The School of Greatness - 1003 Jay Shetty: Mindset Habits for Happiness, and Thinking Like a Monk

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

“What movement does for the body, stillness does for the mind.”Lewis sits down with the incomparable Jay Shetty to discuss how to craft your life instead of coasting in the passenger seat, why you should establish an intentional morning routine to boost your mood, and three questions you should be asking yourself each day. Jay breaks down all the wisdom in his new book, "Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day."Jay's previous podcast with Lewis: https://lewishowes.com/953Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-pod

This is episode number 1003 with Jay Shetty. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Author Marcel Proust said,

The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. And Headspace co-founder Andy Pudicombe says, Remember the blue sky. It may at times be obscured by clouds, but it's always there. My guest today is a school of greatness luminary, one of my closest friends, Jay Shetty, and he is the host of the incredibly popular podcast On Purpose. As a former monk, he has a unique perspective on cultivating a mindset, lifestyle, and daily routine to help achieve happiness and success. Now, Jay has a new book coming out called Think Like a Monk.

Train your mind for peace and purpose every day. It's a message we all need to hear, and he has shared a ton of that wisdom with me today. And in this episode, we discuss what mindfulness really means, how to achieve peace of mind, regardless of what's going on in your life, the three S's to design your life with love, joy, and passion, the difference between living a purposeful life and finding your purpose, how to overcome the fear of failure and success, and so much more. This is packed with wisdom, with some incredible inspiration, and I know you're going to love it. If you do, make sure to share this with someone who needs to hear it because you have the

power to change someone's life today by sending them this link right now. And a quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening to podcasts and give us a quick rating and review. After this quick message, the one and only Jay Shetty. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. You are in for a great treat. My man Jay Shetty is in the house. Brother, very excited about this.

It's good to be back, man. Thank you for having me back. This is the third time you'll be on. The last two people loved hearing us together and hearing your wisdom and i feel like we just scratched the surface literally you told us about your story in the last couple but for those that don't know you were a monk for many years for about four years three three years after going down a journey of multiple women some drugs some alcohol some like different trying different things in life

that you thought would bring you joy and fulfillment, but you realize they weren't bringing you a lot of peace internally, right? And so you found a mentor who was a monk, you were really inspired by his life, and you left to go live in an ashram in India. And that's part of your story. And then you went off to leave monk life.

You got a corporate job, and you started creating content around what you learned from the lessons of being a monk. And over the last three years, you've exploded in the world with your content, from your podcasts to social media to viral videos, and now you've got an amazing book out, Things Like a Monk, that's amazing. I want people to get. And I wanted to start with asking about mindfulness because this

is something that I hear people talk about a lot. When I had another guru named Sadhguru, he said, I don't like the word mindfulness because your mind is too full and you actually want to have mind nothingness essentially. You want to have nothing in your mind so you can be more at peace you talk a lot about practicing meditation and also prayer and you say something that was interesting about using silence to hear in between the lines so can you share what that means to hear in between the lines through prayer meditation mindfulness and kind of what this all means how How can we understand this? There's a lot of noise about it, but what does it really mean? Yeah, beautiful.

First of all, I'm glad to be back, man. The School of Greatness is a special place. And the fact that this is, so everyone who's listening or watching, this is how you test whether your friend really knows you. Lewis just told my life story in 30 seconds, which means that we're real friends.

Lewis was able to summarize everything that I've been through in the last 10 years in 30 seconds. I appreciate you, man. Of course, man. And I'm really happy to be back. And yeah, let's talk about the term and let's talk about that specific answer. So when I hear the word mindfulness, to me what it really means is intentionality. What I mean by that is, are you crafting, designing, and intentionally creating your life? Or are you just coasting in the passenger seat

of your life which is just dragging you and driving you wherever it's taking you? And so it's the difference between being the driver or being in the passenger seat. And so to me, living intentionally taking you and so it's the difference between being the driver or being in the passenger seat and so to me living intentionally is what allows you to live a life of by design and so i'll give an example of what mindfulness can look like there's something in the book that i talk about called the three s's which are sights sense and sounds now if you think about that, we're exposed to sights, sense, and sounds every single day. Every single day. But how many of us have crafted those to be sights,

sense, and sounds that we want in our life? So this is what I realized. When we were monks, one of the most important things was, what was the first thing you saw the sight when you woke up? And right now, most people are probably seeing their screen. Yeah, I think 80% of people look at their screens first thing in the morning and the last thing at the night So you're seeing your screen first thing in the morning, but what do you really see you're seeing everyone else's priorities You're seeing everyone else's issues and challenges. You're seeing everyone else's messages to you Which means you're already starting your day off reactively but what if you started your morning looking at a painting that inspired you

or a picture of a loved one that brought joy in your heart or your favorite quote by Lewis or by anyone else that when you read that in the morning, you were like, oh yeah, I feel in charge today to make a difference in the world. So imagine the first thing you saw in the morning was something inspiring. How much would your day change? That's mindfulness. Mindfulness is being intentional and mindful about what you are exposing yourself to let's talk about sounds next so sounds was something that i started to study actually much later from a modern life

perspective but when we're monks we would wake up to birds we would wake up to water we'd wake up to gongs or symbols chance or chance Exactly, which are all beautiful sounds now. The crazy thing is all of us wake up to something called an alarm I don't know why anyone would want to wake up a lot of an alarm. Why would you want to wake up alarmed? It means now your system is Alarming like why would you want to do that why would you want to wake up in shock in a state of like a jolt I don't think that's a positive way to wake up so changing the sound that you wake up

to now I'm not saying that everyone can wake up to nature sounds maybe you're one of those people who just hit the snooze button again but what if you woke up to a sound or a song that brought you joy? Now, when I lived in New York for two years between 2016 and 2018, I started to feel quite exhausted by the end of the day and I was really looking into like, why is it that I feel tired? And I started to realize I came across this term

called cognitive load. And what it means is that a lot of the sounds that you hear in New York City are sounds that are insignificant for your mind to process. Drilling, construction work, taxis honking, driving, cars screeching, scratching. People yelling at each other in the streets. People yelling at each other on the streets. All of that sound is called cognitive load where your brain is now trying to make sense of meaningless sound.

It's also just like, should I be afraid? This is a loud sound. Is my brain going to fight or flight? Like I need to protect myself. So you're always being alarmed. Yeah, exactly. And you hear sirens. The amount of sirens that I remember hearing on the streets. Now, when you hear sirens, sirens have an emotional trigger and they have an emotional response to them. So think about your day. Think about when you come home from work. Well, when you come home from work. Well, now you're working from home. What sound do you want to hear when you're working? What sound do you want to hear at the end of the day?

When you sound design your life, that's called mindfulness. That's being intentional. And then finally, scent. Scent is such a powerful sense that we're not even aware. How many of you, when you smell your favorite food, can't already wait to eat it? Like you can almost taste it. Salivating.

Yeah, you can taste it already just through scent. Why is it that every time you walk into... Pizza. Yeah, I think pizza has one of the best scents. Well, your wife, Roddy, has got some amazing food. That was amazing. When I walked in the kitchen last week, I was like, this is amazing. That was for you.

That was special. That was for you. That was for you. That was a good meal. That was a really good meal. She really appreciated that you love to eat, too. She was happy. Her heart was full.

Exactly. Bring a former jock into your house, and you'll clear all the food out. She was like, I've never seen someone eat that much. I was like, he's a big American dude. I was like, I've never seen someone eat that much. And I was like, you know, this big American dude. I was like, this is like, you know, he can eat. And so, no, it was great. She was so happy that you appreciated it so much. She really appreciated that.

But the scent is important in your life. When you walk into a massage spa, it's the scent, the eucalyptus, the lavender, the sandalwood. It puts you in a peaceful state. Dude, scent puts you in Zen without trying. And so mindfulness is intentionally creating a life that makes you feel what you want to feel without having to just create the feeling from inside. You may say, Jay, you know, I really struggle

trying to be positive. I struggle trying to deal with anxiety. I struggle trying to be focused. Your sight, sense, and sounds can help you do that. Trying to be positive. I struggle trying to deal with anxiety. I struggle trying to be focused Your sight sense and sounds can help you do that Yeah, and you start creating an environment where you naturally feel that like today when I walked into your studio I saw your books. I saw these motivational quotes I saw a boxing glove and it's like all of a sudden you're like, oh, I mean a uplifting environment, right? So you already get triggered. Exactly.

