The Resilient Mind - How to Find Your Purpose & Passion (Even If You Feel Lost Right Now) - Jay Shetty

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Jay Shetty is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host of On Purpose, and purpose-driven entrepreneur dedicated to making wisdom go viral. With a background as a former monk and a passion for bridging ancient insights with modern-day tools, Jay has inspired millions around the world through his transformative content, bestselling books, and global speaking events.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Download_JournalThis video was episode in partnership with Tom Bilyeu. Subscribe to Tom Bilyeu’s channel for more inspiring speeches: https://www.youtube.com/c/TomBilyeu Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to How to Find Your Purpose and Passion with Jay Shetty. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. I was really, really fortunate that very early on I started to experiment with what mattered to me. Sometimes I got me in a lot of trouble. What people don't know about me is that I was suspended from school three times for trying out all sorts of things. Things that people would never imagine of someone who goes on to be a monk.

I was experimenting with all the drugs in the world. I had multiple relationships. I was really trying to search for some sort of meaning, fulfillment. And as far as long as I've known, I've been chasing thrill. I really value thrill and feeling like my life. I did not see that coming. Yeah, no. Not many people do.

It's very different. From 14 to 18, I was like this kid who just wanted to try new things out. And my parents' rhetoric would always be, well, make sure you get good grades. And I used to think, well, if I can be bad and get good grades, then it's all works, right? Everyone's happy. So that's kind of what I did. And at 18, I was really fortunate when I met a monk. And this monk was invited to speak.

And I kind of just went because one of my friends forced me to. At that time, I was listening to CEOs and entrepreneurs and business people and marketers who I thought that's what I was aspiring to be like. And then I hear this monk. And he captivated me like no one had ever captivated me before. It was like staring at the most beautiful woman on the planet. You know, I was completely fixated on him and his message. And that is the beginning, without me going into too much detail before we probe,

that was the beginning of what changed me. Because I went from being someone who did only want all those things to become successful and trying to. But I started hearing my own inner voice. much more in all that noise that I had around me. I remember one of my parents had a maths tutor for me because they wanted to be amazing at maths. And I was pretty good at numbers

and I'd have this tutor and he'd tell me that. He goes, the reason that you're struggling with the next question is because you're always worried about what your parents think. And that really stayed in my head. I was just like, wow. So as long as I'm trapped by what my parents think, I can actually never find the answers to the real questions of life. And there were all these little things happening.

I lost two great friends when I was 16. One girl died in a car accident. One guy died because he was involved in drugs and violence. That made me rethink everything. I just thought to myself, wait a minute. These were beautiful people, people that I loved. People that, in my opinion, were good people. And I just lost them in a moment.

And it was kind of like this collation of little things that just made me think, wait a minute, having money, having fame, this. that just doesn't seem to add up. And then meeting the monk kind of made that shift possible. And as I said, he was completely captivating. And then I found out that he'd given up jobs in Google and Microsoft to be a monk. And I thought to myself, who does that? You know, he's given up everything that I'm chasing

and that all my friends are chasing, but he seems happier than anyone I've ever met before. And he spoke about this incredible principle where he said that we should plant trees under whose shade we do not plan to sit. And he was speaking about this principle of selfless sacrifice. And that kind of just penetrated me right there. When he said the words selfless sacrifice,

for the first time of my life, I felt a thrill about something that I'd never felt before. I thought, wow, giving up everything you have for the service of others sounds like the best thing you could possibly do. And I don't know why I had that thought, because I wasn't a spiritual kid growing up. I wasn't a religious kid growing up. I wasn't even a good kid growing up.

I was just a rebel, a misfit, trying things out, an experimental, which I still consider myself. And so what I started to do is I was interning at companies and firms and corporates thinking I was getting a grad job afterwards. And then I'd spend the rest of my summer holidays interning in India, living with him as a monk. So I'd use all my summer and Christmas holidays

to just be out there with the monks. And he introduced me to another 200 to 500 monks that were just like him, just as smart, just as bright, giving up everything they had and using all their skills to make the world a better place. I've always had friends who are older than me. And I could see a lot of them in the most successful careers, successful jobs, beautiful partners, whatever it was.

