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this is a really difficult question to ask but it is the best question you can
00:00:05
ask yourself i don't need to tell you who he is because his reputation precedes himself i enjoyed being a monk
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as much as i enjoy understanding media and that's really paradoxical for a lot of people but that's just my truth i've
00:00:19
always wanted to share meditation at scale with the world if you just keep trying to change your
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environment hoping that your life's going to improve you're going to feel dissatisfied at the next place and i feel we're just conditioned to say okay
00:00:31
you don't like your job quit your job you don't like your relationship quit your relationship and i think we just keep saying that it's this external
00:00:37
shell that we're in when it's actually this shell and what's happening inside of it that's defining all of these perspectives i believe that to create
00:00:45
happiness day to day in one year in one month in a week you have to have
00:00:52
quick one can you do me a favor if you're listening to this and hit the subscribe button the follow button wherever you're listening to this
00:00:58
podcast thank you so much jay shetty is a household name all around the world
00:01:04
he is someone that's provided inspiration wisdom and insight to billions of people
00:01:10
using social media i don't need to tell you who he is because his reputation precedes himself
00:01:18
in his early years he was lost becoming a monk helped him to find himself and through service he's gone on to
00:01:24
touch the lives of billions of people through social media but who is he really
00:01:30
who's the guy behind the following me and jay have a connection that i'm yet to experience with pretty much any
00:01:37
guest that sat here with me and i know you're gonna feel that today this is a truly special honest open conversation
00:01:45
between two men about so many things that i genuinely think the world needs
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to hear thank you jay and when i say thank you to jay you're going to understand why
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shortly so without further ado i'm stephen bartlett and this is the director ceo
00:02:01
i hope nobody's listening but if you are then please keep this to yourself
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[Music]
00:02:13
jay first of all you know i usually start this podcast in a much more serious way but it's good to see you back in the uk
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mate it's good to see you and i was just saying this to you offline that i think the first time we met was around three
00:02:25
years ago three or four years ago in new york and i think we have this plan to become best friends
00:02:32
we're like we're going to see each other this this is this and then all of a sudden i moved to l.a yeah and then you
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moved back to london too yeah it's so good to see you man no it's great to be reunited i do feel like we've got so much in common in so many unbelievable
00:02:44
ways but the reason why i was so excited by this conversation is because we've also got so many we've walked a
00:02:49
different path in our lives um and you're such an uh a self-aware sort
00:02:54
of self-analytical human being so the wisdom that i've gained from watching you online over the years is someone that comes from london is from the uk as
00:03:01
well and is speaking to the world through their content and channels i find i found truly inspirational
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so let's get into it so one of the things i always start with with people and i think this comes from my experience with like studying
00:03:12
childhood psychology is trying to understand what it was in their early years that that has led them
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to go on the path they went on and ultimately to be sat here when you look back at those early years in your life
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in growing up in london um what were the formative things that you point at in hindsight and go do you
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know i wouldn't be who i am now a bit of an anomaly if that hadn't happened
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i think one of the biggest things would be that i felt i mediated my parents marriage when i
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was younger and so i was their go-to person for my mom and my dad
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and i have a really good relationship with both of them and loved them both
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and they would come to me with their challenges and their issues and their pain points
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and as i was growing up i felt that i was always trying to reconcile
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discuss converse negotiate for both of them on either side
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and one thing i realized very early on as a young child was i never wanted to take a side i never wanted to
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make one of them win and one of them lose i never saw one of them right and one of them wrong
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i really saw them both as two humans who were trying their best but just like
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me were naturally flawed and fallible and made mistakes
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and i think that gave me a sense of compassion that runs through to today for myself
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and for others and for people that i work with and the people that we communicate through
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the podcast and videos because i just saw very early on in my life that people could mean well
00:04:52
people could try their best people could try to be loving and share kindness
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but they could still feel that things weren't working out for them so i look at that as a massive
00:05:05
moment in my past because now when i look back at it i think i've
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i've just been doing this for so long like i feel like i started doing this when i was probably six seven maybe ten years old
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and so now to be still doing it today it feels like something that was a natural role that i embodied at that
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time and it's now a role that has evolved into looking internally for myself
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also looking at the things that i adopted from that time that were uncomfortable and things that made me question my own
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self-worth and my own meaning of life what were those things i would say that
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for me i realized that we either try to repeat or avoid
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what we saw in our childhood and that happens either unconsciously or consciously so you could be
00:05:57
unconsciously repeating what you saw in your childhood or you could be consciously avoiding it
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and i found that there were parts of me that were really great at avoiding some of the negative things
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but there were also subconscious parts of me that adopted some of those behavior traits that i only discovered
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in the last two years and so i'll give you an example with my wife i sometimes played the role
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of sacrificing and over giving but then expecting her to give the same
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amount back now the way i see sacrifice now is that if you sacrifice something for
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someone and then you want it back it's not a sacrifice it's a transaction
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you can't give someone a discount and then ask them to pay full price and then say it was a sacrifice because
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it wasn't it was a transaction and i saw that in my life because of the way i'd received loved from extended
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families or love from school or teachers or whatever it may have been i was loved in that way where i was
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loved but then made to feel guilty if i didn't repay it in full and i saw myself
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adopting that in my own loving relationships with my wife with my family with my sister and i literally
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only spotted that two years ago wow and i thought to myself this has to stop i
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can't repeat this cycle what is the work you do to spot those to illuminate some of those kind of
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subconscious behavior patterns that because we all have them going on in the back room of our lives and our minds we have our
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childhood the lessons we learn and the limiting beliefs we learn almost acting as the puppet master of
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our adult lives and so how does one become get to a point where they can spot that and go do you know what that
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comes from that what is there an exercise you've done is that you know tell me i think the first thing is that
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when you experience conflict with someone or you experience a disagreement or a disconnect with someone
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our society version is blame them it's their fault they upset you they're wrong and
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our friends will agree with that when you go and tell your friend that so and so did something they'll say oh yeah
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well you know he or she is a xyz xyz sorry uh xyz
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the the the american spelling to his time in america uh the the xyz of their so and so they're like this they're like
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that and actually in that moment i think the best thing we can do is
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what's my accountability in this what part of this have i created for
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myself this is a really uncomfortable difficult question to ask but it is the best
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question you can ask yourself if every time something goes wrong or something doesn't work out
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instead of blaming someone else or blaming yourself if you can pause
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and say what part of this am i responsible for and i think the
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reason why that's difficult is because we see everything as binary we see it as it's either their fault or it's all my
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fault it's all your fault or it's all my fault and the truth is there is no all
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it's all parts it's partly your fault and it's partly my fault but if i don't
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understand what my part to play is then i can't actually understand it so
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the first step is what's my part that's the first part of the exercise the second part of the exercise is now
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that i know what my part is let me focus on what skill i'm missing let me focus on what growth i haven't
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had let me focus on what part of my life feels incomplete that makes me act in my
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incomplete way with others so what part of me is missing and i found that when i
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was over sacrificing or over giving that's because i was trying to demand love from someone else and demand
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validation from someone else so i was almost trying to achieve or earn that love and validation
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and so i realized i wasn't giving it to myself and so now i've realized that whatever
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you want from someone else give it to yourself first if you want compliments from someone else give them
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to yourself first if you want validation from someone else give it to yourself first because no matter how many of them
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they give you if you never gave it to yourself in the first place it will never be enough so that's the