Yeah, I think a friend of mine mentioned one time on the podcast, Chris Lee, he said you want to create an environment like a rainforest where things can thrive and grow as opposed to having an environment like a desert where things go to die. That's beautiful. And if you have sights, scents, and sounds that are like a desert for your life, for your heart, then it's going to be hard to grow those things from your heart but if you create an environment of a rainforest where things can grow water nature you know cool air things like that then you can really start to cultivate that growth you mentioned about creating and designing your life how much of the world do you think we

receive by being here and how much of the world do we create ourselves yeah that's a beautiful question it's it's a complete dynamic dance between what the Vedic tradition would called fate and free will so fate is what is already created for you and a good example would be the place you were born the type of family you grew up in the socioeconomic background you had it was already there when you walked in to the world but within that you had choices where your free will came about you had the choice to either do what everyone in your neighborhood did or to do something different. You had the choice to have a relationship with a particular person or not.

So what happens is that we're constantly creating new spaces from which we have another choice. And so you kind of see it as this dynamic dance between, okay, now I'm in this situation and now what is my choice in this situation? So I would say, I'm not saying it's equal I'm saying it's a dynamic balance and a switching process where you're constantly creating a new level and then now in that level you have a next choice because we went we didn't have the choice

to be created here we didn't we were here and that wasn't our choice now everything after that is our choice right yeah and there are some there obviously there are some traditions and i'm a big diver into like reincarnation and past lives so according to the beliefs of reincarnation and past lives you have at some point made a choice to be here but taking it more simplistically the truth is that when you're brought into a situation it's the best analogy that i've heard and and it's been told for years is of a father is an alcoholic. One of the sons that he has decides to become an alcoholic because his father's an alcoholic. The other son decides to never drink alcohol because his father's an alcoholic. So

they were exposed to the same situation and same scenario, same environment, but they both made different choices based on their experience. And that's the choice element. That's the element that we should be trying to empower in our lives. Because we can constantly say, I'm limited by my environment or I've been restricted by my environment. And hey, it's true. There are so many of us that have been limited and restricted. But by now you repeating that, you are going to repeat that restriction in your life. How much of a positive environment supports us in our growth or holds us back?

There are some people who have the perfect family situation, resources, beautiful backyards and nature who are lazy. And there are others who have you know divorced parents abusive parents abusive friends an environment of a desert yeah and they figure out a way to thrive totally how much importance is our environment play in our overall success if you look at the examples that you just shared and you really analyze life, you'd see very little because you see people craft their own life. So a good example for me is that when I came back

from living in the ashram and there were other people who may have been monks who'd also left the path and I came back to a not financially successful or supportive family. So my family doesn't have abundant wealth and couldn't necessarily have taken care of me or paid for me forever. And I had to figure out my own life. And that to me was a great sense of impetus and incentive to go and figure it out and learn new skills and network and meet people.

And I saw other friends who'd parents had like a property portfolio with like 10 properties ready to hand them over They had a BMW the second that they came out whatever, you know from their own life Yeah, or I even have friends that had all of that and didn't become monks and didn't even find careers So I've also got friends that I went to school with that today don't even have Careers, even though their parents were really well established. Which has, all of these examples have continued me to believe that we truly have influence

in our, more than our environment. Our environment affects us for sure. It plants seeds and weeds into our life, but there is still a choice. And I think even if you feel there isn't a choice, simply by accepting that there is, it means you have a chance to get out of there. And I think that's what. Because if you don't accept that there is, then you're just going to stay stuck.

Correct. Like there have been so many times in my life. And there's a beautiful quote from Edison. I don't think I said this last time, but if I did, it's worth repeating. He said that when you believe you've exhausted all options, remember this, you haven't. And the reason why I love that is your mind continuously feels stuck when it's tried the obvious.

And that's why a lot of creativity and focus studies say that the first 10 ideas that come to your mind are never the most interesting. It's when you get into the 11th idea that you start breaking the pattern. And so if someone asks you, oh, what's your best business idea? Your first 10 ideas are probably not that innovative.

And so the mind constantly gets stuck on that train and you've got to keep reminding yourself that there is another door, there could be another pathway. I was thinking about a piece of advice that, so one of my closest spiritual mentors who is in London, I knew him since I was probably like 12 and probably since I was 18, he passed away this year from stage 4 brain cancer and

He did brain cancer for about I think like three three four years now And so I hadn't really had a real interaction with him for the past few years because every time I saw him He wasn't fully functioning in his short-term memory. His long-term memory was there but his short-term memory wasn't and I remember speaking to him probably about seven, eight years ago and asking him the question. I said to him, you know, I've got so many ideas. There's so many things I could do.

Where do I start? And he said this beautiful thing to me. He said, you know what? Your role should be to open up every door possible. And he said, let the world close the doors you're not meant to walk through and walk through the ones that remain open ooh and what I realized is most of us just not opening up enough doors because we think we only have the

option of two doors we look at life as binary zero and one zero and one right it's just this or that this or that and I mean I I think you'd say this too about you and every guest you ever had on I don't think life is ever this or that. It's like this, that, and that, and maybe that, and that. And there's always a gap. Of course. The challenge that people have that I've sensed a lot is the fear of criticism when you go after something that you weren't supposed to do or that people don't think you're supposed to do. Why do so many people fear criticism from peers, family, friends,

the media? Why is that such a big fear? And how do we overcome criticism from others? Psychologically, we feel a sense of safety and security when we think people agree with us. Right? That is just psychologically true that we would rather avoid conflict and sit in a space where we agree and therefore we have something called confirmation bias and the echo chamber where we keep surrounding ourselves with thoughts and ideas that are similar and reaffirm our beliefs now i think that you can have that and at the same time entertain ideas that you're not sure about yet and so one of my favorite examples was MIT did this study where they asked people which person was more creative and innovative

and they showed two charts one chart was employee a and the other chart was employee B the chart for employee a all of the people they knew knew each other and knew them back so it was almost like a closed loop of the people they knew, knew each other and knew them back. So it was almost like a closed loop. And employee B, they knew lots of people who didn't know each other. And they found that people who have more people in their network who don't know each other are more likely to be creative and productive. Really? Why is that? Because they expose you to opposing ideas and they may counteract how you think. So one of my favorite examples of this

is a conversation between Mark Zuckerberg and one of his mentors. So Mark Zuckerberg told this story at the Facebook headquarters a few years back. I wasn't there, I've seen it on video and I'm sure it's available. And he talks about how when he was struggling with the direction of Facebook in 2009, he approached his mentor and his mentor happened

to be Steve Jobs. Wow. Pretty cool. Wow. Pretty cool. I wish. That's really cool. Yeah, it's so cool, man. And so anyway, so Mark Zuckerman goes to Steve Jobs and he says, I'm struggling with the direction of Facebook. Remember at that time, Facebook was five years old. There was no fan pages, I don't think. I don't think it was, there was no creators, I don't think there were fan pages, it was very much used by university students at that stage. I think it was mainly like Ivy Leagues. College kids. College kids.

And I don't even think it was international in a massive way, very early days, and now we can't even think of that. But 2009, I mean, you just about had the iPhone and just about had Instagram and YouTube. So he went up to Steve Jobs and he said you know I'm struggling with the direction of Facebook what do I do now Steve Jobs at that time obviously was already the founder of one of the biggest brands on the planet and obviously the brand still is he had access to investors he had

access to business coaches I'm sure he had access to investors, he had access to business coaches, I'm sure he had access to life coaches, he had access to health experts. He had access to anything. Like I don't think there's anyone, scientists, PhDs, I don't think there's anyone in the world who Steve Jobs couldn't have called up at the time. And Steve Jobs said something amazing. He said, you know what, Mark,

I think you should go and live in an ashram in India. He did not. He did. No way. It's a true story. He goes, and when you go to live in an ashram in India. He did not. He did. No way. It's a true story. He goes, and when you go to live in the ashram in India, that's where, if you spend some time there, that's where you'll find your answer.

Shut up. And Mark did it. No way. Mark went to the ashram. It's a true story. For how long? I believe he was there for, I've seen two online. I've seen two versions of the exact time he was there.