But I saw a sense of lack of fulfillment, meaning, and purpose in their lives. And I've always been an observer, and I would see these people who are like five years older than me, seven years older than me, maybe ten years older than me. And I'd be watching them and go, Is that the life I want? And often the advice I give to people today is fast forward where you are, look at yourself in 10, 15, 20 years time and ask yourself the question, is that where I want to be?

If you're in a company, look at the person who's 20 years ahead of you and ask yourself, is that where I want to be? If you're in a startup, look at where other startups have got to in similar roles and go, is that where I want to be. And if the answer is no, then you need to find a new path. And for me, the answer at that time from observing was no. The path that my parents or society or the university I went to or the community I had that was carving out for me, it didn't feel like the path for me.

So I was almost seeking an alternative or a new path. I was just so fortunate that it happened to be an uplifting, powerful path as opposed to something that could have actually taken me down the wrong road, because that could have been possible too. And so I'm living there, I'm waking up. I'm almost doing all the practices, just as if you were shadowing a CEO. I'm just shadowing a monk. And so I'm just shadowing his lifestyle.

So we wake up, he's like one of the most elite monks. So we're waking up at like 2 a.m. every day after sleeping at like 9 or 10 p.m. And then we study these ancient Vedas, which are 5,000 plus years old together. And we spend two hours. And I'm studying with the best of the best here. So he can like analyze and assimilate

and I'm learning fast, taking notes. Then 4 a.m. we go to collective meditation. We do those practices with the other monks as well. 6 a.m. We have personal meditation. So I'm literally going through the life of a monk and falling in love with it step by step going, wow, I've never had this experience before. I just threw myself in and I was practicing it to the tea. Right? It wasn't like, oh no, my back hurts when I sit on the floor. I can't stay here for too long or, you know, today when people are like, oh, I can't meditate for longer than two minutes. I was like, no, I'm going to do it for two hours. If that's what they're doing, I'm going to give it a go. Because I can only test the hypothesis will only be true. if the experiment is carried out to the degree that they are. So if the hypothesis is if you live like this,

you'll are happy, more fulfilled, then I want to do that. I think even one step before that is opening yourself up to new role models and new experiences. See, we live in echo chambers. We're just surrounded by the same thinking. How often do you bump into a monk?

You know, it just doesn't happen. You don't have, no one has a dinner party and goes, oh yeah, we just invite the monk, you know, from town, like the local monk. Like, no one ever. does that and so we meet people who are just like us most of the time and we talk about this in business all the time if you want to be a billionaire spend time with billionaires if you want to be a millionaire spent time a millionaires if you want to be a tech startup spend time with you know that's

that's the common rhetoric that we hear all the time but what if you want to find purpose and master the mind there's no one better than a monk who's mastered the mind so so for me the first step is just opening yourself up to new experiences and new role models and Because most of us can't see ourselves in people, so then we try and fit ourselves into the boxes that we do see. And, I mean, there's this beautiful quote that I've been saying it everywhere, and I wish I wrote it, but I didn't. So it's by a philosopher and writer named Cooley.

And he said that today, I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am. I am what I think you think I am. Right? And just let that blow your mind for a moment. It's so powerful. I'm not what I think I am. I'm not what you think I am.

I am what I think you think I am. So we live in this perception of a perception of ourselves. Hence, my identity is made by what my parents think I should be. My identity is made up by what my college or university thinks I should achieve. While you're living in that bubble and that echo chamber, getting to what you really want to do is impossible. because maybe that just doesn't fit and I think so many people feel that way today

that they don't fit into the current education system they don't fit with the three or four or five careers that you're taught exist so that process of self-excavation and actualization first requires being exposed you can't be what you can't see if I never saw a monk I would never have wanted to be a monk if I never meet a billionaire I wouldn't want to be one

because I wouldn't know what that feels like I don't know what it looks like I don't know what it takes And I think that's the biggest challenge of our society, that we're not exposed. So that's the first step. Being exposed to unique experiences and role models. Second step is finding that experience or role model that you're passionate about. And exactly like you said, taking it seriously, shadow them, network with them, spend time with them, observe them. Even from afar, it takes that observation, being addicted to observing that person's lifestyle.