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second step whatever you want from someone else give it to yourself first and the third step i'd say to get to that self-awareness
00:10:29
is simply sitting down and plotting the three most difficult times in your life
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so sit down and write down what have been the three most difficult times in my life for the most
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painful decision making points of transition in my life
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and then ask yourself when you made good decisions what was the environment like
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who were you listening to what were people saying around you and when you made poor decisions what
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was the environment like what were people saying who were you listening to and you'll start to spot a pattern and i
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found that in my life anytime i make a good decision most people disagree with me
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i have to listen to my inner voice and i'm usually doing something against the grain now that's my pattern but everyone
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has to find their own you've reached a point of self-awareness where you can literally pinpoint the steps of doing that and obviously your
00:11:24
coaching and all the work you do has um has exacerbated that extremely is there like a practical day-to-day habit you've
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installed in your life to be able to look back at how jay's behaving on like is it a notepad is it voice notes in
00:11:39
your phone is it meditation what is the the day-to-day practice that's got you to this point
00:11:45
so i would say that over time i've done journaling i love voice notes because i like speaking sometimes more than
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writing but i'd say the biggest one if i'm completely honest with you stephen like sitting here with you and you're
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looking in my eyes asking me that question i'm like the honest answer is i talk to myself a lot while driving
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i talk out loud to myself a lot and i will sit there while i'm driving and i
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will talk through that day about a situation where i didn't like
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how i behaved or a situation where i was really happy about how i behaved and so i'll pinpoint and i always think it's
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really powerful to pinpoint a point where you were below your expectation and a point
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where you were above your expectation and i'll sit there and ask myself why was it that i was above my
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expectation why did i have the ability in that moment to act in that way
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i'll give an example of where i was below my expectation the other day i was going to play tennis with a friend
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in the morning and i was running late because i woke up i was figuring things out that
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morning i had a few work emails from the night before i'm eight hours ahead of la right now so i had things to catch up on
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i'm running late to play tennis we've got the court booked and it's only booked for an hour so we might be late
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something really insignificant by the way i turn up and
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i meet the lady at the front and they haven't been able to give me a membership card because i'm only here for 10 days and then i'm like here's my
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membership number and and they can't figure it out and they don't know if i'm in the system and now we're getting later for the court
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and i'm holding my own and i'm on the verge of just being like get on with it like can't we
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this is not that complicated and i resist from that
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but in my head i'm thinking why did that even happen like why am i even feeling the urge to put a simple person trying
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to do their job why am i thinking to release my anger and anguish onto them
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and when i thought about that later that day it was all because i was late i was frustrated that my friend's gonna be
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upset that we're 30 minutes late for the court i was upset that we're going to get even less time and i was about to
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take it out on an innocent person who actually has nothing to do with any of it who's trying to do their job and so
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for me talking out loud when i'm on my own
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spending time actually now when i'm answering a question spending time alone
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is the only place where you get to have these conversations and most of us are spending time away
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from being alone because we're scared of having these conversations i'm sure you've seen they did that study
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where they asked men and women whether they either wanted to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes
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or give themselves an electric shock now the results will surprise you
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30 percent of women gave themselves an electric shock and 60 of men gave themselves an
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electric shark and the reason was because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes we
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struggle so much with the idea of being present in our own minds and
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bodies and hearts that we distract ourselves so really the habit
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is being present with myself with my thoughts and working through
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when i'm happy with myself and when i think i could have done better you know i really
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can relate to that point about um not wanting to be alone with with your
00:15:17
thoughts not from my own experiences but because i've got friends around me specifically over the last year when we've been in this lockdown who have
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really struggled and even over the christmas period i've got a couple of friends who really really struggle because they are alone with their
00:15:29
thoughts and you've spoken there to the value of sitting alone with your thoughts and silence and self-contemplation but what is it
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in the human in a human that makes them not want to be alone with their thoughts why for
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some are their thoughts so such an unpleasant place to be
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i think it's because we've equated loneliness
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and being alone with abandonment
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and those are two completely different ideas you can be lonely but that doesn't mean
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you've been abandoned and we confuse this so much paul tillich
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writes about this and he says that the challenge today is that we think
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that there's only one word for being alone and we call it
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loneliness and he says we've forgotten about a second word it's called solitude
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solitude and loneliness externally look the same but they're completely different things
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and he says that solitude is the strength of being alone and loneliness is the weakness and to me it's because
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being alone feels like abandonment it feels like everyone has left us it feels like we're alone at the end of the party
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and no one's gonna stay we've created a feeling of being enamored
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and being forced to admire being together my other half
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my better half the person who completes me it's like all of this language
00:17:05
is phrased in a way to make you feel half and incomplete
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when someone came to school and they didn't have someone to sit next to them that person was considered the loner
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if you had a birthday party and no one showed up you were considered unpopular
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all of our self-worth since we were young has been defined by do you have
00:17:27
people around you not the quality of those people not the depth of those people not how much those people
00:17:34
actually love you just did you have people around you and so we've just been conditioned to
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believe that being alone means being lonely means being abandoned
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when actually being in solitude could be the most beautiful thing we could do so it's just
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as a society we've got to unlearn that conditioning that's made us forcefully believe
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that if you don't have someone else if you turn up to a wedding and you don't have a plus one yeah that's like one of
00:18:03
the most stressful things for people i don't know who i'm gonna take why is it that prom if you don't have a
00:18:10
date every single major life event graduating weddings they're all based around having
00:18:17
someone else there to celebrate you why like why why why can't we just
00:18:23
celebrate ourselves and i think that's where we've lost it we've lost the idea of celebrating ourselves do you think that i was just
00:18:30
thinking that thinking that through and i was thinking you know if 10 000 years ago on the in the tribes of africa if i
00:18:35
was without if i was without a tribe i would have been um from a reproductive standpoint less
00:18:41
attractive no woman would want to have been with me because a tribe speaks to the resources i can provide in bringing
00:18:47
up a you know a baby for our family but also you know i would have been in great danger my social status would have
00:18:53
decayed and typically they see this in tribes i think in monkeys where if you if you fall out of the tribe eventually
00:18:58
you get sick or die um so do you think that's a prehistoric part of our conditioning or is it like a
00:19:04
social new age social um construct i think prehistorically it
00:19:10
makes sense but i think the social construct has been that equating
00:19:16
solitude or loneliness with isolation seclusion and separation
00:19:21
and i think we confused the two ideas spending time every day in solitude is not me saying to you
00:19:28
don't talk to anyone all year you're not good enough right yeah and it's not like me saying spending some time talking to yourself
00:19:34
and being alone with your thoughts means never go to a party or an event like i think i just think we've got really poor
00:19:40
as humans as entertaining two ideas that are supposedly conflicting but
00:19:47
recognizing that there's a middle ground like we're poor at saying okay well jay and steven aren't saying be alone or be
00:19:54
surrounded by people we're saying spend some time alone and be intentional about who you spend your time with and for
00:20:00
some reason the human mind goes no no i think you're telling me that i have to go live in a forest and be away from everyone but that's not really what
00:20:06
solitude is solitude is i am comfortable spending time with myself for a few
00:20:12
moments a day enjoying my own company and speaking of spending time with people then so one of the concepts you
00:20:18
write a lot about is this kind of 75 rule um people often discuss the importance of
00:20:24
the company you keep whether it's their wisdom their attitude their positivity their optimism whatever and the effect
00:20:30
that can have on you as a human being what have you done in your life and also what is the importance from what you've
00:20:36
experienced of surrounding yourself with people that have good values that are equally ambitious
00:20:41
that share a sort of similarities as it relates to who you want to become is it important does it matter i i think
00:20:48
one of the biggest mistakes i've made and i think we make as humans
00:20:54
is we often look for divinity in humanity you're looking for that divine person