I've seen some people said it was a couple of days or a week, or some people said it's a month. So I think it's hazy how much time he actually spent there. But he went. And he says that based on that experience, that's where he found the direction of Facebook to be connecting people. Now, the reason why I love that story is because it's the unobvious alternative random connection. And when Harvard did a study of 3,000 executives, they looked at and asked them, what's the number one skill for being a good leader? And a lot of people would say communication, a lot of people would say vision, strategy, humility.

And the number one answer that they got from 3,000 executives was the one word which is called associating. And what that means is the ability to spot patterns where everyone else doesn't see them. And that's the connect that real leaders can spot patterns and connections in anomalies. So most people would be like,

what has an ashram got to do with a tech platform? But that is where you expand your mind to find answers that you never expected. How important is creating alone time with noises, people, busy work, to allow your mind to expand? Is that the only time in that silence, I think you mentioned it,

silence to hear in between the lines. Is that where we start to hear what we're supposed to be creating, where we're supposed to be heading, our mission? That's, yeah, I'm really glad you brought that back. I wanted to get back to that. So when we talk about, there's a beautiful statement by David Lynch, who's a movie producer and a deep meditator. And he says that prayer is how you talk to God

and meditation is how you talk to God and meditation is how God talks to you and whether you believe in God or the universe or spirit or divine whatever it means the point is that there is a dialogue in a conversation. So prayer is like you're speaking you're saying here's what I want here's how I feel, help me, help me yeah and meditation is more receiving. Receiving yeah and so I love that statement because I think it makes it very clear that we have to have a dialogue with the universe. We have to have a dialogue with people in our lives. We have to have a dialogue and there's both giving and receiving.

So when I talk about hearing in between the lines, the best example I can give you, Lewis, is let's take a look at you and your relationship and mine and my wife's relationship. One of us is always traveling. Yeah. So you travel. Your partner travels. So let's take a look at you and your relationship and mine and my wife's relationship. One of us is always traveling. Yeah. So you travel, your partner travels, I travel, my wife travels. Sometimes we're missing each other. Imagine you've got really busy and hectic. Do you think, and anyone listening or watching, you can ask the same question.

If you were really busy and hectic and stressed out, do you think your partner feels comfortable to tell you how they feel and get your attention? If I'm busy, stressed out, overwhelmed, would my partner tell me how I feel about themselves or about... Yeah, do you think they would feel confident to be like, Lewis, I need to tell you something really important? I don't think they would. They wouldn't. They really wouldn't because... They don't want to stress you out more. They don't want to stress you out more. You're not present you're not present all these things exactly so exactly that and so what happens is when you're still Your mind and body actually get to speak to you and give you signals of how they feel and so when you're still that's when You notice that ache in your foot that you haven't noticed for a month sometimes when you slow down That's when you get sick.

Because your body wasn't allowing itself to be sick because you were pushing it to get through stuff. And so just like your partners can't communicate with you until you slow down, your body and mind can't communicate with you until you still. And so there's a beautiful Buddhist teaching that says, what movement does for the body, stillness does for the mind and so when we find that space stillness and

solitude you really are able to hear your deepest desires and challenges your physical pains and and areas of growth it's one of the reasons why when people meditate they feel sleepy afterwards and they think they're doing it wrong but actually they're doing it right meditation just told you you needed more sleep. You need to rest Yeah, meditation is just a signal. So sometimes when I meditate with people that I'm coaching I'm so sorry. I'm I'm so sorry. I'm just feeling so tired and I'm like no did sleep arrest Yeah, that's what your body's telling you because you finally listened. And some people are like, oh, Jay, I feel so energized. And I'm like, yeah, because you allowed yourself to be in line with your body. I know your body's saying that you feel energized.

And that's great. You've got that energy. Go work out. Go build something. Or you've cleared out those negative thoughts or you've let go of those distractions or that resentment. And so you're not feeling this weight. So you feel lighter. Correct. And so that stillness and silence is one of my favorite ways

for you to actually build that relationship with hearing your inner voice. Is there too much silence? Like if you say, okay, five hours a day, is there a tipping point when you're like, okay, I think you do two hours every morning, but a lot of people say, well, I've only got 20 minutes maybe. Is five hours too much? Is an hour? What is the maximum or minimum or sweet spot you think for people to be silent every day to live a great life? I think 20 minutes is a great starting

point because 20 minutes is significant enough time for your mind to switch off. So we hear that studies show that we have 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day. 80% are negative. 80% are negative and I'm guessing a lot of them are repeated. And so if you're only gonna say I'm gonna do five minutes, it just takes five minutes to switch off. Like it takes five minutes to just overcome that noise. And so I'd say that 20 minutes is a good amount of time.

And hey, you're not trying, and I think this is the challenge with meditation mindfulness, you're not trying to empty your mind you're just trying to be present with it and listen and listen to it and experience it if we were to truly find that peace every day and be able to be present relax our heart rate you know not empty our mind but listen to what's happening what would you say are the three questions we should ask ourselves every single day

that would help us improve our life? In that moment? Internal questions every day during meditation. What should I be asking myself? And what should the world be asking ourselves in order to make sure we're living a purposeful life? Yeah, what a beautiful question. Yeah, I'd say one of the first questions

that always comes to my mind is, is how can I be of service today? How can I be an, and this is extended from that first question, how can it be an instrument of love, compassion and kindness? And that's what I count as service in my own definition. And so what I would say to anyone listening is define the words yourself Because what service means to you me may be different to you, right? And so it's important But for me, it's like how can I be of service today? And the reason why I love that is we've talked about this before when you're wired for service You're set up right we talked about in the last podcast like service sets you up to feel Satisfaction to build bonds and create connections and does so much so being of service is that one of the first questions I would ask. The second question I would ask myself is, what do I love about myself? What do I actually love about myself? That is probably the most powerful question anyone could ask because most people never learn to love themselves. Totally. And we always find the things

that we don't love about ourselves and we fixate on those things. And that's one of the repeating thoughts in our head that keeps us playing small every day. All the time, all the time. And we talk a lot about today's self-love and self-care, but I think a lot of that starts with self-awareness, which we know about, self-knowledge, but self-knowledge creates self-trust. And a lot of it's like learning to trust ourselves.

And it's like, if I don't know what I love about myself how am i ever going to trust myself how am i going to trust that i have my best interest at heart yeah and so asking yourself what do you love and and then the third and final question i think i would ask myself is is who do i want to be right who do i want who is the person that i need to be uh that i can love that i want to be that I can love, that I want to love, that I want to give more love to? Like what parts of growth are there still available? And there's one thing I want to add, which isn't a question, but it has been a really

reaffirming or deepening affirmation for me that I keep reminding myself, and I think it's helped a lot of people that I've shared it with, is literally some days I'll just put my hand on my heart and i'll just repeat to myself i'm exactly where i need to be and it's just such a great reminder like if you literally put your hand on your heart and you just go i am exactly where i need to be you stop getting lost in the future you stop worrying about the past and you realize that everything you need to learn everything you read right now to make a change it's all right now it's all right here

and so that's one of my favorite things to repeat it's not a question but it's more of a mantra saying correct yeah because i think i find it so hard for people today who compare themselves to everyone online yeah about not being where they want to be or not having the career or the relationship or the body or whatever, the following or the attention. A lot of people compare themselves to other people in their space, friends, family, and they don't feel enough. And so when we say to ourselves,

I'm exactly where I need to be, does that help us eliminate the feeling of not being enough? Yeah, absolutely. You're spot on because we're always feeling like we're, we either feel like we're ahead. We feel like, oh, I'm doing better than everyone. I'm kind of like winning the game. Or more often we feel behind where we feel like, oh, they just got promoted. Oh, they just, you know, they got proposed to whatever it is. Like we always feel like they had their first child or whatever. They had their first child. They bought their first house, whatever it is, like we always feel like they have their first child or whatever, their first child, they bought their first house, whatever it is. And we're always feeling ahead or behind.

And so when you say to yourself, I'm exactly where I need to be, you realize you're not ahead or behind. And the problem is, if you always think you're ahead or behind, then you're always comparing yourself to others. Whereas if you're where you need to be, you now just need to get to the next place of where you wanna be. And also you only get ahead of yourself by first being present with yourself. And I think it's really hard to say that when you're in a challenging place in your life. I'm exactly where I need to be.