And then the third step is going, yes or no. does that work for me? Not everyone who's going to go off and become a monk is going to feel like the way I did and that's cool. But not everyone is going to go and follow and shadow a billionaire and go, that's exactly the lifestyle I want. They may want the result, but do they want the hard work that goes with it?

And so for me, that's the third step. It's observing, focusing, shadowing, getting as close to the process of that individual and then going yes or no. Do I want that process? Not do I want the result. Everyone wants to be that monk who's fully enlightened, you know, can walk through, has an incredible aura that people just

gravitate towards. But when you realize he has to wake up at 2 a.m. every day and sleeps about 4 to 6 hours, you're like, ah, you know, I don't want to do that. That doesn't sound like me. So from a monk's perspective, the greatest power is to be self-controlled. To be able to train the mind and energy to focus it exactly where you want it and when you want it to be. You are completely detached and undeterred from external ups and downs.

You're able to navigate anything that seems tough, challenging, fun, excitement with the same amount of being ecropoised and balanced and equanimity without being too excited in pleasure or being too depressed in pain. But knowing how to navigate every situation, to me that's great strength and great power. It's more like a training system than it is a lifelong commitment. It is bringing that mindset into the real world where you get to test it. Now, I got to do that for real when I left being a monk around five years ago. And when I left, it was like, oh my God, I'm in the real world now again. Real world. I have to think about how to apply all this.

I'm going to test for real all this stuff that I've learned. And I was scared. Like I was nervous. I was anxious and all those things that I've been trained not to be rushed. back because for the first time in my life I had to really put it into practice. And I love that feeling. I'm so glad that I had to do that. So for me, actually, the mindset is completely trainable to bring it into the real world. That's what I'm trying to do. And what it allows you to do is it allows you to gain clarity and perspective when you need it. Because you know when

you can just take a bird's eye view from something. You know when you need to get close into something. You know when you need to pull back from something. There's a beautiful. beautiful verse in the Bhagwaggita that says that detachment is not that you own nothing. Detachment is that nothing owns you. And I love it because to me that summarizes detachment in a way that it's not usually explained. Usually people see detachment as being away from everything. Actually the greatest detachment is being close to everything and not letting it consume and own you. And that's real power. That's real strength. How many people do we know that have had fame and then that fame has ruined them? So for me, that definition of detachment is possible to practice even in the real world, rather than saying, oh, I'm just going to have a really simple life, I'm just going to have

nothing in life. What was the best part about being a monk? The best part about being a monk is that your morning routine and practices are so powerful that you can actually aspire for more incredible values in life. Because your mind is clear. Because your mind is clear. And do you have that ability to have more clarity so you can seek that which is higher? So I'll give an example of what I mean.

Define, is that what you're about to define what is higher? Yes, exactly. So for me, being able to overcome ego, being able to overcome envy, being able to overcome jealousy, being able to overcome the negative of competitive state. There's a positive competitive state And there's a negative competitive state Today when people are looking on Instagram or Facebook or YouTube All you're looking at is oh she got that many likes or he got that many likes

She got engaged or he got married or oh my God look at her body or look at that And it's like that stuff's destroying us inside Envy jealousy ego greed To be able to have enough clarity to purify yourself of those things is going to alleviate the biggest anxieties and depressions of our time and mental health problems. And we know that. We know that because all the mental health research today suggests

that things like isolation, over-exposure, we now can have more pain consumption in one day because of what we're exposed to than the pain we would have had in a lifetime. That's huge. That's ridiculous to think that in one day, because of the media and news and social media, we consume more negative than we did in a lifetime.