00:21:01
that has all the answers and that is infallible and perfect
00:21:07
and when you seek divinity in humanity you're left with
00:21:13
insecurity and anxiety because no one fulfills that divine
00:21:18
search and so for me what i really had to understand is i went down that road
00:21:23
and felt like i was let down and felt like people made me feel unworthy or unequipped was
00:21:30
i recognized that there were four pillars of relationships and they are care
00:21:36
competence consistency and character every single person in your life
00:21:43
is going to be able to give you or should be able to give you at least one of these four characteristics
00:21:50
very rarely if ever will one person give you all four
00:21:55
and if you're lucky you might have a few people in your life that give you two or three so let's talk about each of them
00:22:00
care my mom there is no one in the world who cares for me more than my mom she would
00:22:06
do anything for me she'd be there for me all she wants to make sure it doesn't matter what i've achieved or what i've
00:22:12
done if she picks up the phone to me her first question is have you eaten what did you eat
00:22:18
uh are you safe are you healthy right like that's all she cares about now my mom isn't the person that i go to
00:22:25
for business advice or she's not the person i'm saying hypothetically that i go to for social
00:22:31
media advice that's not her competence but she doesn't need to be she cares for me and that's what i get from her
00:22:38
now let's go to competence if i'm thinking about starting a business
00:22:43
new dragon over here right like you'd be a great friend to call up you're someone who understands
00:22:49
what it takes to get investors scale a business build teams manage internationally grow scale sell like you
00:22:56
have that journey and you have that network you have that career i'd also care about you i know you also care
00:23:02
about me so i've got two out of four in you and you've got good character you don't have the consistency though because we don't see each other enough
00:23:08
so so three out of four 35 yeah 75 percent and so for that for me is that perfect
00:23:14
example of there's competence there and there is care there which is wonderful and there's character there i believe you're someone of good character and
00:23:20
that's the next one character there are some people in our life that hold us to higher values
00:23:25
they help us grow with greater integrity they help us see things beyond what we're chasing they make us look beyond
00:23:32
our desires and make us recognize that there's so much more to life and those people are massively important
00:23:39
and those people may not be the people we see every week they may not be the people we see every day they may not be the people that we call up but you need
00:23:46
them as your compass the people with character are your compass and then finally you have the people
00:23:51
that are consistent you have some mates that you just know are always going to
00:23:56
pick up the phone you know that if you need to move house you've got a family emergency you know
00:24:01
which friend you call they may not be the competent business advisor they may care about you but they don't
00:24:07
care about you as deeply as your mom does but they are consistently always there for you
00:24:13
and that's beautiful but the problem is when we look at our consistent friend we think why are you not competent we look
00:24:19
at our competent friend we think why don't you have good character we look at our character friend and say well why aren't you always there and so we're
00:24:26
always looking for which c they don't have rather than appreciating for them for exactly what they bring to our life
00:24:33
you know i met your wonderful wife yeah you did yeah yeah honestly
00:24:38
in a room full of hundreds and hundreds of people if there was a light like if she felt like a physical like a
00:24:44
light in the room just her energy was just unbelievable and it's it's
00:24:50
remarkable because she she felt so much like you in so many ways i'm guessing when you're talking about that third
00:24:56
point about character and values and showing you things in life that are beyond what you might have thought in
00:25:01
the meaning of life i'm i'm you know from my own 10-minute you know conversation with her i feel like she
00:25:06
must be in that category right yeah right i always used to say to people like so people become friends with me
00:25:13
and i hope they like me and then i introduce them to my wife and then i never hear from them again so she steals
00:25:19
all my friends and i'm i'm not even just saying that like that's genuinely true she has stolen every single one of my
00:25:25
friends as soon as they meet not surprised i can't but yeah she's just i don't know how and
00:25:31
it's it's been interesting because my wife has taught me so much more about me
00:25:37
and life than i ever thought a partner could and it's because
00:25:44
as my so my wife and i've been together since before my external career took off
00:25:50
and so she was with me when i had no money no job she
00:25:55
introduced me to her family when i had no money no job i met her parents i met her extended family i had no career plan
00:26:03
so i've been with her for around eight years now and far far before everything kind of took
00:26:09
off externally and what was really really phenomenal was as
00:26:14
my life took off externally i started to develop this need for
00:26:20
validation from her for what i was achieving so if i'd get a big deal
00:26:26
i'd be like look what i did like look what i did like isn't this amazing and she wouldn't be impressed by it
00:26:33
and then if i did something and it went viral i'd be oh look at this look at this like look how cool this is like isn't this amazing
00:26:39
and she wasn't impressed by it and then if i was on the front cover or magazine or something i'd be like oh look how cool this is like look look at this
00:26:46
and she wouldn't admire it and for a long time i started to think did i marry the wrong person
00:26:53
and i was thinking to myself did i am i with the wrong person because i know plenty of people who are telling me that
00:26:59
that cover's amazing and that video is amazing and that podcast is amazing and that person's amazing like am i like am i not worthy of respect
00:27:08
and i realized as i and i reflected on that as i said earlier i was like what part of this am
00:27:13
i accountable for and the answer was really simple
00:27:19
my life my wife loved me for everything that came before that
00:27:25
she loves me despite all of that if all of that was to go away tomorrow she'd still love me
00:27:31
and i was like isn't that the most beautiful thing like isn't that what we all want isn't that what we're truly craving is that we
00:27:39
are loved beyond our appearance our achievements our ambitions
00:27:44
and our goals and i had that but i wasn't seeing that because i wanted to be loved for my
00:27:50
ambitions my achievements my goals and so yes when you talk about my wife being a light she's one of those people for
00:27:56
sure because she's been my guide my coach my teacher without even knowing if you asked her this question
00:28:02
she she wouldn't say that she was doing it intentionally but she's been such a great teacher in light
00:28:08
in my life in so many ways and so i'm always just trying to anytime she annoys me i'm like there's a
00:28:14
lesson in this for me and and there's going to be something really profound in this for me because she's she's she's cut from a different
00:28:22
class she's she's remarkable i don't even know how she's like her parents her parents are incredible and you know
00:28:27
they've they've given her a lot of love and so i see that kind of flow through her it's so funny i burst out laughing
00:28:33
then because it reminds me a lot of my girlfriend and i i've said this on this podcast a lot and it's i've never actually
00:28:38
realized the kind of fundamental truth in um what you
00:28:44
said there but whenever i talk about my girlfriend i say she doesn't really care when i if i'm
00:28:50
number one in the charts or if i'm number one here or that the reaction i get from her versus other people like my
00:28:55
boys is kind of a bit more mute yeah i think maybe she just doesn't care about my you know my like prefer but
00:29:02
you've what you've highlighted there is in fact that is somebody that values something else yes in you so my
00:29:09
girlfriend would be very very happy and very very impressed with me doing a bunch of other things that would maybe a
00:29:14
bit more pure in their values she would celebrate those things it's not like she's not celebrating me it's just i
00:29:20
don't get the euphoria from the like number one in the podcast chart yes and it's a question of values and in fact as
00:29:26
you say that's what we should all be looking for yes but society has taught me that you clap when you get big numbers
00:29:33
on stuff or you go number one or the bank balance is big yeah so that's so interesting it's probably
00:29:39
i guess someone's going to draw the conclusion from that they're going to look at their partner who's been clapping because they've got like a promotion at work and they're going to
00:29:45
go you've got bad values and not at all we should we should we should be supportive partners about
00:29:52
everything that our partners do but it is beautiful that you get an opportunity to learn about
00:29:57
your partner's values by what they value in your own success and that doesn't mean that like you just
00:30:03
said like your girlfriend or my wife is not happy when something goes number one or does great of course they're happy
00:30:09
but there's something deeper than that that makes them happier yeah exactly and i think that's really special and that's
00:30:14
that character in that light do you want to drink yes please what is this
00:30:19
i know what huel is but i didn't i've never had this before is this vegan yes oh amazing all right
00:30:25
yeah i'll try this vegan gluten-free it's like a yeah all your nutritionally
00:30:30
complicatedness this this tastes so good you like it yeah it's rich it's really good for you it really is good for you
00:30:35
and when i say when i say that how much sugar does it have in it i don't believe it has sugar i think it has sucrose or
00:30:40
whatever the replacement is it's too good to feel healthy well you know they could have made it taste like nesquik
00:30:46
and they i've been in the boardroom with them and they just refuse they refuse to compromise on the the goodness
00:30:52
call all right whenever you're ready when i was reading through your story and from what i've observed with your
00:30:58
story there was um some really interesting similarities that really reminded me of mine but um i feel
00:31:05
like are an exception and it's it's you and you know what you said it before we started talking
00:31:10
you said um we were talking about various business things and business decisions you've made
00:31:17
and also you we were talking about you moving to l.a after just going there with your wife
00:31:22
for a week and you said well it just felt like the right thing to do we were there for one week and it felt like the right thing to
00:31:28
do so although you were leaving new york where you had all of this stuff and you were starting to build um your presence
00:31:33
there you used your your compass became how you felt and when i looked through your
00:31:40
your history from your very very early days from a teenager to school to university to
00:31:46
going off and becoming a monk to getting a job at accenture then pick getting picked up by ariana huffington
00:31:52
at huffington post and quitting after six months because you're doing this other thing you are a remarkable quitter
00:31:59
and you seem to be one that's guided by this compass of how does this feel not what will people think
00:32:05
talk to me about that and is that observation accurate it's such a hard way to live in one
00:32:10
sense and such an easy way to live in one step that observation i i never put it in those words but i love those words and
00:32:18
i've heard you talk about that before about being a good quitter and i love that i i i think what you're saying is true i
00:32:25
i agree with you i've never articulated in the way you just did but it feels so true
00:32:31
i from a very young age just felt there was this strong inner voice and i
00:32:39
believe everyone has it this isn't me being religious or spiritual or woo-woo this is me saying that there is a voice
00:32:46
that we all hear in our minds in our hearts in our heads wherever you want to say it is it's there
00:32:52
and the challenge that happens is in our early years you're told to tell it to be
00:32:58
quiet so every time that voice says well maybe no no no no just just do what
00:33:03
they're saying do what they're told get on that conveyor belt get on that assembly line
00:33:09
stick that bar code on your back become a machine go be a robot and and it's almost programmed and so that voice that
00:33:17
is not machine like that voice is the human inside of us is being trained to be a machine
00:33:23
and so we start treating ourselves like machines and machines you just program them and
00:33:28
then press enter and then it gives you what it wants but we don't function that way we're a conversation in the universe
00:33:35
we're not a program and so if you're a conversation and you're an interaction
00:33:41
you're dynamic that inner voice becomes so squashed that now by the time we're 20 30 40 50
00:33:49