I'm broke, my dog died, my girlfriend broke up with me. It's hard to accept that. And I've been there, I know you've been there. It's really challenging to say, my life is perfect right now when you don't feel that way. But I think when you can learn to accept timing of life and know that, you know, a mentor of mine early on, when I was broke and I was an intern

working for free for six months for someone, I was living on my sister's couch. I remember saying, I would do walks with him every day. And I was like, man, I could really use some money. Like in my life, I'm just sick of being broke. And he said something I'll never forget. He said, money comes to you when you're ready for it. And I was like, I feel pretty ready right now.

Like I feel like I could have some money. And I wasn't ready for it. Mentally, emotionally, my life wasn't set up. I didn't have systems set up in place to really receive the money and be able to do good with it. And be able to use it for good in my life. And put it to good use. And later when I started to make money, I realized like, oh, I probably would have blown that money. I would have spent it poorly.

I would have made the wrong investments. Whatever it may be. It's hard to hear when things aren't going well, but I think trusting the timing of your life. If you would have built your empire seven years ago, you probably wouldn't have been ready for, maybe you would have been, but you wouldn't have been ready or social media wasn't the right timing for your message to be out there. Is that right? Yeah. I think that if I wouldn't have gone to monk school, then I think you can become successful, but still feel extremely dissatisfied

or misuse the success. And I don't think that that can be blamed on anyone because no one's ever been taught how to deal with failure or success. There's no class on here's how you deal with failure or here's how you deal with success. But the funny thing is those are the two most extreme things that we all experience. And the things we're most afraid of are failure and success. And success.

So how do we deal with failure? If you could give a mini masterclass right now, what would you suggest to people who are afraid to fail, how to deal with it? Yeah, I think one of my first things in failure is don't take it more personally than it actually is. And I'll give an example of that. When I was applying to 40 companies

that all rejected me before an interview, all I was getting was an automated response saying your application will not go any further. I can't take that personally because they didn't meet me in person. They didn't have a interaction with me. They just saw my name. They saw I'd been a monk for three years. That resume is useless. I mean, what's your transferable skills like sitting in silence and stillness? Surprise, surprise, no one wants to hire a monk. And so they rejected you, but that's not personal because they didn't meet me in person.

But what if they had met you in person? Right. So that's the first step. The first step is don't take all failure. I'll give an example. Me and you, we reach out to countless guests to be on our podcast. Who say no all the time. Who say no all the time.

But if I don't hear a no from the guest directly, that's not a no. Like someone's team can say no. Someone's assistant can say no. Someone's PR team can say no. But until they say no personally, it's not a no like someone's team can say no someone's assistant can say no someone's PR team can say no But until they say no personally, it's not a no. Okay, but when they do say no then that's a no Yeah, so then let's how do you deal with that type of failure? Yes, so if I deal with a failure where someone meets me in person and gets to know me No Jay, you're horrible. You suck. Like I don't want to deal with a monk ever in my life

Yeah, I would never go on your show. I'm never listening to you, never. How do you deal with that type of thing? So I've heard you say this, I've said it a couple of times and I'm sure it's been repeated a bunch of times around how I genuinely believe failure has feedback. And so for me, it's like failure has the ability to actually tell you what you need to improve.

Now not to improve to get their attention, improving to get the actions that you want to take. Now, not to improve to get their attention, improving to get the actions that you want to take. Yeah, the results you want. The results you want. And don't make that result about the person who said no. Don't try use failure as a way to prove someone else wrong. Because what happens when we prove others wrong? When you prove others wrong, you end up trying to get validation and approval for them. And now if they're not impressed when you're right you lose again See and I'm losing twice and you spend all this time and energy Years maybe to prove something wrong. I've been there many times and then you're like I felt good for a moment

Yeah, and then I feel empty totally and and so that's the thing about failure in the second half is you have to see failure as an improvement if if I'm completely honest Everyone who rejected me in my life up until now has made me more hungry, taught me so much more about myself and made me up my game. Yeah. And I think if failure doesn't make you up your game, it's the same as losing in a sport, right? When you fail and you've lost games and you've won games on the big stages. You didn't have the skills. You didn't have the teamwork. You guys weren't hungry enough.

You weren't communicating enough. There was something you were missing. Yeah. So you go review the game film. You check the stats. You see what could I have done better. And you try to improve that for the next game. Yeah.

And I think a lot of people can do that in life. But we're so afraid to go on the next game of life. Like I got rejected once and it hurt so bad. Yeah. How do people learn to overcome that pain of rejection? To keep going. You know, in sports, luckily there's a season which is like you might have 30 basketball games.

After you lose the first two, you don't say, I'm just going to give up the rest of the season. You keep playing. But in life, a lot of people stop playing. Why? Yeah, I think that's great mental training too. I think sports is great mental training because you have to show up to the next game even if you lost and you don't feel bad. Exactly.

That you don't feel good, sorry. And one of the things, before I dive into that question, one of the things that you reminded me of was the Last Dance documentary. So there's that season that Michael Jordan, everyone is in agreement that he is one of the best players to be playing. And they keep losing. They didn't make the finals. They didn't make the finals. They lost. And then they realize they need to get the team.

And they need to find, I think they're bringing Dennis Rodman. And then they start bringing in all these other players that strengthen. Whereas if they would have just said, oh, we've got the best player in the world. We just keep doing this. I'm not sure they would have got there, right? But the coach, Phil Jackson and the team, they had to adapt. And so you're saying, why do we feel that pain in rejection and how do we deal with that? I think we feel that pain because we look at a failure. Right. We look at it as a complete definition of us. Right. We're looking at it as a complete definition of us. We're looking at it as, there's that famous statement of failure is an event, not a person. I don't know who said it, but it's one of those

statements that really clicks. Failure is an event, not a person. Whereas we start thinking we are the failure. We say, I am a failure. Exactly. Those are the words. I am a failure. Exactly, right? Like, those are the words. I am a failure. I got rejected. And it's like, no, your application got rejected. Yeah, your efforts. Your effort, your specific effort at this moment in time got rejected. Your specific exam at this point got failed.

You didn't, you are not a failure. And so you have to disconnect and distance yourself from the event you know what's interesting is like no one who was successful at everything they did ever told a good story like the greatest stories are the ones who overcame failure and adversity it's not the ones who are like everything was easy for me everyone loved me everyone accepted my actions i didn't have to work hard and it just came to me effortlessly. People don't care about that. That's not a good story. That's not an inspirational human being. It's the human that had to deal with adversity that we really admire and we look up to.

Even if they had some low moments, it's a much better story of hearing about someone's failure than hearing how they succeeded. Totally. And that's a beautiful lesson that one of the biggest mistakes we make is we don't study the stories of the greats. So how many people's lives have you studied from start to finish? If you've studied someone's life from start to finish, I genuinely believe this is like the core skill that's needed. I would say that the people I admire, I have studied their lives from start to finish. I know why they made bad decisions, what they consider to be good decisions.

Like there's autobiographies and biographies out there. There's podcasts like ours where people come and listen to people's stories. If you've not studied someone's story, then you can't follow that path because every time you hit a rejection, so every time I get rejected, I think of Steve Jobs getting kicked out of his own company crazy every time I fail I think about Michael Jordan losing a game every

time I get tired of training I think about Cristiano Ronaldo putting in that extra rep those are the visual cues that we need but you only get those visual cues if you've done the research and the study and then you oh, if Steve Jobs was kicked out of his own company, but then still had the audacity at one point to go and build Pixar, then I think I'm all right if I just didn't get this job. Yeah, and Apple wouldn't be where it is today without him getting kicked out, learning the lessons, having humility, gaining some compassion, all the things that people said he didn't have fully at that time.

He learned by having to be Kicked out start something else bring a new perspective. Yeah, what did you call it the? Association yeah associating yeah Like he was able to then go somewhere else and spot different trends and then he came back to Apple and built it to where it Is today will help build it to where it is today and he probably Apple want to be where it is Yeah today without him being rejection, which is crazy to just think of that. Yeah, exactly. So if he would have kept saying, I'm going to keep doing it my way and this is the way it is, it probably would have had some challenges. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the,

the more you study the lives of inspirational people, and that's what I'd say is everyone should pick their top three inspirational people and go and study their life the full life their full life yeah and read the biography the autobiography listen to every podcast I mean like seriously get immersed in that person all the journey in the industry you're trying to make it in and when you do that you'll realize that your journey actually doesn't look that different from theirs yeah it actually probably looks similar so how do we go inside our minds and say, okay, I'm getting rejected over and over again. I'm trying really hard.