For me, being able to have time, energy and clarity to focus on self-purification, that is the best thing about being a monk. Because you have that time, reflection, and a process and an environment that only allows you to become more purified of those things. So an ideal life for me is a life, and this applies to a company, an organization and institution for me, is an ideal life is when we all have a head. a heart and a hand, all three elements together, working in alignment. Without one or the other, we start to lose something. If you only have a head and a heart, you'll find that life is stable. So a head is the clarity of vision. What you want. What you want, knowing what you want, the way you picture life and being able to navigate and make the decisions to get there. That's a good head. A good heart is being able to understand what your intuition and heart wants, being

able to connect and tap into that understanding deeper and beyond the vision you may have painted for yourself. So I often say to people that you'll get to where you want in life, just not in the way you imagined. And that's because the path that's paved up and down is far different to the path we pave. So you can have a great head and a great vision and a great mission and know where you want to go. But if your heart's not able to have that resilience and be able to adapt and have compassion and care and all of that, then you're not going to be able to make the toughest decisions

without your heart, but to be able to realize that we need to care and be sustainable and long-lasting requires a heart. And a hand is that service, wanting to pass that on, that which you have, wanting to give it forward, pay it forward. The idea of serving with what you have, I often say to people,

your passion is for you, your purpose is for others. Your passion makes you happy. But when you use your passion to make a difference in someone else's life, that's a service, that's a purpose, and that's the hand. So those are my three elements of an ideal life. And whenever I was reading these books that are 5,000 years old, my greatest fascination was finding a principle and finding its relevance in modern science.

And I said to myself, the day I can't find that, I'll quit. I won't believe in this anymore. So I'm still doing that. And I'm ready to quit. If someone shows me a piece of science and I can't find a principle in these ancient literature or actually what I like to call

these timeless literatures, then I'll give up my faith because for me, it has to track forward. And I'll give you a really basic example. Today we're in the gratitude movement. There's like a million gratitude journals out there. There's a million scientific studies on gratitude. And gratitude has been linked to better mental health,

self-awareness, better relationships. I mean, there's so many scientific studies on the neuro level that shows that gratitude is great for your mind, brain and fulfillment. Now, I look back, and gratitude is all over the timeless wisdom. One of the first things we were trained to do when we were a monk was to pay our respects to the earth for what it gives us.

And you do that first thing in the morning. What is that, if not gratitude? When you wake up in the morning, you thank the earth for the food. You thank the earth for the water. You thank the earth for allowing yourself to walk. You start your day with gratitude. Today the biggest tip on Forbes and ink and everything is,

start your day with gratitude. Like, where does it come from? It's right there. These things are old. So I get fascinated. I'm intrigued by the parallels and patterns because it saves you time. It's the same way as which if I say that this business person got invested by this company and that's why they're successful because they had the right investors,

etc. That's a pattern. So I know if I'm building a business in that area, I'm going to look for investors like that. It's the same thing. That pattern saves you time. Rather than you trying to figure out, does gratitude work, how shall I be grateful, creating your own process almost? I mean, I'm a huge fan of the book thinking fast and slow. I don't know if you've read it.

Yeah, it's a great book. Because for me, it's got a really close pattern connection again to what I studied. So just understanding system one and system two, If anyone watching hasn't read it, I highly recommend it. Just being able to differentiate between System 1 and System 2, as Daniel Kahnman calls it, in the Vedic philosophy we call differentiating between the mind and the intelligence. Knowing how to differentiate the voices in your head is the first level of self-awareness. The System 1 is your initial response to anything that happens.

It's a stop that I can't really say. So if you say something I don't like, my System 1 naturally would be a face that I pull that. I'm like, I don't agree with that. That's the understanding of what system one in. It's your initial default reaction in the moment. That can be positive often. For example, if someone pulls out a knife, you feel scared and you run. That's system one, that's a good thing.

It's safe for you. But also system one is someone says something that hurts your ego and you start defending yourself immediately. That's a negative of system one. That we would refer to as the mind. It's built up of conditioning. Those responses are conditioned. Those default elements are all there because of habit and continuous practice.

