success, but she is the number one fan of me. And I think this is a really important point. I had to learn through my wife to value myself

based on who I was and how I behaved, not what I achieved and what I killed and what I created. And I think if it wasn't for the way she loved me for that, I think I would have been someone who measured my value based on simply my success, my wins and my accolades. And so I would encourage people to say, is your partner here for you? Because chances are they are, but we're so wrapped up in wanting them to love us for what we achieve and what we do. I've had so many friends who are like,

oh my God, like I just don't feel valued for what I'm building and what I'm creating. I'm like, that may be the case, but what if you lost it all? Would that mean you wouldn't be valued now? Is that how you want to be loved? Do you want to be loved for that and unloved for not having that? Or do you want to be valued for the qualities you have, the characteristics you have, the values you live by? So that was a big, big, big lesson for me that I learned through my wife. Not that she doesn't love the podcast and the books and whatever, she appreciates all of it, but it's it pales in

to insignificance and irrelevance compared to the love and appreciation she has for me as the man I show up as. And I think that's made me value myself more highly and better than, than I would have before. So that's been huge. Another thing that comes to mind as you ask that is, if your partner is trying to change you, help them understand how unlikely that is. I find that a lot of men deal with this problem the most where their partners are trying to change them and I'll often get women in my audience that will say to me I really want my husband

to like get into like self-development and personal growth and I just don't get out to get him into it and he won't listen to me and you know I'm giving him all the books and Jay I sent him your podcast I'm like oh please don't please don't send him my stuff I don't want him to hate me for the rest of my life. And I get a lot of those questions of like, how do I do it? And when I'm speaking to the women, I'll always say to them, don't do it. Like, let him find its way to it. Let him find something that's natural to it.

Don't send him my interview with the person you're inspired by. Send him my interview with the person he's inspired by. Maybe he loves athletes, maybe he loves musicians, Maybe he loves Scott. Like, that's the conversation he needs to listen to, not X, Y, and Z that you love. Stop trying to make him the version of you. And I think for a lot of men, either we pretend to change or we promise to change or we say, yeah, yeah, yeah, we go along with it,

rather than saying, you know what, this is who I am. I'm really gonna struggle to be that version that you want me to be The amount of times when I met my wife, I was so clear. I was like, this is who I am This is who I'm gonna be. This is what I value. This is my purpose. This is the guy I am I'm not the guy who wants to go to the movie theater every week I'm not the guy who wants to do XYZ like this is who I am and Communicating that and then also hearing from her, who is she, what does she want?

And then we learn this art where we've overused the word respect, but we've actually undervalued what it means. Respect means I don't need you to value what I value, but you respect what I value. You allow me to live life the way I want to live it and I allow you to live life the way you want to live it because I respect your value but I don't need you to change to be who I am. So I think being really careful about being open about this is who I am, this is what I can realistically do. I'm not going to pretend and promise and over share on this potential of I'll be there someday, I'm getting there, oh yeah yeah I'm not going to pretend and promise and over share on this potential of I'll be there someday.

I'm getting there. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm reading it. It's kind of like what you said about meditation. Like, what's the point of lying? What's the point of pretending? And as you said, I like threes and so I'll give you one more because why not? My favorite one probably is letting my wife change. I married my wife and I met in our early twenties.

I was in my mid twenties, you know, we've been married, we've been together for 12 years, married for nine. And I've been pretty much the same human through most of it. I don't think I've changed that much. The scale of my life has changed and things like that, but my priorities and the way I work, I'm pretty much very, very similar. My wife has changed and lived so many different lives

in the last 12 years. And I feel like that's the mistake a lot of us make where we go, well, you didn't care about this three years ago. Why do you care about it now? You didn't want this seven years ago. Why do you want it now? You weren't this person nine years ago.

How are you that person now? And I think the realization that, hey, the person you marry on your wedding day is not the person that's there at your 50th birthday and is not the person who's there when you're sick in hospital, that person changes and you probably will too. So recognizing that they're going to change, I'm going to change and I'm going to allow space for that because guess what? That's what makes the relationship joyful. That's exciting.

And by the way, if I don't find that exciting and I want to find someone that's going to be the same, I'm going to find someone who can probably be the same for seven years, right? Divorce happens between the first five to seven years of marriage and cycles every seven years. Maybe someone can stay the same for five to seven years, but even the cells in our body are changing during that time. So maybe someone's going to be a new person every seven years.

So maybe you're going to leave that person, find another person. Maybe you'll find someone who stays the same for five to seven years, but that person's also going to become a new person. So start getting real about the fact that there is no consistency and stagnancy and, you know, remaining the same. What remains the same is that you've lived that much life together. My wife's a different person today, but she's the only person in the world who's experienced my My wife's a different person today, but she's the only person in the world who's experienced my trajectory with me as intimately. That's what I value so deeply about that consistency. Kind of invokes that old adage that they are forced to go through to change their complexion and approach to life because they take sometimes a disproportionate unfair

amount of responsibility around the kids. But you've been very dense with your time. I just have one more question. You have a very public profile. It's impossible to have your profile and put yourself out there as openly and as provocatively on you know issues this important and without getting a lot of criticism. How do you deal with criticism and what advice would you be in terms of a practice for how to handle you know be thoughtful right? I've never anyone who