It's not working. How do we still deal with that emotional pain? Is it just the self-awareness that every great person had to go through this and this is just a timing thing? How do we eventually just ease that? Or should we not try to use that pain I don't think it's about easing it I think it's about engaging it you know it's it and I believe that the engaging does the easing in my opinion at least so what I

mean by that is behind that pain is a understanding that I don't have this skill or is an understanding of I didn't try this skill or is an understanding of I didn't try hard enough or is an understanding of oh maybe there's just another option because guess what sometimes you may have done the best pitch in the world and you just had an executive that didn't like your vibe keep going keep asking different people keep going like you you know you've just got to realize that there's one there's a there's a you have to engage that pain in discovery and that eases it because when you discover like oh like for example let's take my podcast my podcast producer the team that was meant to produce my podcast pulled out two weeks before we launched

my podcast and i thought i had this big deal lined up i was really excited i'd never launched a podcast before and i thought oh yeah this could be amazing and I was in India meditating for my annual trip that I take I come back and the first news I remember receiving is by the way this isn't happening anymore and I'd said that I was gonna launch my podcast on Valentine's Day 2019 and I had my episodes recorded with my wife and I'd already gone out made the content so just to tee up how bad that two-week notice was I'd already gone out and made the content. So just to tee up how bad that two week notice was, I'd already gone to Monaco, interviewed Novak. I'd already interviewed Lily,

I'd interviewed Russell Brand in London, I'd interviewed my wife, and obviously those people are all close friends and people I know, so they were very happy to be on the podcast even when it was new. So I'd already done all that effort, I'd already created all the content myself, all this podcast company was gonna do was put it out there and help me market it a bit.

And then they pull out two weeks before it comes out. And I'm going to myself, wow, okay. I can either sit here and be really sad or I can scrap together and figure it out. And so the only thing I realized was it actually turned out perfectly because now I own my podcast. There you go. And I'm completely aware of every part of the journey. And it gave me more confidence in myself that I could scrap together when I had to. Yeah.

And I think that's what it is, that we lack confidence. We're waiting for someone else to tell us how we should feel about ourself. And I think if we go back to those three questions you said, like when you're feeling a failure over and over and over again, or you feel a sense of I'm not enough or whatever it may be, go back to asking those three questions to yourself. How can I be of service today or serve today? What can I love about myself?

So even when everyone's saying no, what is there to love about me? To remind yourself and not be validated by other people's opinions. And who do I want to be that I can love? Yes, exactly. Who do I need to become? Who do I want to be that I can love? Yes, exactly. Who do I need to become? Who do I need to become that I can love? And just keep focusing on the process because the process is the prize.

Yes. And focus on that journey. I'm curious about success then. We talked about how to deal with failure, but how do we deal with success? Because this is actually, when I ask most people, 50-50 of people are failure and success is their biggest fear. And some people say, why would you be deal with success? Because this is actually, when I ask most people, 50-50 of people are failure and success is their biggest fear.

And some people say, why would you be afraid of success? But a lot of people are afraid to succeed because of the weight, the pressure. Can I maintain it? My family and friends aren't going to support me and they're going to try to pull me back down, all this stuff. How do we deal with success? Because we're not taught this growing up. So how do you think we should deal with it?

we deal with success because we're not taught this growing up yeah how do you think we should deal with it one of my favorite ways to deal with success is continue trying to be the least successful person in the room that you and i think there's those statements of like you know never be the dumbest person yeah never be the smartest person in the room etc and i think it's the same with if you become successful don't just stand at the top of the mountain don't just stand at the top of the building go back down the stairs and and keep building and keep living as that person that got you there because you only got there because you started from the bottom right no one starts at the top and so you started at the bottom and you built it up and it was that mindset that you started with that got you there and so you want to keep rediscovering that mindset and new parts of it and new parts of that mindset too where you're always trying to challenge yourself.

And so for me, one of the best ways of dealing with success is keep expanding the goalposts, right? Keep widening the goalposts. Keep making them harder to reach and challenging yourself because when you challenge yourself and you push yourself out of your comfort zone, you're naturally humbled. Because you're naturally humbled when you're yourself and you push yourself out of your comfort zone, you're naturally humbled. Because you're naturally humbled

when you're walking into spaces. I'm sure you feel this sometimes. Sometimes I walk into a room and I'm like, how did I even get here? Right? Sitting at a table, I'm like, why should I be here? Yeah, and there's part of it that's imposter syndrome and that can have its own negativity,

but part of that just lets me feel like a beginner again. And I appreciate that feeling and I go this is amazing because learning to be grateful and stop just thinking that oh I earned all of this and I did it all myself and I'm self-made you start recognizing gratitude for all the people that got you there so for me and success first thing is be grateful for all your teachers mentors guides people that got you there the first thing is be grateful for all your teachers, mentors, guides, people that got you there. The second thing is always keep challenging yourself because the more you're out of your comfort zone, the more naturally you stay humble. You don't stay humble by trying to be humble.

You become humbled constantly by trying to do stuff that's out of your league, which constantly makes you prepare, work, deepen what you have. Study, all that stuff. All of that stuff that makes you go there again. And the third thing you do with success is I think you try and share it with others you try and use your platforms as an opportunity to give other people a platform yeah so that they can come up as well because you're reminded of what a beautiful gift you have yeah and how the people supported you or gave you an opportunity or give you an interview or something yeah

there's a there was someone successful who had to give you something in the beginning. A piece of wisdom. Coming on your podcast. Exactly. Yeah, giving you an insight. A quote or whatever. Yeah, or even rejecting you.

Even indirectly, someone had to do something. That's true. It's funny because I love this approach to having humility when you succeed. Let me know if you think I'm off here. I also feel like sometimes me know if you think I'm off here. I also feel like sometimes we get into a place where we're always putting it on other people. Like, you know, it's not about me. It's about the team. It's about this. Like, I see that a lot as well,

where some people are more extreme, like I'm the man. And then other people are like, you know what? It wasn't me at all. It was God. It was the team. Like, I just showed up, you know? So I think there's a balance of, I love this speech that Snoop Dogg gave. Where he's, I think it was like on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he says like, I want to thank me for me. I want to thank me for all those late nights I put in, for all the hard work, for like overcoming the rejection.

Like he went on this thing and I want to thank me for like showing up. Yeah. And I think we also should acknowledge ourselves for, yes, people helped us. For sure. We got guidance. We had all this access, but Snoop Dogg still had to show up. Yeah. He still had to put in the hours and the time to make the results. And I think it's, correct me if I'm wrong, is it good to also acknowledge ourselves? For the work we put in the wins the things we do Yeah, or is it all about being humble and acknowledging everything else? I think it's about being honest. Yeah, it's honesty, right? Like humility means to be honest. It's like the ability to say This is what this person deserves credit for and this is what I deserve credit for this what this person it's like

It's kind of like when you write the acknowledgements of your book, right? And I remember doing that process and really thinking about like, who's helped this book in different ways? And everyone gets their line in the acknowledgement who's made a difference. Now, your name goes on the front cover because you wrote the book. Like you want everyone to receive the credit to the degree they merit it. And so you never want someone to feel like they didn't receive as much credit as they deserve. And at the same time, you don't want to give someone more credit than they deserve.

The point of credit is to give it where credit's due. Right. And so for me, that's honesty. That's humility. Arrogance and pride is when you start to feel like only you did it on your own. And we all know that's just not true. Like, I can't say I did it all on my own. I just, I can't anyway.

I definitely can't say that. And I can't say it was all other people. And so that is the, that's where honesty and humility, I think, live together. Yeah, acknowledging everything about it. Yeah. I'm curious about, you know, a lot of people haven't learned about how to deal with failure

or success. And I don't think people have been trained how to believe in themselves. And for me, self-doubt is a big thing. I think it keeps people back from their dreams. And I'm curious, I'm going to share five words with you, beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, and intentions. How should we be thinking about beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, and intentions. How should we be thinking about beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, and intentions within our life? Because I think those five things dictate the results, the outcome, our feelings, all of this in our life based on beliefs, thoughts, words, actions, intentions.