60 70 whatever age you are you can't hear it anymore so you say oh that's some spiritual mumbo-jumbo stuff because
00:33:55
i don't hear that voice but that's just because we quietened it so for me
00:34:00
even till this day and by the way i have more things trying to quiet that voice today i had a
00:34:07
conversation with my team recently i was talking about a few new things i wanted to try out this year and a lot of
00:34:13
people said to me they said jay don't you think that's a risk to the brand you've created don't you think that's a risk to who you are and i said well i
00:34:21
haven't worked this hard to not do what i truly want like i haven't got this far
00:34:26
by being someone else i've got this far by being true to myself so i can only continue to do that and so
00:34:34
yes there are things that i do that are slightly unconventional for people who've been monks in the past there are
00:34:39
certain ways that i live my life and there are certain things that i enjoy and i always say this i enjoy being a
00:34:44
monk as much as i enjoy understanding media and that's really paradoxical for a lot
00:34:50
of people but that's just my truth i enjoy building a business and learning about what it takes
00:34:56
as much as i learned trying to understand how to meditate deeper and go internal i under i enjoy and appreciate
00:35:03
what i gain from all these pursuits and i see them as being this beautiful
00:35:11
you know beautiful symbiotic synergetic combination of learning and life and experience but the
00:35:17
problem is our mind has said no those things are paradoxical that's an oxymoron you can't connect those two things those two things are
00:35:24
unconnectable and i'm like well steve jobs said that creativity is connecting things and
00:35:30
connected thinkers will rule the future so if we can't spot connections in
00:35:36
anomalies then i think we actually sell ourselves short and so when you say being a
00:35:42
remarkable quitter i see that as me saying i only have trained myself to know that i can
00:35:48
only do what i really feel like doing with the awareness that this could be a risk
00:35:54
but i'm okay with that does that answer your question yeah and you know you you brought up another point now which i think is is
00:35:59
equally this sounds a bit like a pun but equally connected which is you know society will give you a label
00:36:04
they'll say okay you're a monk so act like and behave like a monk we know what monks are here's the instruction manual
00:36:10
of being a monk and if you do anything other than the instruction manual there then they'll say contradiction yeah
00:36:15
they'll say you're a monk how do you live in laj yes you have a you have a nice home you make money
00:36:21
and then and so what is what is it about these labels that we give people and then we society then tries to enforce
00:36:27
and if you step outside of the implicit instructions of the box that we've labeled you in we go fraud yeah yeah
00:36:33
what is that there's a really good meme on social media that i've seen fly about for years and it says society says
00:36:42
be yourself and then it says no not like that and i don't know who invented it but
00:36:49
it's been out there in in the meme world for years and i love it because i'm like that's exactly it and i the way you just
00:36:54
explained what you said i've actually never heard it said better than that so you've just explained in 30 seconds i've been trying to round about for the past
00:37:01
three minutes uh but but that's exactly it that we want to label people we want to label things we want to label
00:37:08
everyone now let's take the rock dwayne the rock johnson we lay we could label him a wrestler
00:37:15
but that wrestler is one of the biggest actors in the world today and forget actors he's a brand beyond that
00:37:21
now if we labeled him as a wrestler and said no no you just have to stay a wrestler you never get to see this if
00:37:26
you look at steve jobs well you started by making computers you're a computer maker so just make computers why are you
00:37:32
inventing itunes why are you inventing the phone now i think it gets harder when it gets to things that are
00:37:39
spiritually intertwined and i grew up with a belief for a long time that if you were truly spiritual
00:37:46
you had to be poor you had to have nothing you had to be completely detached and disconnected
00:37:53
and i found that that's a worthy pursuit and has some beautiful rewards at the end of it as a journey
00:38:00
but i also saw having lived that life as a monk that there were certain areas of
00:38:05
impact certain conversations that we never got to be a part of there were certain things in mainstream society
00:38:12
that we never got to shift and that's something that called out to my heart personally
00:38:17
where i felt well what if mental health was mainstream that that was a mainstream conversation that everyone in
00:38:24
the world had access to the tools to help themselves for free through podcasting through interviews through
00:38:30
books through videos through content what if everyone in the world had access to what i have access to as a monk
00:38:37
but what does that need that needs staff it needs employees it needs eight cameras it needs a microphone it needs
00:38:44
people it needs teams it needs a business so what looks like a business on the outside is just purpose on the inside
00:38:52
but we're so schooled and trained to judge things for
00:38:57
what they externally look like not what they internally are that we don't give ourselves that
00:39:03
expansive abundant mindset to say well maybe this could be more now i'm not saying that i don't have imperfections
00:39:09
and i'm not saying that i don't love things as well like i i like nice things
00:39:14
i like nice clothes i like fashion i like uh i like living in a nice space so i
00:39:21
like i like nice things that i would never shy away from that but i'm also fully aware that i don't
00:39:27
depend on my happiness on those things i'm not putting what i believe is going to make me joyful on those things but i
00:39:33
appreciate having them but i've also appreciated life when i didn't have them so they've never defined whether i've
00:39:39
worked hard or worked on my purpose if that makes sense 100 you know there's two times in this conversation where
00:39:45
you've made points where where the kind of conclusion that my head has arrived at is we have to meet in the middle if
00:39:50
we're going to make progress the first time you did that was when you were talking about um having like an argument
00:39:55
with with a wife or a partner or whatever it might be and you've got to actually like meet in the middle and say this is maybe where i can improve and
00:40:01
maybe this is where you know use step to file and then you said it again there with um with the example of spirituality
00:40:07
and probably like the business world they're seen as polar opposites one is all about you know maybe a less a
00:40:14
less of a desire for material possession and attainment and climbing and capitalism and the other is the
00:40:19
the definition of it and you're saying well really if we are to spread the message of spirituality around the world
00:40:25
we're going to need to learn a little bit from the other side about building and scaling and and i just think that phrase the truth
00:40:32
is in the middle has haunted me for the last couple of weeks since i came back from indonesia because um it seems to be the nature of
00:40:39
everything and we're actually moving away from that as a polarized society black white police the people rich poor you know and
00:40:45
woman exactly and and it's beautiful you said that actually because the buddha always talked about the middle path
00:40:52
so he called it the middle path interesting for that reason from what you just said that it was always about
00:40:57
the middle path that the answer was somewhere i interviewed kristen bell recently and she wrote a book called why
00:41:03
the world needs more purple people and that's because of the red and blue states so the idea of this idea of like
00:41:09
meeting in the middle that there's some answers that you only come across if you can
00:41:14
entertain this idea and this idea and look for the connection and what i love
00:41:20
is that for everything we're talking about someone's thought about it and talked about it before
00:41:26
and when i think of someone who defined what we're talking about really well and this is
00:41:31
a quote a thought that an insight that i try and live my life by and it's from martin luther king
00:41:37
and he said that the people that love peace need to learn to organize themselves
00:41:43
as well as the people who love war and to me that's what's been missing so
00:41:48
for so long in spirituality and wellness and health is that we can speak about
00:41:54
these things in this really organic beautiful way but if it doesn't get organized and if
00:42:00
it doesn't get strategic and it doesn't get focused it just kind of feels like splattered
00:42:06
paint and it doesn't allow people to practically apply it in their life so sometimes when people say jay what
00:42:12
you're saying is so simple it's so basic i'm like yeah i'm choosing to do that
00:42:17
because that's what we all need like don't we all need to make this really simple and
00:42:22
easy and practical i know that's what i need and by the way i love getting caught up in a heady intellectual conversation and i've studied the vedas
00:42:29
that are five thousand years old and i can reel off verses and talk about philosophical intricacies but
00:42:35
i don't think that's going to help people at this stage and that doesn't help me when i started so for me i like
00:42:42
to focus in on how can we get focused around powerful simple ideas
00:42:47
and a powerful simple idea that loads of my guests come here and talk about and it's interesting that they do because they are incredibly successful people
00:42:53
typically um is this idea of meditation and the power of meditation now i've
00:42:58
heard this word meditation for many a year and increasingly over time i've become more compelled by it and started
00:43:04
doing it thanks a lot to my girlfriend as well um so and you write about it a lot in your
00:43:10
book i mean a couple of the chapters mentioned i mean pretty much several of the chapters mention the power of meditation
00:43:16
talk to me about this simple idea of meditation and what the impact has been for you and can be for those listening
00:43:23
so in the book i present three different types of meditation
00:43:29
that i was trained in as a monk and that i was exposed to and they are breath work
00:43:35
visualization and mantra so if you look at all types of meditations that exist today in the world there are three tools
00:43:41
or three formats in which you can do it breath work obviously naturally it says in the name it's all about your
00:43:48
breathing and breath work is generally aimed at body and physical so if you're having
00:43:53
physical anxiety physical stress if you're rushing around your heart rate's gone up breath work is a beautiful way
00:43:59
to come back into alignment now visualization is really interesting because visualization is used by
00:44:04
everyone from lewis hamilton when he's driving his car around a track through to david beckham before he took a free
00:44:10
kick visualization was the art of sitting in one place closing your eyes
00:44:16
and visualizing what's that track going to look like what's that turn going to feel like
00:44:22
how's that ball going to move it's visualizing the process not the result and that's what's fascinating
00:44:27
western society has made it all about visualizing the result visualize yourself at the top of the podium and
00:44:33
the goal the smartest people in the world are visualizing the process and the work and the journey
00:44:38
and that's where manifestations gone wrong we can get back to that and then finally mantra or sound
00:44:43
so the oldest text on meditation believe that sound has the power to transport
00:44:51
and connect us in a way that no other type of meditation can now we can we all
00:44:56
have experience of this when you hear a song from your past you're taken back there immediately
00:45:03
when you hear a song that has maybe some ego in it or there's a song that you
00:45:09
that you listen to on your way to a party or a nightclub because it pumps you up and it makes you feel good there are songs that make you feel violent
00:45:17
sound has the ability to wake you up in the morning you don't wake up by sight you don't wake up by scent you don't
00:45:24
wake up by taste you wake up by sound sound has the power to awaken deeper
00:45:29
parts of us depending on what level it's at so when you look at meditation you have breath work you have visualization
00:45:35
you have sound you can try a mix you can try one or the other ultimately for me
00:45:42
meditation is an opportunity to build a relationship with yourself that's truly
00:45:47
what it is to build your relationship with your body with your mind with your heart and with your consciousness and as
00:45:54
you continue to meditate through breath work through visualization through mantra and sound
00:46:00
that's all that's doing it's just deepening your relationship with yourself it's almost like saying oh when i'm with my girlfriend or my wife what
00:46:06
do i do oh there's few activities and experiences that you do you go out for dinner you watch a movie you go for a
00:46:12
walk okay well what do i do on my own well when i meditate on my own i get to know myself better and that's the
00:46:17
beginning of what meditation is but the greatest benefits of meditation come from using the right tool for the right