The system two is more like the intelligence. What I would say is more like the parent. If you can consider system one to be more like a child, system two is more like a parent. It looks more at the long term. It looks more at the bigger picture. It processes that default reaction through a set of checking and metrics to decide whether that's true.

The child is the one that wants everything right away, impatient, quickly, responding, straight away reacting when it doesn't get what he wants. The intelligent parent, a good one, knows what the child wants and needs and what's better for it in the long term. Just starting there and being able to reflect and observe the different voices inside of us is a great place to start your self-awareness. Because the biggest challenge is that most of us don't know what we're listening to. And most of us don't even know that there are more than one voice inside of us. Just getting over that line is a huge win.

Because now at least you're trying to differentiate in what you're hearing. And that's going to help you make better decisions in the future. The biggest challenge is that there's just so much noise. It's like, have you ever had someone in your home? Maybe it's your wife or maybe it's a friend or whatever. Just play a really bad song too often. Right?

Just playing a song that you really don't like. I actually heard my wife laugh because she knows how guilty she's... Right. Okay, there you go, right? You just play a song and just think, oh, turn that off. And after a while, it's been on for so long that you become immune to it. Like it's just there and it's still on. It's there in the back of your mind and you didn't manage to turn it off.

So the noise that I describe in life, whether it's your parents' expectations, whether it's society's expectations, whether it's your partner's expectations, all of those are like noise in the background. And that noise drowns out your ability to understand the mind of the mind of the mind of the the intelligence. That's one of the biggest trip-ups. I was looking at, I gave a presentation called Build a Life, not a resume. It's also one of my popular videos. But... Very good video about that. Thank you, man. Thank you so much. And when I did the reset, so you don't see this in the video, because this resets didn't make it into the video. But the

research that I was doing was around the most common resume lies. The truth is, over 40 to 50% of us lie on our resumes. Yeah, if you don't, you're missing an opportunity. I'll just say that. Yeah, there you go, right? So, and I started to dig deeper, and I was looking at, you know, a lot of people lie about their dates of employment. So instead of three days, it's now three months, you know, whatever it may be. Now, I dug deeper and I wanted to meet some of these people and speak to people. And so I spoke to people who lie on their resumes. And we know that at least 40 to 50% tell us they do.

And the thing is, no one was proud of that. No one was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I'm going to get. Really what it came down to is we're really insecure about our own abilities. Really what it came down to is we're not confident about what we have to offer What it came down to is a lack of self-awareness What it came down to is a lack of understanding? What am I good at? What am I passionate about? What am I bringing to the table? That's what people were really worried about They were worried about the job, but when you dug beneath the surface the real behavioral trait that was coming out was insecurity

And being unconfident about one's potential That tells us a lot, that indicates a lot about human behavior and human nature that the noise for outside makes us want to fit into a container and that stops us from differentiating between what is my mind saying and what is my intelligence saying and what happens is that noise becomes your voice so that noise becomes what you think is what you're saying one of the biggest ones and we say this all the time but it applies mostly to this is switching your association the people that you hang out right it's like changing your circle because if you're only hearing the same thing from that circle, the only way to turn it off without you having to do mass amounts of reflection

is changing your circle where you start hearing. We all ultimately find the things we want to hear, right? We know that. So for me, there was two questions that I had to ask myself that really changed what I do. One of my big questions is, what advice would I give to my younger self? It's huge, because I think that's the stuff that we regret. That's the stuff that we wish we were doing. That's the stuff that has been lost in the noise. When you ask someone, what advice would give to your younger self, the number one answer is, I wish I studied this. I wish I tried this out. I wish I gave this a go. You know, those are the- All things that somebody didn't do. Yeah, it's all things that things people didn't do. It's always like something that either

should have started or didn't continue. And that's really tapping into someone's voice, right? That's really tapping into what someone really wants to do. And you're going way beyond just like, oh, what are you like? What are you passionate about? So hard to answer that. sometimes, especially if you're drowning. So I used to do a lot of spoken word when I grew up. I read the dictionary, I read the Thesaurus, I loved language. That's what I was fascinated by. And for some reason, I gave it up, then I found out about monk life, became a monk.