How should we be thinking about these things? How should we be speaking to help us build our self-confidence what's your thoughts i've thrown a lot of yeah but no let's go down each of them so let's start with beliefs so i think the first thing we have to do with beliefs is you have to realize everyone has them it's not like you don't have beliefs just because you don't know what they are everyone has beliefs that they're currently living with. And I think life is about unlearning the beliefs you have

and questioning the beliefs you have and then creating new ones. So the first thing I do with beliefs. Unlearning. Yeah. From the beginning. From the beginning. What if your parents had the answers

and the way and the religion and this, should we be questioning it all? I think we should question it because questioning, okay, questions are the most powerful invention in the world Because questions either strengthen or weaken a belief based on the information so questions aren't always from a place of doubt and cynicism and trying to find a weakness Questions are a sincere request to figure out something. Like when we're sitting in these interviews,

you're not sitting there trying to like be cynical. You want to help yourself and people who are listening and watching. And so that's a question first of all. A question is not to cut someone off guard. A question is not to put someone down. A question is not to mislead people. A question is to uplift yourself and others and

when you ask a question in that way the answer can either strengthen a belief you already have or weaken it or introduce you to a new one why do we get so frustrated when our beliefs get questioned when we have a belief that we put out in the world or we question someone's belief Why do people when they get shaken in their beliefs they attack they they break down they yeah, whatever Why why is that? Why don't people just say okay? That's interesting. Let me look at that more Yeah, because we have defined our identity by our belief So imagine you're on one of these assault courses and you're on this rope and you're being told to swing to the next rope. But in order to catch the next rope, you need to let go of this rope. But you're scared because this rope is currently your safety. So your current belief

is your safety. And when you have to consider holding on to another belief and to entertain both together, you're scared that if that one doesn't hold, I'm basically going to fall. So people are scared that their belief is currently their safety net. And so even if it's wrong, it still makes them feel safe and they feel comfortable. And we don't want to feel uncomfortable. So we'd rather hold on to that safety net, right? So the only way to do it... How do we get comfortable with questioning our beliefs, but not being like holding on to nothing well realizing that you don't have to change your mind or you don't have to leave what you think in order to entertain or be curious about anything and explore like explore and experimenting and experiencing

can either strengthen the belief you have or help you find a new one. But you have to do that middle three E's of exploring, experimenting, and experiencing. And the problem is that we're just theoretically thinking. We're not experiencing the benefit. And this is what I love about what you've done in your past. We've talked about this, how you grew up in a certain religion, and then you started studying different religions to see, okay me just try this on and let me see what i like about this religion and does that apply to you know can i let something go and what i grew up in not making anything right or wrong but just saying what works for you correct right yeah and yeah and i think taking that experiential journey of asking questions from different beliefs allows you to just say okay yeah this is working this is working for me already, I don't need to change. And I like this and I'm gonna keep growing

and go from there, right? Yeah, definitely. I desire for safety and security. So what you're speaking about was when I was around 16, maybe 15, we used to celebrate Christmas every year. And Christmas is probably my favorite time of year. We were talking about it. I love listening to Christmas songs

and I love Christmas decoration. And for me, Christmas is presents. And so I grew up in a culture where we celebrated Christmas, but Christmas was presents and a family dinner. And because I went to my school in England, we'd celebrate all the religious holidays. So we knew about all the main stories behind every major world religion. And so I remember celebrating Christmas at home, but thinking, I don't know that much about Jesus. And should I not be connecting with Jesus? Because that's why we even have this day.

And so I started going to church in my local area, just out of curiosity. I wasn't trying to be a Christian or trying to be a Hindu or trying to be anything. I was just interested and curious to be like, what is it about Christ that created a day that has lasted thousands of years that people all over the world celebrate? There must be something here. And so I feel like we get so scared because we want clear designations. We want like a clear title of I am this or I am that. And that gives us a sense of

safety and security, but really answers come in the curiosity, not in the security. Yeah. Right? What does that identity do to us, in a good way or in a negative way? In a good way, it creates a, and this isn't just about religious identity,

it's any identity. Just any identity. I'm a podcaster, or whatever, yeah, it's not about religion. Holding on to this identity of yourself. Yeah, so in the good sense, it surrounds you with more people like that. So if I'm a podcaster, I hang out with more podcasters. We learn more about podcasting and that's a great thing because we will become better podcasters. The mistake is I go, oh,

I can only be a podcaster, but I can't write a book. I can't make a video. I can't do that now. And that's the mistake that it makes. So it should be evolving. These titles that we give ourselves, these communities should help us evolve not devolve yeah and and not stop us from expanding and growing okay and and so you want to be around people that are always curious and insightful yeah does that make sense makes perfect sense okay thoughts yes thoughts are something what do we have 60 to 80 000 thoughts a day 80 are negative yeah most of them are repeating thoughts. Yes. So let's talk about thoughts. Yeah.

My favorite technique that I talk about in the book is called spot, stop, swap. Yep. And so that theme is all around how thoughts are meant to be spotted, stop and reflect, and then swap. And what I mean by that is if you've got a thought that's repeating, like you said, and is negative, I'm guessing you don't want that thought around for too long So you want to spot when does that thought arrive? Does it arise when I'm with certain people does it arise when I'm on a particular social media platform?

Does it arise when I go to a particular place? Where is that? What is the seed of that door? Right. So once I had identified that, I now need to stop, spend some time in stillness and go, is this thought benefiting me? Is this thought useful to me? Is this thought actually leading me to who I want to become? And if it's not, I need to swap it with a thought.

So one of my favorite ways of, let's take an example of like, I feel less than, I feel like I'm not achieving anything. I'm no good. I'm no good, I'm not achieving anything. I'm no good. I'm no good. I'm not good enough. So you spot that and you go, oh, I always feel that when I'm going through this particular Instagram profile because I'm looking at someone who I think is better than me. Okay, what do I swap that with?

You don't swap that with you're beautiful, you're amazing, you're incredible because you may not believe that yet. But you swap it with I feel confident when. I feel attractive when. I feel attractive when. I feel happy and joyful when. And you figure out what is that thing that I need to be and do to feel that emotion. Yeah, so don't lie to yourself. Don't lie to yourself because lying to yourself is not going to get too far.

And you're losing your integrity as well to yourself. Totally. Which makes you less confident. Yeah, like i feel healthy when i exercise yeah i feel happy when i spend time with my wife yeah there's a there's a line that everyone uses fake it till you make it but it's really you should be facing it till you make it like face that fear face that doubt and say okay what can i do to improve this until i make myself feel better about it if you want to get a result for the long term, yes. Yes. Like if you just want to make yourself feel better instantly,

then do what you need to do. But if you really want to create a life that's fulfilling, that's thoughts. Thoughts can transform your life in a positive way or a negative way. Completely. I feel like that's the foundation of our life is what we think. The best place to talk about that though with thoughts is the movie Inception. of our life is what we think. The best place to talk about that though with thoughts is the movie Inception. So you look at how a thought is planted into someone's mind and how in that movie Leonardo DiCaprio in his wife's mind plants a thought that this is not real. And that thought grows into a

belief. A belief that is so strong. It's crazy. Right? And it's like that is literally what a thought can do. And you see that in the Joker movie. So I did a whole episode last year, which was all about like mental health and the Joker. And you look at the Joker's story, he's trying to bring joy to others, but everyone treats him badly. And so the thought sets in of I'm not worthy.

I'm not valuable. My father doesn't want me. No one thinks I'm funny. Everyone makes fun of me. Even when I go on TV, everyone's laughing at me. That idea becomes his reality. Now I get that that's a fiction movie, but the point is still that we see even in today's world that thoughts have the ability to become, I forget the word that Leonardo DiCaprio uses in the movie, but that thought. Yeah, cancer or some type of. Yeah, it's like a cancer in the mind, right? Like really just expands. And so I think we have to be so good at spotting, stopping and swapping thoughts. I love that. Okay. So beliefs, we want to ask about everything and question everything. Yeah. Spot,

stop, swap thoughts. What about words? How important is the things that come out of our mouth into existence? Harvard did a table which I really believe is what mindful speaking is all about. So, what is this? So it's called the, it's called Harvard List of Emotions, but I kind of changed the name to emotional vocabulary because I think it sounds better.