00:46:25
part of your life so before i'm coming on a podcast like this or going on stage if i'm feeling nervous or my heart
00:46:31
rate's going up i've recognized that that's because i care it's because i really really care what i'm about to do
00:46:37
and i want to be of service to others i want what i say to help someone i want what i say to hopefully start someone's
00:46:45
meditation journey potentially and if that's the case then i need to be aligned so i'll practice breath work
00:46:52
i'll breathe in for four and out for four this simple practice just brings me back into alignment
00:46:58
see stephen we all have this experience how many times have you ever woken up and you feel your mind is ahead of your
00:47:05
body every day your body wants to go to bed and your mind is racing yeah or you
00:47:10
experience the opposite your body is racing and your mind is still in bed
00:47:17
so most of our stress and tension in life comes from a lack of alignment in our body and our mind our
00:47:24
body's racing 100 miles per hour and our mind is slow or our mind's racing 100 miles per hour and our bodies slow
00:47:30
to bring them back into alignment you breathe in for the same amount of time as you breathe out simply doing that brings you back into
00:47:37
alignment visualization i use for when i think i'm about to start a difficult
00:47:42
journey and i think i may lose a bit of patience or i feel like i really need to
00:47:48
practice this imagine this as i'm about to go on stage doing something that's really big deal and important for me i'm
00:47:53
going to visualize myself pacing back and forth on stage i'm going to visualize myself communicating that
00:47:59
message i'm going to visualize myself being really energetic on stage notice i'm not visualizing people
00:48:05
clapping i'm not visualizing people saying that was amazing because that's just setting a false expectation i'm
00:48:11
visualizing my performance being the best that it possibly can and the mantra and sound which is a big part of my
00:48:18
meditation every day i do to connect with my deeper self i do to awaken parts of me that are forgotten and
00:48:24
to feel a connection to a higher power in the divine there's so many people listening right and you said that so
00:48:30
beautifully and eloquently um who i imagine listen to me doing these podcasts and they may be tuned in
00:48:35
because they wanted a business podcast and they go here go steve again talking about meditation or whatever and the the
00:48:41
react that reaction is probably caused by the i don't know
00:48:46
the historic kind of snobbery that surrounds spirituality it can be quite a exclusive club right and the terminology
00:48:54
can feel very exclusive to normal people and chakras and all of this stuff in alignment it can and when words like
00:49:01
that are said to some people who are who aren't near the middle who are very much at the other end of the spectrum they
00:49:07
just turn off to it so if i was just be someone who's listening to this now driving in my van on my way to work this
00:49:13
morning and i see a lot of people in their vans driving listening to the podcast um what would you say is a really good just a first step to to
00:49:20
investigate for themselves subjectively if um meditation can can
00:49:26
add value to their life where would they start yeah i would say that the first thing you want to do
00:49:31
is put something in your schedule in your calendar which is time for you if you look at your schedule you would
00:49:38
never cancel an important meeting with someone else but we don't even schedule one with ourselves there is nothing in
00:49:44
the calendar that time with myself time for me time for you time for just this this whole thing that's going on
00:49:51
right now literally put it in for five minutes a day it's kind of five minutes do it for two minutes a day just put it
00:49:56
in there because if you start putting that in there you might then tomorrow go okay well what am i going to do at this time i've got five minutes wow okay what
00:50:03
am i going to do with it so start putting it in there that's the first step the second step i would say is
00:50:08
definitely focus on your breath i think the breath is just something we can all relate to it's tangible by the way
00:50:14
athletes have to learn how to control their breath musicians have to learn how to control their breath whether you're
00:50:19
adele or whether you're a football player you have to learn how to breathe in order to perform me you and everyone
00:50:26
we're all athletes in different ways we all use our bodies we all use our minds whether you're a business person or
00:50:32
whether you're an actual athlete playing on a on a court or a pitch but he's saying that i don't know how to breathe
00:50:37
i am saying you don't know how to breathe yeah and not you specifically i'm saying that most people don't know how to breathe and i didn't know how to
00:50:43
breathe until i was taught how to breathe and i know that sounds ridiculous but how many times a day do
00:50:48
you get out of breath i know there's times of days that i get out of breath how many times of the day do you feel that when you're
00:50:54
experiencing an emotion your breath changes like when you're crying or you're sad or
00:51:00
you're upset your breath changes when you're happy and elated your breath changes so our breath is connected to
00:51:06
every single emotion so if we want to navigate our emotions and our life we have to train our breath
00:51:13
so i would just say to everyone take out two to three minutes and just take a moment to breathe in and out and breathe
00:51:19
in for four and out for four just try it as simply as that now if you're someone who struggles to get to sleep which can
00:51:24
often be something that i think everyone struggles with that's when you want to breathe out for longer than you breathe in so if you're breathing in for four
00:51:31
breathe out for more than four to relax and rest your body and if you're one of these people that goes jay i've got you
00:51:37
know i've got like you said i've got to do a delivery today i've got to run to this meeting i've got to get to this and you need more energy
00:51:43
breathe out for less time than you breathe in so you may breathe in for a second and breathe out for a millisecond
00:51:49
it's a really sharp breath out and if you do that you'll feel this pumping energy in your body and so to me it's
00:51:54
these are really practical tools that i think we all need to sleep so everyone knows their meditation for sleep we all need to get energized so that's a simple
00:52:01
meditation to energize and we all need to just feel like we're not rushing yeah so i think those are hopefully quick
00:52:07
things that feel practical to anyone and everyone yeah i mean i'm i think my natural position on things is to be a
00:52:13
little bit of a skeptic and i when i was in indonesia the last time i my girlfriend brought me to see a breath
00:52:19
work coach and before we did the breath work he explained it to me and so this is this is as a logical guy like i am
00:52:26
the explanation matters a lot yeah and he was talking to me about um how we pretty much live most of our lives these
00:52:32
days because of the over stimulation because of the stress because of the screens in this kind of like permanent state of fight or flight and when you
00:52:39
look at what happens in fight or flight and i studied biology i know what happens to the body um and anatomically
00:52:44
and physically what happens to your digestive tract and i mean this is what a lot of people say
00:52:49
when they say i'm nervous and they've lost their appetite that's your body preparing and keeping
00:52:55
the minerals and nutrients it needs to expend energy to help you in a situation on the serengeti when a lion is running
00:53:01
at you that's a very prehistoric innate part of our conditioning and we do live on edge
00:53:06
our notifications run our lives and all of these things so when we think about why people might be getting a little bit more anxious day-to-day
00:53:13
it's probably because we're living in like a heightened state or fight or flight and one of the things that happens in fight or flight as well is
00:53:18
your breathing changes so yeah and then i think about the moments where i'm feeling a little bit stressed and one
00:53:24
thing i've done and i might find it so funny my head went straight to new york city as i'll go i'll stop and i'll just
00:53:29
go and whenever i do that someone turns to me and goes are you okay
00:53:36
okay i'm fine i'm just like i am now yeah yeah yeah yeah but no i completely agree and i think it's one of those things that i
00:53:42
think everybody's listening regardless of who you are or how much of a tough guy you are you should um definitely you're a tough guy stephen
00:53:49
so you know well not really no not really i'm a bit soft okay you know around the edges this let's talk a little bit about fear
00:53:55
then because we talked about that there in your book in chapter three you you talk about
00:54:00
there being good fear and bad fear how can fear be a good thing
00:54:06
i realized that fear could be healthy or unhealthy
00:54:13
based on how i used it and most of us don't realize
00:54:19
that we get consumed by fear instead of using fear so fear becomes
00:54:24
our being in the sense that fear becomes what controls us it tells
00:54:30
us what we should do and what we shouldn't do it tells us how we should think and we shouldn't think it stops us
00:54:36
from doing stuff that's really important to us and it makes us do things that we would
00:54:41
never ever do it makes us say things to people that we love that we would never want to say to them and on the other end
00:54:48
it stops you from saying things you really want to say to someone because you don't want to appear weak and your
00:54:53
ego won't let you sophia takes this really magnetic controlling effect on our whole lives
00:54:59
but fear at the same time can be one of the healthiest things because it's basically giving you a signal
00:55:07
as to what's important it's basically giving you as a signal as to how you
00:55:12
feel and when you use it as a signal not as a suggestion or a push it changes
00:55:19
everything so let's let's make that practical when you are in your home and if the fire alarm goes off
00:55:26
that gives you a signal to say check for the fire check if there's a fire right
00:55:31
now if you go oh just turn it off it doesn't matter let's let's avoid my fear let's avoid it let's just turn it off
00:55:38
let's forget about it your house could burn down or if you're lucky there was nothing and it's fine
00:55:44
but the odds are that there could be a fire now if you're someone who goes well let me inspect it let me be curious about
00:55:51
that i am scared that there's a fire in my house now that i've heard the fire alarm but let me be curious let me
00:55:57
inspect let me check imagine we approached our fear in that way imagine every time i felt scared of
00:56:02
something i said well let me get curious about this why am i scared of this why is it
00:56:08
affecting me so much what about this scares me is it all of it or is it just
00:56:13
a part of it when you start doing it you start to break that fear down and that's the healthy way of looking at fear
00:56:19
rather than the unhealthy way of saying forget about it keep it away from me i don't want to go there and so for me i
00:56:26
really feel that fear is what blocks us from these beautiful breakthroughs in life
00:56:33
and it has such a choke hold on us like it's such a strong hold on us and i think most of us are living our lives
00:56:39
because we're scared of what someone will say what someone will think or what
00:56:44
someone will do and that feels like something that we're going to
00:56:49
regret when we're at the end of our lives well they do they do right so they interview people as you know on their deathbed and this
00:56:55
is the number one regret of the dying your dms they must be full of people that are exhibiting exactly that
00:57:01
behavior because i know mine are yeah a young person saying i'm in this job i'm in this relationship i it sucks but
00:57:09
yeah fear right yes fear of change fear of uncertainty whatever it might be what do you typically say to those people
00:57:15
that you know they hate the situation they're in but the fear is kind of imprisoning them to to into an action
00:57:22
i think i always meet i always i'm saying this to someone on my team this morning actually i i always try and meet
00:57:28
everyone with compassion and not judgment because i know what it feels like to
00:57:34
experience that and i still experience that in different areas of my life so it's always there and i think if you
00:57:40
don't meet it with compassion you can kind of say something really energetic in the moment and kind of make them feel
00:57:45
like they've solved it but that isn't really wearing it down i think for me the first thing is to acknowledge that
00:57:51
that fear is real to acknowledge that there potentially will be backlash that there potentially will be someone who's
00:57:57
upset because i think often we're told oh no just do what you want and it doesn't matter and i'm like well it does matter because
00:58:03
maybe you are a good person and you don't want someone to be upset or you don't want to let your parents down or you don't want to hurt someone right or
00:58:09
you don't want to uh ruin your reputation by quitting your job or whatever it may be
00:58:14
and i think it's important to acknowledge that that's real and that may happen but i think what i try and do next is
00:58:21