is immune to criticism I wouldn't trust. I mean, okay, that's, I think that makes you a sociopath. So how do you deal with criticism? One thing I've learned just by observing and having the fortune of coaching people who are far more successful, famous, and accomplished than I am, is that the closer you get to the top 1%, the more likely you are to have 50% of people disagree with you. So if you look at the most prominent positions in society, you take the president, chances are close to 50% of the country disagrees with you, right? So you look at the more

someone gets into the top 1% athletes, you look at athletes, it's like you have, you look at Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, you get 50% on either side. You get Kendrick Lamar and Drake, you get 50% on either side. Like it's very hard to be the 1% of your industry or the world in case of these people that I'm talking about and not have 50% of people disagree with you. So I think the first step is recognizing that the closer you get to the 1%, the more chance it is that 50% of people disagree with you. So I think the first step is recognizing that the closer you get to the 1%, the more chance it is that 50% of people are gonna have an issue with you. So I think everyone remembers as an early stage creator

when you kind of had 100,000 followers and your comment section was la la land, right? You lived in this little bubble where everyone loved you, everyone said wonderful things, things were beautiful. And then you got to a million followers and then that changed proportionately. And then you got to 10 million and it changed and whatever else it may be.

So that's the first thing we have to look at it realistically, statistically, and realize it's not personal. It's math. That's the first step. The second thing is how can I take feedback without the sting? And this is an art that I was really grateful to learn in the monastery, which was this, the quality of humility. What does humility really mean? Humility doesn't mean I'm weak and I'm not good enough and that's low self-esteem. Humility means I have the ability to extract that which is beneficial for me and leave that which is hurtful and poisonous.

Can I actually have the ability to listen to something, to consume something that may be really hurtful, but extract the minimal truth in it that may inspire me, that may make me better and leave behind the part that was venomous or poisonous. And I try and do that as much as I can. When I see anything, I'm always like, where is the truth in that? What can I take from that?

What is there about that that? What can I take from that? What is there about that that can actually improve my character from? And let me leave behind the negativity, the venom, the envy. Sure, I'm sure it's covered in envy, ego, competition. I'm sure it's covered in all these things, but the skill of humility is the ability to leave all that stuff behind and extract it

and see if I can work on myself. And the third thing is to be really careful about having a group of people who truly know you, who deeply know you, who intimately know you, making sure that you're not lonely at the top. I've seen that for so many people, the cliché is true. People are lonely at the top because they don't make friends with people that go through similar things. Most people who are at the top will make friends only with their childhood friends, which is great. I love my childhood friends, but my childhood friends can't relate to what I love my childhood friends, but my childhood friends can't relate

to what I go through at this stage in my life. So I have to have friends in the similar industry in a similar space to actually be able to share what we're going through. And if those people know me intimately, those are also the people who can remind me of who I truly am, why I started, why I'm here. And to me, that is the most powerful investment you can make.

The biggest mistake you can make is to think because you're number one, you don't, you know, need anyone else around you. And, and, you know, by the way, back in the day, like 25 years ago, people were pitted against each other. They were told you can be the only successful black man in Hollywood. You can be the only successful woman in this field. People are told things like that. And I think that naturally made people disconnect and not build friendships

in their zone of genius. So I would encourage people to make friends in their zone of genius and deep intimate friends, because chances are that's the only person who knows what it feels like. And so that's how I think about it in those three areas again. And by the way, my biggest takeaway on all of that is it's so wonderful to be detached through criticism, to praise an ego and your own hype. If it doesn't offer any other value, it offers the value to remind you that you do this only for the reason you do it for. You get joy from the fact that

you're doing it because you believe in it and that from a very spiritual perspective, you don't get to take your fame with you, you don't get to take the money with you, you don't get to take the accol you, you don't get to take the accolades with you, and no one's even going to remember any of that. So the universe is just preparing you to be detached from things that are going to be taken from you anyway. So why not learn to be detached while they're still here rather than wait till the moment they're all snatched away and then try and grab a hold of them and scrap with them. Why not embrace your own insignificance before you truly become insignificant and irrelevant? And so it gives you a glimpse of that.

It gives you a really beautiful spiritual ego death and glimpse of that, which materially is the worst thing to go through and spiritually is the most beautiful, fulfilling thing to go through. Yeah, I like that. Embrace your insignificance in a healthy way. Jay Shetty is a global bestselling author, entrepreneur, and the host of the world's number one mental health

podcast on purpose. Born in London, Jay embarked on a transformative journey as a Hindu monk before emerging ancient wisdom with the digital world. His podcast on purpose with Jay Shetty, Chops the Charts, is one of the world's leading podcasts with over 35 million monthly downloads and features. This is one of the world's leading podcasts with over 35 million monthly downloads and features. Influential guests, basically, you name it, I won't even go through all of these. And also has several bestselling books. He joins us from his home in Los Angeles.

Jay, I really enjoyed this. You're sort of like enter into this like dreamlike state when I listen to you. I'm listening, but I just find a sense of calm about the rhythm and the cadence. You're really a joy to listen to. I appreciate your time and am really happy for all your success and think you deserve it. This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez. Our intern is Dan Shalon. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you

on Saturday for No Mercy No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our ProppG Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.