So an emotional vocabulary, if you look at all of the world's emotional vocabulary, it's very limited. We use five words to describe pretty much everything. Good, bad, okay, fine. So it's like, how's your week going? Good. How's your day been? Bad. How are you feeling? Okay. Literally, we use such limited words and that may be okay for the majority of people, but in your personal relationships, it's so important to expand your emotional vocabulary. So this table that Harvard has made,

which anyone can find just by typing in Harvard list of emotions on Google, what that does is that it shows you that when you say you're sad, what do you actually mean? So it gives you all this list of emotions that sit under the word sad. Are you irritated? Are you offended? Are you disappointed?

Have you been let down? The more you expand your emotional vocabulary, the more you can diagnose how you feel. And the more you can tell your partner or your friend. This is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm actually feeling. And the more you can tell your partner or your friend, this is how I'm feeling. This is how I'm actually feeling. And this is one of the biggest mistakes with words

is that we think our words mean the same thing. Now, when you say love, you might think forever. And when I say love, I might think for tonight, right? And that is literally how the word love or care or marriage or forever gets misused, abused, and thrown about because we both mean different things. And our meanings are based on our backgrounds. Our beliefs. Our beliefs, but how we were born and how our parents treated us. Our culture, our experience. Everything. Yeah. It forms our meaning. So I really believe that in a relationship, in our communication with words, define words. When you say, yeah, we're best friends or friends, what does that mean to you? When we're business partners, what does that mean to you? A contract in a financial legal sense is to define the terms.

Right. But in our emotional sense, we also need to define the terms. And we don't do that emotionally enough. And that's why we feel emotionally like someone broke the contract. And you have nothing to hold them to because you never made a contract. You never communicated it. You never communicated it. The meaning of these words. Exactly. And that's why words are so powerful.

But they're only powerful when we agree on the definition. Yeah. What are the words we should eliminate from our vocabulary and what are the words we should be adding or using more of? Words that we should use more of in our life are words that give us the right feeling we want to feel. So I'll give you an example. Instead of saying, now I work super hard,

I do get tired and I do get exhausted sometimes. I'm very aware of it and I'm cautious of it. And I realized that for a long time I just kept repeating, I'm tired, I'm exhausted, I'm tired, I'm exhausted. And I'd say to my wife, I'd say to my team, I'm overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed, stressed. Yeah, and I still do it sometimes. It's not that I'm perfect, but you're making me aware of it. And I say that, and I start to realize that, okay, it didn't make me feel better by saying

it. And actually, what I was trying to do was get validation from someone else to be like, I know how hard you work, and you're amazing, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so you're really doing it for a reaction. Yes. And then I start to realize, well, I am tired, but why don't I just say, I'm going to make some time to nap today i need to i need to find some time today to rest i need to make sure that i uh you know get some time to

myself today like when you flip it not by just saying oh i feel amazing because i don't feel amazing again you don't lie to yourself but you're trying to create words that help you actually get what you need so me saying i'm tired really what i need to be saying that help you actually get what you need. So me saying I'm tired Really what I need to be saying is I need to get some more rest today. I better sleep early and when you go All right, you know a to rather rather, you know what? I think I'm gonna sleep early tonight That's that's perfect. Now. I'll sleep early and I'll get the rest and I won't be tired. Yeah, I'm so tired It just creates this negative pattern of complaining and whining and creating that in ourselves. What's the difference between a positive mantra and fake positive thinking?

Because there's the power of positive thinking, but if it's not accurate to where you're currently at, it could be out of integrity with yourself and you could feel off. Yeah. So how do we have a positive mantra or a saying or thoughts or words that support our growth as opposed to I'm fine when you're not fine. Yeah. And that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid. Yeah. Because when I'm tired, if I was told to just say to yourself, I'm healthy, I'm excited, I'm energetic, I may survive for 30 minutes more, but that's not going to survive for 30 days or three years. And so so for me I find connecting positive mantras to a act or an action

For example, if I'm tired and me saying I think I need to eat on time That action is what's gonna solve the fatigue long term or me saying I need to sleep early tonight That action is gonna solve the fatigue long term So to me the positive mantra needs to be linked to an action and a habit that's actually going to relieve you in the long term of that pain point. Right. Yeah. Like I need to get my schedule to be more organized on Monday mornings. And my favorite example with that, again, I don't know if, yeah, this with the words is the definition that I think we see this most prominently in is the definition of time.

So many friends will come to me and say, my partner doesn't spend enough time. Or I don't have enough time. And what they're really saying is, from a partner point of view is, I really want energy, intimacy, and presence, and attention. It's attention. You're not asking for time. You're asking and attention. It's attention. You're not asking for time, you're asking for attention. And I've had friends who have gone on weekends away with their partners and they'll come back and their partner on Monday morning will say,

I wish we had more time together. And the partner's thinking, well, but we just spent the whole weekend together. But they're like, no, because you were doing your work by the beach and you were reading your book and I was trying to take care of the kids and you realize it was never time, it attention it was intimacy it was presence and so if we don't define those words all right words are all about definitions if you don't define them

people will break that contract and that emotional contract and you have nothing to hold them to well you didn't have the you guys weren't aligned to your contract no not at all you just had your belief that like oh she, she understands me. He understands me. Like this is the way it is in my life and it must be the same way in their life. Exactly. What are the actions we should be adding more of in our life and the ones we should be eliminating? I think actions that we should be adding more of in our life are actions that create positive habits.

I think it has to be habits orientated. It has to be stuff that we can repeat. And in Think Like a Monk, I talk about the four key habits in your day, which are thankfulness, inspiration, meditation, and exercise, which is the acronym of time. So make more time in your day for thankfulness,

inspiration, meditation, and exercise. Those are four actions that I think if everyone wants to take in their day, this is what happens. When you're thankful, you boost your immunity, you boost your self-confidence, you boost your mood. Because you go, oh, people love me, that means I matter. People care about me, that means

I have something to care about. So it boosts your mood. And then when you tell people that you're thankful, you now boost connection and relationship. And when you're thankful, you now boost connection and relationship. And when you thank someone, you now boost the feeling of, I have people in my life that care about me and I care about them.

So much comes out of that one action. Inspiration or insight, listening to a podcast, reading a book, reading a quote. When you do that, again, you feel excited. You feel enthused.

You feel like you're learning. You feel like your mind actually works and that it can go somewhere. So that's a great action. Meditation, of course, we've talked about at length in the beginning. And exercise. People just don't understand that we could solve so many of our challenges simply by sleep and exercise and diet. Like those three things could change your life. And we have to just get focused on one at a time mm-hmm and so we're in actions I talk about this thing in principle is we want things to be small

steps but big priorities so if you want to change an action in your life it needs to be a big priority and then you need to break it down into small steps what we try and do is we try and change everything at the same time yeah we're like okay I'm gonna only eat lettuce I going to work out three hours a day. I'm going to sleep 10 hours. I'm going to be, it's like, you need to shift your identity around like the thing and take the small steps towards it, but don't try to do everything right away. Yeah. Like if you want to be healthy and in shape, then you just need to change your identity to say, I am Mr. Fitness. Yeah.

Like I am fitness. Yes. And I'm going to start living my habits and my actions towards being in fitness and in good health. Yeah. But you can't change every habit right away. No. Because then you'll get burnt out after two weeks. You'll be like, this is exhausting.

Yeah. I'm not Mr. Fitness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You change your mindset and then take those small actions. Exactly. And there's a beautiful quote from, this is more like an underpinning, actually this kind of leads to the next one. We'll save it for the next one. Yep. Intentions. Yeah. So there's a beautiful quote from the Dalai Lama where he said that we're born to help people. And if we can't help them, let's at least not hurt them. And I think that's the intention that you want to leave every person happier than you

found them, leave every place cleaner than you found it, leave every project more productive than you found it. Like you want to feel that if you couldn't uplift something or someone, at least don't pull it down. And I think that when you live like that in your intention, people feel that. This isn't necessarily something that you even have to say or do. People feel that when you just leave a place and all you wanted to do was give your energy in a positive way. So to me, intention is just coming from a place of how do I leave every person just

a little bit happier than I found them. I don't have to change their life. Right. Try not to hurt them. Try not to hurt them. Try not to hurt them. With everything that's been happening in the world right now, I'm hearing a lot of people say that intention isn't enough. Like having a positive,

I had a good intention to like say the right thing, but it offended someone and it impacted them in a negative way. Yeah. So how do people understand that? That it's about intention, but it's also you might hurt people, you might offend people,

even if you weren't intending to. How do we shift that in our minds and our actions to sync up our intentions to actually impacting people in a positive way? You know what I mean? Yeah, it really makes so much sense. A real deep intention means that you will care and do the research and study. And often we have a good intention, but it's not the deepest, greatest intention. So we try and wing it.