say okay well let's say you didn't change anything how are you gonna feel in five to ten years
00:58:26
and that's my favorite question to ask someone let's not change anything about your life
00:58:32
how does it feel in five to ten years and if it feels worse than what you think it is now
00:58:38
chances are that even if you're going to hurt someone that's probably the better way to go but if you say you're going to feel the same or better
00:58:45
then sure just accept that and most people will say well no if i if i don't change anything if i don't get out of this my life's going to be worse but
00:58:51
here's the other thing i think we're always conditioned to think that we need
00:58:56
to change our situation to create a change in our life and actually with what both of us
00:59:04
believe it's all about a change in perspective and mindset i have learned things from jobs that i hated
00:59:12
but that are so useful to me right now i have learned things from relationships with people i've had and those people
00:59:19
that i didn't get along with but those lessons are still serving me today i've been in countless situations where i
00:59:25
wanted to get out that situation but that situation was perfectly designed to show me something and the problem is
00:59:32
we're constantly trying to just move and get away and so really what i say to everyone is i want you
00:59:38
to find out what is the perspective shift that this situation is trying to create in your
00:59:43
life because if you take that with you that perspective is going to stay with you no matter the situation but if you
00:59:50
just keep trying to change your environment hoping that your life's going to improve you're going to feel dissatisfied at the next place and the
00:59:56
next place and the one after that and i feel we're just conditioned to say okay you don't like your job quit your job you don't like your relationship quit
01:00:02
your relationship it's not the job of relationship it's the way you see it and i think we just
01:00:07
keep saying that it's this external shell that we're in when it's actually this shell and what's
01:00:12
happening inside of it that's defining all of these perspectives so much i mean that was a unbelievably
01:00:18
beautiful answer and i'm gonna 100 still that answer i want you to know especially that five year point because
01:00:24
it is a really good sort of mental um game to to role play um one of the things i was thinking when you know you
01:00:31
were talking then is about a lot of those messages that we'll get on instagram wherever it might be they're
01:00:36
centered in insecurity some kind of insecurity and because we have a lot of followers you significantly more than me
01:00:42
and because we have a big audience what people will assume is that we have all the answers but we've got it all figured
01:00:48
out and that we live our lives like saints and i always want to be really clear on this podcast that i absolutely do not
01:00:54
so let's talk about that how about we go back and forward and we just say a couple of things we're really really
01:00:59
bad at and we want to improve on whether they are insecurities they are lessons wisdom we know but we don't
01:01:05
follow et cetera et cetera you please be my guest
01:01:11
this one's been the one that the universe keeps teaching me so when if i think about this question this is the first thing that came to my mind
01:01:17
i keep believing that i'm going to meet someone
01:01:23
who's going to help me take my work to the next level and so i always have had this belief and
01:01:28
i don't know where it comes from it's it's one of those ones that i still need to figure out where every year i'll be like oh well yeah yeah if i'm working
01:01:34
with that person that person like as a manager or an agent or whatever it was like that person's gonna help me get to
01:01:40
another stage and the universe just keeps teaching me every year that it's you it's you it's you it's you like you've gotta do it for
01:01:46
yourself there's not gonna be anyone that comes into your life and changes your life but my naivety
01:01:52
every year is to try and look for that person and if someone asked me and said well
01:01:58
jay who's going to be that person for me i would tell them no what do you think it's you that's what i would say to them off the bat i
01:02:04
would say to someone stop depending on other people stop waiting for someone to change your life you have to change your
01:02:09
life but then in my own life i keep my actions show that i'm still looking for that so that's the first thing i'm sure
01:02:15
let's go back and forth i like this yeah there's there's going to be plenty more okay so the loads came to mind yeah so i'll just
01:02:21
i'll try and start from the top so the first thing that came to mind that i i know the truth upon and i would preach about
01:02:27
this podcast but i find it hard to do is i still kind of impose my own bias and
01:02:33
beliefs on the world onto others and i still loosely don't understand why everybody doesn't
01:02:39
want to do what i want to do with their life so i don't understand why everybody doesn't want to be successful and push
01:02:45
and climb the ladder and pursue and have nice things and build wealth and build an empire so sometimes there's
01:02:51
this real bias in the advice i give people and this real kind of like naivety and lack of understanding that
01:02:57
happiness is the north star we all have our own path to getting there and i can even exhibit that as an employer i can
01:03:04
my a voice can sometimes question why team members might not behave with in the same way as me
01:03:10
and it's fundamentally because again the north star is happiness and their path to being happy is not the same as mine
01:03:16
and that's a really dangerous game to play especially when you've got a big platform because you'll make people feel
01:03:21
inadequate for their journey to happiness because it doesn't resemble your own and so i really need to get better at
01:03:27
understanding we all have different paths and if i just say to myself the north star is happiness and we all have our own ways there then i can stop
01:03:34
preaching upon people or assuming that because they are not following my path they are incorrect yes
01:03:40
yes i love that i think one of the biggest things i obviously talk about is asking people to take time for
01:03:46
themselves and make time for themselves you already know where this is going
01:03:52
and and i think it's really interesting because i i think i try and i think i do but i
01:03:58
know that this year when it came to so i i try and take a full month off
01:04:04
every year for myself and usually i go to india and because of covet i haven't been able to go for the last two years
01:04:10
and i usually go and live with the monks again and and take part in all the meditations and practices for a month
01:04:15
and it's one of my favorite things to do and i haven't been able to do it for the last two years so i still decided i would take a month off
01:04:21
and it came and i said i would do from the 15th of december to the 15th of jan
01:04:27
and then i found out a week before that i kind of had to stay for an extra week in la for work so i delayed it and i was
01:04:33
like oh i'm going to do 22nd of december to the to the 17th of jan
01:04:39
and then i i got to london i started taking that break off but it was like i got to a point where i could see that
01:04:44
i'd been delaying my self-care and i kept delaying it even by that week
01:04:49
and in that week before i left i could tell that i needed a break like i needed to
01:04:55
switch off and my advice to everyone is don't let it get to that point you've got to take it just before that and i
01:05:01
was planning on doing that it was scheduled but because of commitments and priorities and important things i had to
01:05:07
push that extra mile and sure i'm fine and i'm okay and i feel great but i don't think that that's
01:05:14
sustainable and i think it was a different journey and and this is being honest too
01:05:20
i don't think i pro i'm a proponent of work-life balance although it may appear that way so this may actually be a
01:05:26
perception thing i think people may perceive that jay believes in perfect work-life balance and the truth is i
01:05:33
don't i believe in purpose and purpose to me is being obsessed about what you care about and what's important to you
01:05:40
and so for me what i do is my purpose and so i'm obsessed about it i care about it i love it i breathe it i live
01:05:46
it and when i was building i was working 18 hours a day
01:05:52
i was you know a couple of those were meditations sure but then i was sleeping for six hours
01:05:58
but i was working 18 hours a days for two to three years straight seven days a week and i think the perception is often
01:06:05
people may feel that no jay you live a perfectly balanced life and i'm like well no no i haven't like to there's a
01:06:12
different skill required to go upwards then stay maintain create momentum like
01:06:17
it's a different gear that you're in all the time and so today my life is far more disciplined in my health and
01:06:24
wellness than it's ever been before but there have been periods of the years getting here that didn't look like that
01:06:30
at all if that thank you for sharing that yeah that's super valuable um my next one would be
01:06:36
what you described at the tennis court which was some days especially because i mean these are probably everything i
01:06:43
say now is probably gonna be an excuse but i'm gonna say it anyway but i've presented it as an excuse so hopefully that kind of is okay
01:06:48
but i think i've geared my mind to care so much about the like being time efficient yes that in situations where
01:06:55
things aren't moving with the efficiency that i i i demand from my business life yeah
01:07:01
because you put your hand up here that i might because because of my expectations are of efficiency and speed
01:07:07
when i encounter a situation maybe like the people that were bumbling around with the clipboard at the tennis court that you described trying to find your
01:07:13
membership or whatever my expectation goes unmet frustration arrives and then i might
01:07:18
compromise on the way that i behave yeah and that might mean being abrupt being too too forward with somebody or being
01:07:24
too too harsh or lacking compassion in the way that i say something people don't know this about me but when
01:07:30
i'm alone i think about this it's probably the number one thing i think about i reflect on how i treated people that day yes and
01:07:36
there's been too many days in a row where i've gone you [Â __Â ] that up again steve yeah be better tomorrow and then i'll come into tomorrow the expectation
01:07:43
will go in matt i'll be i'll become a person i don't want to be and i'll say to myself in my private time i say you [Â __Â ] that up
01:07:48
again yeah and i've been doing that too much for too long i think we all have i mean i talk about
01:07:54
in my book i had this i had this moment same thing as you just said i uh this
01:07:59
was a couple of years ago in l.a and i was traveling around in in ubers and going here and there and getting in or
01:08:04
lyft and calling one and jumping in and going on and i got in and i was on my
01:08:10
phone and doing whatever and then five minutes later i realized we hadn't moved and
01:08:16
and that's how consumed i was on my phone whether i was scrolling or texting or emailing
01:08:21
and i said to the driver i said is everything okay and he said you didn't say hello
01:08:27
and he said i said hello to you five minutes ago and you didn't say hello and i just it it was such a like
01:08:35
i was late for my meeting i was late for a big thing what i felt terrible i felt so so bad and i was like
01:08:43
i really want people to connect with everyone as a human i said i'm so sorry what's your name
01:08:48
like like and then and he started driving and he wasn't trying to he wasn't even trying to be abrasive like
01:08:54
some people say oh well that's a bit he's not doing this i actually don't think it's his fault at all i think he taught me such a valuable lesson because
01:09:00
i was just kind of like oh yeah it's a service i booked it treating him like a robot treating him like a machine and
01:09:05
yeah one day we'll have driverless cars and i won't have to say hello sure but treating a human in that way
01:09:12
it i i think that goes against everything i stand for is that i want us to become more human
01:09:18
and i want us to not lose our humanity as technology advances and i love technology and it's great but let's not
01:09:25
lose our ability to have human connection which is what brings so much joy to our lives and so yeah i you know
01:09:33
that that's one of those moments that i was like you know you're really trying to teach me a lesson here because
01:09:38
yeah you know what this this whole back and forward if it's taught us anything it's that even people that you presume
01:09:43
to to have the answers from the from the outside um in fact maybe the correct answer is
01:09:49
to understand one's own faults understand we're all really really imperfect to be self-aware about those
01:09:56
faults and then make a commitment to being better every day i think i'll die imperfect but trying to be better i
01:10:02
don't think i'll die perfect and i think um i think that is maybe there'll probably be people that view
01:10:09
the work that you do and say god he's got it all figured out a hundred percent of things and i don't so i'm inadequate
01:10:15
yes i need to be jay and if i'm not jay then i'm inadequate i'm morally wrong my value's about i'm a bad person
01:10:22