And then almost back, 10 years on at 28, I was going, I asked myself that question. And my answer was, I miss words. I miss expressiveness. I miss sharing a message and stories through incredible language and ideas, potential rhymes, but flow and all of these things. So that was the answer to my question. One of the biggest answers was I wish I never stopped. So how do I find my passion?

My simple model, which is the Dharma model, it also, Dharma means eternal duty in the Vedic tradition. It's very similar to what Ikiy guy is being spoken about today, which is a Japanese version of reason for being. Why do we live? Where is meaning coming from? And it talks about an intersect of four areas. What am I good at?

What do I love? What is the world need and how do I get paid for it? To me, those four help you unlock your passion. When you find the intersect across all of those four, you're making your passion your purpose. You'll unlock your passion, you'll find your purpose. This is path one. There's two paths. Path one.

I find my skill set and I engage it to help other people and become better at it. So I'm becoming better at what I'm good at and I'm using it to help other people because I'm aware of what I'm quite good at. And I know what knowledge I have, what skills I have. I have some self-aware. The other path that people often miss is actually I just start serving people.

I just start helping people and I start to notice what I enjoy about that and what I'm good at helping people with. So that's Gandhi's part. Gandhi said that you find yourself when you lose yourself in the service of others. So for me those are the two paths of how do I find my passion and finding the intersect between those four areas. And the second one is Jay, my relationship's falling apart. I get asked that all the time.

So the answer to that is much harder. It's harder to summarize it. But I always start with self-actualization that the problem is we have a list for the one that we want. And we don't have a list for what we need to become. And I don't mean become to attract. I mean become to just be. To just get to understand yourself.

You don't know what you need in your life until you figure out who you are. And so I find too many people rush into relationships without really recognizing and being fully aware of what they need from a relationship. So it all comes back to how aware are you, how much understanding do you have of yourself and what you need and what you want?

That's my best advice for a relationship in like a minute. And then the third question I mostly get asked is, Jay, what do you read? Like, what are your favorite books? Because it seems you read a lot. What are your top three books? They're not groundbreaking in the sense that people may not be like, oh my God, that's the best book I've ever read.

For me, they changed my life. So that's where I'm coming at a point from. I love to start with Y by Simon Sinek. And not because I applied it to businesses, because I applied it to my life. And even today, I'm constantly refining my why. That's all I do every day. My deepest morning routine and practice

is to refine why I do what I do. It's so easy for me to now do it for money. It's so easy for me to now do it for followers. It's so easy for me to now do it for fame. And every day, I have to refine. that because I know having lived as a monk and what I practice that if those become what I want then I'll forget who I need to be. So my daily practice and my daily routine is refining my intention which in modern language is why. So for me Simon's book helped me do that. The

Bagwood Gita which I would love to do for Vedic knowledge what Ryan's done for stoicism and the Baguid Gita over 5,000 years old and that book really exemplifies human challenge. Third book, I'd say, this one's going to be hard because it's the last one. Let me think. I'm going to try to throw something else in there.

So I've done one like self-development, one more spiritual enlightenment. Let me throw a business book in, seeing as I'm sure you have a lot of business few years. I love the book, Exponential Organizations. I don't know if you've read it. It was by Salim Ishmael and the Singularity University. and that book for me is an incredible analysis of the success of all the organizations we see ruling our phone today.

The way it breaks down their business models and how they were created, to me it's fascinating. So if anyone really wants to start up a exponential business today, then that's where they have to go. And that's when Peter Diamandis said that if you want to be a billionaire, redefining it is someone who impacts the lives of a billion people. and that's what that business book is really about is how do you create an exponential organization that positively impacts a billion people Thank you for tuning in Continue strengthening your mind

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