It's based on our beliefs. Correct. As opposed to doing the research of other things. Correct. And so really good intentions are make you ask questions and make you care and make you compassionate. And sometimes that doesn't mean saying a lot. Sometimes that means listening, learning, receiving, understanding. And I think when we are trying to show our good intentions, we say a lot and it may be taken the wrong way. But when we really want to be our good intentions, we're just listening and learning and asking good questions.

And you do that really well. You're this person even if we're on a dinner. Lewis will ask this many questions even if we're having dinner. And we'll go back and forth and I'll ask questions. But you're a really curious and inquisitive person in a positive sense. And that's why people always feel

very comfortable around you to open up and share because they feel that you're really listening. And so I think that's a big part of it is that when we're doing that. The second part is even if you do all of that, there will be people that get offended. So even if you master the way of communicating and you really care and you do the research,

there'll be people that get offended and what you have to realize is that there are just so many more triggers right now so many to everyone's lives and there are deep triggers there too there's historic triggers there's there's so much going on that you can't make it about you and i think sometimes we're like oh how did they get offended me i tried so hard but it's like don't make it about you and i think sometimes we're like how did they get offended me i tried so hard but it's like don't make it about you because there's so many more things at play here there's so much more going on so again we try and reflect it because we want to be liked or considered to be supportive yes but we're not realizing there's just so much more at play here so much and so as long as you did your part and you tried and you acted then that that's great. Yeah, this is something, you know, we talked about this a couple nights ago at your place,

talking about detaching yourself, like being unattached to how other people react to you and respond to you because it's very hard at times if you're attached to the result of other people's opinions to let it affect you. I'm one to blame for that as well. Me too. When I feel like people are coming at me,

I'm like, oh, like, chill out. I'm not trying to hurt anyone here, right? And one of the greatest things we can learn is to be unattached. That's what I've learned from you and so many other great people is like,

don't be attached to people hating on you or the triggers because then you'll be staying in a suffering state. Yeah. Like, you've got to be unattached. It's not easy. No. We're all human beings.

Totally. But that's something I want to talk about that the next time. Yeah, for sure. That's something we can do like a whole masterclass on. But I want to ask you a couple of final questions. Your whole podcast is about on purpose. What's the difference between discovering your purpose, finding your purpose, living it and living a purposeful life?

discovering your purpose, finding your purpose, living it, and living a purposeful life? I think that living your purpose is where it's so much about you and your journey. And living a purposeful life is when you're now letting that overflow into everyone else's life. So it's like you want to find your purpose and you want to feel satisfied in that. But a purposeful life is where you are igniting other people's purposes and it's overflowing with that love and that compassion and gratitude. And that's hard because it takes time. And you can't expect people to do that while they're still filling up too. And I think sometimes we, you know, everyone would always look like they're finished and they're done and they made it you know it's like no one's ever made it and you speak to some of the most successful people in the

world and even they don't feel they've made it and so we are always doing both at the same time you're always filling up your purpose and you're always trying to be purposeful at the same time but you're not ever going to be fully in purpose and you're never fully going to be purposeful. It's all a symbiotic relationship that has to happen in parallel. Does that make sense to your question? Makes sense to me. I've got so many other questions I want to ask, but I want to be mindful of time.

You've got a book out right now that is called Think Like a Monk. I've read this book. It's amazing. I want everyone to go get it. Go pick it up. Tag Jay when you pick it up. Tag me. Let us know that you've got it. Let me know the insights get it. Go pick it up. Tag Jay when you pick it up. Tag me. Let us know that you got it. Let me know the insights that you found are helpful for me. I'm telling

you, you will read this thing over and over again. It's really powerful. If you enjoyed this, you will love that. So that's action number one. I want people to go buy your book right now. Buy it for a friend, family member. The subtitle is Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day. So if you feel out of purpose, out of peace, this will support you with amazing tools, science, research, everything. It's unbelievable. That's action number one. Action number two,

go check out Jay's podcast, On Purpose, and subscribe over on Apple, Spotify, and also listen to the episode that I just did on your show because most people don't get to hear me on my show that much because I'm interviewing, but I feel like I probably did the best interview with you. You were in flow.

I have to say, you were in flow. I was just sitting there listening and absorbing. Everyone's going to love that episode, man. You were so open, so vulnerable, but you had some great insights that people could really practice. Yeah, definitely everyone should check it out. Go check out Jay's podcast. Check out that episode. Let me know what you think and there's two other episodes that we have here from jay in the past that are amazing he's got his three truths if you want to go listen to

that his definition of greatness so go check out those so you can see the end of those as well and i appreciate you man you're just uh you're always got so much wisdom, so much love, so much, just like peace. You bring peace to every space you go into. Thank you, man. And so I'm just so grateful for our friendship and for your time today. And I feel like we can go on for like masterclass. Like every page, I'm like, this is a masterclass.

Well, we do when we're together. I know. We should start recording these things. We spoke the other night for like four hours. And that's normal. Like that's normal for us so but that's what's so special about that for me that's the it's those special parts of the friendship that make this more fun yeah make that more fun it's like having private and public

relationships are so beautiful to have both you know what's funny is i feel like i never run out of questions to ask you or myself when we're hanging out it's like we're always finding new things to talk totally always yeah we never get bored we're always like talking about thoughts and beliefs and ideas and like yeah how to make the world better and how do we impact more people how do we improve what growth areas we have where we're what are we missing in our lives like but you do that you You have that energy. That's what I mean. Lewis on the podcast and Lewis behind the scenes, you're the same person. You're just inquisitive, curious, always wanting to know.

We talk a lot about curiosity and asking questions, but I don't think we all do it enough in our daily lives. It really enriches relationships when you have a curious mind. Even with your with a partner, if you can continue to ask them interesting questions, different questions, it's going to make you look at them in a different way and the relationship is going to continue to grow and evolve. Totally. And that's what I love about your relationship with your wife, Roddy, about how you guys really practice meditation in the mornings together for a couple hours. And you have that space and time to think and allow for questions to come and go. And you can interact and experience life together in a beautiful way. Of you have your ups and downs but it's like if there's something i took away from this is give yourself a minimum of 20 minutes a day to allow for questions and

answers to come to you yeah to the problems you have in your life yeah ask questions to shift beliefs and see what works for you make sure you spot stop and swap thoughts to support beliefs and see what works for you. Make sure you spot, stop, and swap thoughts to support you and serve other people. Make sure you use actions that have positive habits to them. Make sure your intentions are not to hurt people and always question your beliefs. And then ask these three questions every day. How can I be of service today?

What can I love about myself? And what do I want to be that I can love? And if you do those things, you're going to start living a better life. So Jay, my man, I love you, brother. Appreciate you. Love the school of greatness. Appreciate you, man. Thank you. Make sure you guys get the book, check out his podcast, and we'll have you back on soon, man. Thank you, man. This is awesome. Thank you so much for listening to this episode, my friend. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please make sure to share it. You always can have the opportunity to impact someone's life.

And that's what we're all about here is changing lives. So just copy and paste the link and text a couple of friends, post it on social media. Make sure to tag me, atlewishouse, and Jay Shetty over on Instagram so we can stay connected and see who is listening and if this impacted you in a big way. And make sure to check out my friend's book. Jay Shetty's book is out right now. And I'm telling you, this book is going to be a massive resource for you for many years to come. I've gone through it a few times and it's really inspiring, super powerful, insightful. So go pick up a couple of copies of his book as well. And if you want weekly inspiration from me,

then text the word podcast to 614-350-3960. And I want to leave you with this quote from St. Francis de Sales, who said, where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt. Find time today and every day to create peace, to create silence in your mind and build joy in your heart. And if no one has told you today, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful

for you and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.