so that's kind of i love that i'm so glad i love the back and forth too i you know for me it's it's always
01:10:28
wonderful to talk about these things and i think that's what our generation has changed in this space because i think we
01:10:34
did live at a time when gurus and guides and coaches were revered as flawless
01:10:40
perfect and you never really saw the behind the scenes and i think i i always say to my team like i'm always
01:10:45
trying to i don't want i don't even want that pressure it's it's pressure and it actually stops
01:10:51
you from being sincere and genuine and authentic and i feel that pressure sometimes like i feel that pressure when
01:10:58
someone has a question and i need to rush off and i'm like i want to answer it but i also need to rush off and i feel that pressure
01:11:04
and it's just i've realized i don't want that pressure like because i'm not perfect and i don't want to try and pretend i am or i don't
01:11:10
want to have to live up to it because it will just let someone down and it's really interesting because this was
01:11:16
around probably around 11 years ago now and this was i was mentoring before i
01:11:21
became a monk when i was a monk i was a mentor and then i became a coach and whenever i took on a mentee or a coach
01:11:27
coaching client or anyone the one of the first things i'd say to them in our first meeting is i just want you to know
01:11:34
that i will let you down i just want you to know that that there will be something i do
01:11:39
that upsets you disappoints you or lets you down if you're okay with that let's get
01:11:44
started let's get going and i saw the amount of people that walked out that door really yeah there
01:11:50
were people that left because they were expecting divinity and humanity and they were expecting perfection and
01:11:56
i'm really happy that they left because i would never have been able to live up to that and i don't even want the pressure and so i'm really clear with
01:12:03
people even now like i work with so many clients and that's one of the first things i'll say to them and you see that the people that stay recognize that
01:12:09
because they understand they have flaws and we all do and i also took off the pressure
01:12:14
especially in coaching where a lot of people think you can change their life and as an immature coach or
01:12:21
therapist you may think you can change someone else's life and the more i've coached and the more
01:12:27
hours i've racked up with coaching the more i've realized i don't i can't change someone's life
01:12:33
i don't have what it takes to change someone's life i don't have to say something profound
01:12:38
every word i say and not everything i say is going to be perfect and incredible and insightful
01:12:45
and if i can let go of that i actually might allow something beautiful to happen
01:12:51
actually trying to do all those things trying to say something profound every sentence trying to magically solve
01:12:56
someone's problems trying to be perfect all of these things actually block something beautiful from
01:13:02
happening kind of interesting because it very much links to what you said about not not putting the expectation on the
01:13:07
outcome you said that earlier i'm not going to try and change your life today but let's just focus in as you said earlier on the process of like what we
01:13:14
can do today i guess part of my point the first thing that came to mind there was we both write quotes and put them out on
01:13:20
the internet and that kind of thing but i'm going to be completely honest when i write quotes on instagram i have no expectation that it's going to change
01:13:26
the life of pretty much i actually don't think even if people agree with it most of them won't actually do anything
01:13:32
probably over 95 maybe 99 of them but what does it take to have an impact
01:13:38
on someone's life is it something that you can do as a coach or is it something inside them that is you're just the
01:13:44
oxygen to their flame what is it i believe that we need different language different perspectives
01:13:51
different faces different voices to connect with every person on the planet you're going to say the same thing
01:13:59
in your own way from your own mind and heart and your experience and that's going to touch someone in a way that
01:14:04
what i said can't and then i'm going to say something in a context that's going to impact someone else that your words
01:14:09
may not speak to because i've i've heard truth again and again and again and again and again
01:14:16
and then i hear it again last week and it clicks because i heard it from someone that
01:14:22
said it in a way that speaks to the language of my soul that speaks to the language of my mind and heart
01:14:28
and i think that's what's so fascinating about needing more voices and more faces and more people trying to serve but when
01:14:34
you talk about what creates change in coaching there's there's four steps to making a change in someone's life it
01:14:41
goes theoretical meaningful practical and applicable so most people
01:14:48
when they like a post on instagram or maybe they comment that's them saying theoretically i agree
01:14:55
with this and i understand it i understand the theory that what you're saying is true and i like it and i agree
01:15:02
with it theoretically but that theoretical understanding doesn't create transformation that theoretical
01:15:08
understanding doesn't change someone's life it may hit them here and hit them here the next step actually is from here to
01:15:14
here which is is it meaningful to them so i'll give an example let's say someone reads a quote but they just lost
01:15:21
their parent or they just lost a family member they love i know i've had that happen to me in the
01:15:27
last couple of years i'm sure many people listening have now it's not theory it's meaningful
01:15:33
because it's hit your heart it's gone from here to here and you're like okay that really resonated
01:15:39
but again that doesn't change your life because now it's meaningful it's emotional it's internal but that hasn't
01:15:45
changed in your action or your behavior so the next step is making that practical
01:15:50
okay steven wrote that amazing quote how do i make that practical let me reflect this is the work that the coachee or the
01:15:57
client needs to do okay steven presented it beautifully it connected with my head it hit my heart
01:16:03
how do i actually make that practical in my day-to-day life i'm not stephen i'm not jay how do i actually practically do
01:16:08
that and then finally what's the part that i apply and take action on so as a receiver of wisdom and knowledge you
01:16:15
have to do half that journey all you can do is the theoretical and the meaningful and you may even help
01:16:21
with practical tips and application but someone still has to sit there and go how do i do that unless you're sitting
01:16:27
there with them one-on-one obviously and you can't do the the practical bit for someone else forever ever yeah you could
01:16:33
maybe help them today or tomorrow totally not for a lifetime it's not going to be the fishing rod quick one as many of you know i've been
01:16:39
trying to make my life a little bit more sustainable as it relates to energy ever since i sold my range over sport and
01:16:44
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01:17:36
product and one that i'm going to be installing in my home soon over the years i've tried to kind of simplify what happiness is and i sit
01:17:42
here with my guests and mogada was great at that as well yeah of course is unbelievable kind of the concept of happiness what
01:17:48
are the kind of simple fundamentals that jay shetty requires in his life to live
01:17:54
a happy life i'm going to use the word happy i know it's a shitty word in many respects but i just want to use that as the
01:18:00
the word yeah i'd say that i look at happiness as
01:18:06
daily habits and then deeper purpose so there's things you can do daily
01:18:12
that keep that happiness kind of moving and feel it's growing and then there's almost the objective the compass the
01:18:19
reason why you live and why you exist and for me
01:18:24
it's been really clear that finding your passion and using it in the
01:18:30
service of others is what creates the greatest deepest happiness when you find what you love what you
01:18:36
excel at what you're brilliant at and then you can actually use that to improve people's lives and you can
01:18:43
use that skill that passion that energy to make a difference in someone's life
01:18:50
there is no better feeling than that and what i find is i meet a lot of people who've mastered their passion
01:18:57
but not for service they mastered it for business they mastered it for money they are mastered it for success
01:19:04
and they have all of that but they haven't got the service element in their life they don't understand how to use
01:19:09
their passion for a purpose and so they feel unequipped and then i know lots of people are trying to serve
01:19:16
or trying to make a difference or trying to do charity work they're trying to do all this good work and they feel good about it but they
01:19:22
still don't feel fulfilled because they're missing what is my special role like what's my position what's my
01:19:29
offering in this space you kind of get lost after a while and so to me happiness is where both
01:19:34
come together where it's like i know what i love and what makes me happy and when i do that for others to improve
01:19:41
their lives it makes them happy so if you can do what makes you happy and do it for others and it makes them happy
01:19:48
that's going to give you happiness and i have tested that principle time and time again with clients with friends with
01:19:54
family with myself and i've seen it to be true again and again and again but that's that bigger happiness piece
01:20:01
let's go to the daily habits like the daily stuff and i want to try and avoid the stuff that i think people have heard
01:20:06
and people have probably come across before in many different places maybe i've spoken about that maybe other people have
01:20:12
but one of the biggest ones for me is i read a book a few years ago about flow state and that book really transformed
01:20:19
how i felt about things and it talks about how being in flow is the intersection
01:20:26
where your skills and your challenge match so if your skills are higher than your
01:20:33
challenge you'll feel bored lethargic and maybe feel stuck but if your challenge is greater than
01:20:39
your skills you feel overwhelmed potentially depressed and disconnected
01:20:44
and disappointed so most of us are living in one of those discrepancies
01:20:50
and i find on a daily basis i'm playing around with that equation for happiness
01:20:55
because that flow state of when you know you have a skill and your challenge is met and even if you lose you still get
01:21:02
such a joy out of it because you know that you're still working in the right direction and i think that is an
01:21:08
underplayed part of happiness because it doesn't sound like something predictable or obvious because people go
01:21:13
well that's achievement that's ambition it's actually not it's just saying for most people it's either or their
01:21:20
challenges are greater than their skill or their skills greater than their challenge so i would ask everyone to say look at your life
01:21:26
do you need to improve your skills or do you need to broaden your challenge is this a year of expanding your challenges
01:21:32
or is this a year of broadening your skills and i promise you if you start with that you're going to get so busy
01:21:38
and active changing one of those the happiness is going to naturally flow
01:21:44
this comes into a little little model i created of creating happiness for my year
01:21:49
and that one sits in one of them so i'll explain which one it's in i believe that to create happiness day
01:21:56
to day in one year in one month in a week you have to have
01:22:02
three things you have to learn something every year you have to launch something every year
01:22:08
and you have to love something every year and that's how i've lived for the last three to five years every year i'm
01:22:14
learning something every year i'm launching something and every year i'm loving something and i'll
01:22:20
give you an example so when i talk about flow state that comes into the idea of raising your
01:22:26
challenge is like launching something the reason why launching something creates happiness is because it creates a
01:22:32
feeling of nervousness it creates a feeling of butterflies creates a feeling of excitement like i don't know what's
01:22:38
going to happen we all need a feeling of surprise in life we all need that feeling of i don't know the sense of the
01:22:44
unknown can actually cause happiness and so launching something is such a powerful
01:22:51
way and i think too many people will think for five years and think for ten years and maybe launch one thing in
01:22:57
their whole life and me and you but i mean i'd love to i can't wait to interview on my podcast but
01:23:03
i have launched so much stuff there but that launch creates so much joy it
01:23:08
creates so much happiness so launch something and we can dive into that then there's learn something which is what we just talked about learning a skill so that's
01:23:14
the that's the idea of creating your flow state by saying what skill do i want to learn and every year i pick a skill
01:23:21
and it's usually based on what i want to launch the next year so i'll go okay i need to learn podcasting so 2018 i
01:23:27
studied podcasting 2019 we launched the podcast uh so what you learn turns in
01:23:32
what to what you launch and what you launch turns into what you love and what we try and do is we try and do it the other way around we try and love
01:23:39
something before we learn and launch it it doesn't make sense you've got to learn about something first
01:23:46
and then you can fall in love with it you can't love something and then learn about it you can but it doesn't always
01:23:52
work that way so i try and plan my years out in that way i go what am i going to learn what am i going to launch and what
01:23:57
am i going to love so yeah i think that's how i try and create happiness on a daily weekly monthly
01:24:03
basis without diving into things like gratitude and meditation which are huge parts of my daily happiness but i think
01:24:10
those are ideas that are out there and that we've talked about before probably and you've launched a lot of stuff a lot of stuff and uh we're going to
01:24:17
talk a little bit about some of those things that you've launched i mean you've got your your genius community which you which has been going for a
01:24:22
long time now brilliant a really brilliant business and really a standout business in this whole industry
01:24:29
in terms of the way you um executed it and the i mean even the design of the the programs and i mean i remember going
01:24:36
on the website and trying to thinking to myself would i be able to make something as quality as this um in the future and i'm
01:24:43
sort of modeling myself on that you've got your certification school for coaches as well you've launched your tea business and there's also
01:24:50
a really i guess this is a bit of an exclusive your partnership with calm the mindfulness meditation app and i think
01:24:57
they also call themselves a sleep app as well now i think that's a more modern um description of them
01:25:02
so why did you partner with calm so michael and i uh michael is one of
01:25:08
the co-founders of calm he's been on this podcast yes exactly yes and uh we
01:25:13
we got introduced probably around four years ago now and he came over for lunch to my place
01:25:20
we were hanging out connecting getting to know each other he was being told that he
01:25:26
should really connect with me and i was being told i should connect with him and finally we got together so we had lunch in my home my wife made us this
01:25:32
incredible lunch uh and we sat down and he brought brought a friend and i had a
01:25:37
couple of people there and we just hung out and in that meeting
01:25:42
i met someone who i really believed was not trying to build an app
01:25:47
and i met someone who's not trying to build a platform and i met someone who was not trying to
01:25:53
build technology he was trying to build an experience he was trying to build a journey for people
01:26:00
to go on he was trying to build a practical daily habit for each and
01:26:06
every single person in the world and that was really beautiful for me to hear because i'd been an admirer of calm when
01:26:13
it first started out and i first heard about it probably eight years before we met and i've been
01:26:20
seeing what they were doing and creating and to meet the person behind it and for them to be as genuine sincere and wonderful as
01:26:26
michael is you've met him so you know what he's like i was really blown away by that i was just blown away by that vision
01:26:32
and having spent hours and years meditating in the monastery and then meditating
01:26:37
afterwards i've always wanted to share meditation at scale with the world
01:26:43
i think it's a habit that 80 to 90 of the world's most healthy wealthy and successful
01:26:49
people live by so if we could make it accessible practical and relevant to each and every
01:26:56
person's daily life can you imagine the transformation that they'll have
01:27:02
and i've experienced that as a monk i saw it in for years and years and years i've seen it last year during the pandemic i
01:27:09
went live for 20 days on instagram and taught meditation just to everyone and anyone because
01:27:15
i felt quite inadequate i was like i'm not a frontline worker i can't save lives i'm not a delivery person i'm not
01:27:22
helping people with their groceries and their food i was like what can i offer and i thought well maybe if people can have
01:27:27
a minute of peace and calm then then that might be worth it and across 40 days i ended up doing 40 instead of 20
01:27:32
across 40 days with 20 million people tuned in and it was just so mind-blowing to me and most of the people were saying
01:27:39
they'd never meditated before and i thought to myself how beautiful that was and one of the biggest pieces
01:27:44
of feedback i get from my audience is well jay we want to meditate with you every day why can't we keep doing that and i was
01:27:51
like wow those 40 days of live meditations were really intense and a lot of work went into them
01:27:57
so i wanted a home for where i could share meditation every single day
01:28:04
a new piece of meditation insight that each and every single person could build a daily habit every day every day what
01:28:12
of seven minutes a day you're gonna do seven minutes a day every day seven minutes a day every day wow five days a
01:28:17
week five days a week not weekends you get days off yeah everyone gets two days off you don't have to meditate on the weekends you can sleep in but you're
01:28:22
gonna you've recorded a meditation income for 365. we haven't recorded all again
01:28:28
we haven't recorded all of them because they're fresh and they're moving and they're based on my weekly inspiration so we record them monthly nice so we
01:28:34
record them monthly so i've recorded for the next month ahead because i have to because everyone's going to need them but i'm
01:28:40
basing it on like what my inspiration is that week and what my day is that week but it's a seven minute meditation and i truly believe that everyone can find
01:28:46
seven minutes and if everyone could just find seven minutes in their day in their calendar as i said that they put aside for
01:28:53
themselves i believe in those seven minutes everyone could build a beautiful habit now the difference with our
01:28:59
meditation is the meditations we've created we believe they're meditations that inspire action
01:29:05
so all of them are not just sitting there on your own with yourself breathing they're interconnected with a
01:29:11
change in your daily behavior so each and every single one of them have a takeaway have an insight that you can go
01:29:17
and apply no matter what you do across the world so the goal is when meditation meets
01:29:22
action where meditation can actually help you change how you feel that day through your real life and so why i chose calm
01:29:30
was i wanted a home i wanted to work with michael and the team who i just believe are
01:29:36
dreaming beautifully about how to bring meditation to the world and so sincerely and genuinely care about each and every
01:29:43
person and i just love how i would say i love how universally
01:29:50
they approach meditation i think they approach meditation in this universal expansive abundant mindset way
01:29:59
which makes story be a part of meditation which makes visualization be a part of meditation and that's how i
01:30:05
was trained in meditation as a monk so it feels very philosophically aligned as well you know you've done so much
01:30:11
and really from what i observed even you really started in 2000 and i'd say
01:30:18
the the sort of external social media content journey started in 2016. yes that is mad
01:30:23
that is mad you've gone from 2016 um making your first content tour in 2022
01:30:30
now just and you're this global household name as it relates to content self-improvement meditation all of these
01:30:37
topics right that's a short period of time when you look back and you try and connect the docs as steve jobs often did
01:30:44
about how apple came to be in the little moments and the little things whether it was a moment of um good fortune or
01:30:50
whether it was something that you have spotted in hindsight in your character
01:30:56
why was jay shetty successful in such a short period of time in such a big way give me the honest practical answer i
01:31:02
don't want anything i want why why were you successful so i'm going to give you the i'm going to give you my monk answer
01:31:09
and then i'm going to give you then i'm going to give the media answer so and and i live by both right like you have to you have to see things as both and
01:31:15
that's why i love my monk answer is i was really fortunate to meet
01:31:20
incredible people when i was young i met a few people that absolutely transformed my life i'm eternally indebted to them grateful
01:31:27
to them and i owe it all to them and so i give all my success to them you know without meeting
01:31:33
those amazing mentors and those phenomenal thought leaders and thinkers who are not famous who are not known who
01:31:40
are not present like they're not they're not in the social media world they're not big names or whatever
01:31:46
those people you know those people if i never met them none of this would have happened i can see that's the emotion in your face when you say this
01:31:52
yeah i just i i really you know we we skipped it earlier but i i just feel like
01:31:58
the gratitude that i have for people who saw potential in me when i
01:32:04
didn't see it in myself that is just the greatest gift you can give to someone like i today have
01:32:10
self-awareness and i have confidence and i know who i am and i i wasn't always like that like there were tons of years
01:32:17
where i was insecure and you know i was bullied for being overweight and i was bullied for being
01:32:22
the only indian at school and there was so much like baggage to do with just my body my how the language i used and
01:32:29
all this kind of stuff and to to have someone notice that you may have something
01:32:35
i mean you've had that and that is just you you like honor that person for the rest of your life and the best thing is
01:32:40
those people don't even want it so you know the best thing about all of this is the people there are not going oh yeah we did that they're they're actually
01:32:47
saying no no it's not us like it's you and and i think that's the beauty of that so i i have to say that it's
01:32:52
important that i share that answer not because i'm trying to give a more strategic answer but i think
01:32:59
it's important because it is a big part of it and so that would be the monks that i met it would be the coaches that i met
01:33:05
the guys that i met looking at it from a very practical strategic standpoint shifting now
01:33:10
my parents forced me to go to public speaking and drama school when i was 11 years old
01:33:16
and i really didn't want to go because i was shy i was unconfident i was insecure about
01:33:22
being on stage or being in a public setting i actually loved acting growing up i really enjoyed acting and doing theater and things like that where i was
01:33:28
playing another character but being myself on stage that was the last thing i wanted to do
01:33:33
and my parents saw that and they saw that as something that i should work on so they forced me and my school to
01:33:39
enroll me in a public speaking course so from the age of 11 through to the age
01:33:44
of 18 for three hours a day three days a week so nine hours a week for seven years i
01:33:51
went to public speaking school really for seven years of my life i went to public speaking school
01:33:57
so when i look back at my ability to communicate my ability to understand ideas and by the way public speaking
01:34:02
school is examination based too so we had exams where they would give you a topic 15 minutes before you have 15
01:34:08
minutes to research a topic from the books in the room that they give you because there was no smartphone at the time when we were 11 12 years old
01:34:14
and you'd have to create a speech in 15 minutes about that subject from the books that were in the room you had to read from a book that you'd
01:34:20
never read before they'd pick a random page and they'd ask you to read it out so the examination of a public and this was at the london academy of music drama
01:34:27
and arts it's called lambda and that's where i studied for seven years so that's a very
01:34:33
strategic skill set that i had the time to develop thanks to my parents you know like without my parents that none of
01:34:38
that would have ever happened and i think that's a big part of why people hopefully appreciate how i communicate
01:34:43
ideas because i've spent a lot of time understanding communication but when i was 18 i had nothing to talk
01:34:50
about so even though i had all these tools and skills i didn't really use them because i didn't care about anything so sure i
01:34:56
gave a good presentation at university and work experience and an internship but it was never something that brought
01:35:02
me to life and so then when i met the monks and i got an opportunity to study the vedas
01:35:07
which are 5 000 years old and again we were put through rigorous study we sat down we had to learn verses we had to
01:35:14
analyze purports commentaries on ancient scriptures we had to do comparative analysis of religions and tradition like
01:35:21
when i was a monk we were massively trained in philosophical analysis and that to me gave me a real strength
01:35:27
and confidence in these ideas so some of the ideas i present today that may sound simple they're based on these really
01:35:32
ancient deep truths that i've had the time to grapple with with the greats who really
01:35:39
understand them so that to me is a big benefit i've had where i've had three years
01:35:44
of complete dedication to studying philosophy and not just studying the
01:35:51
intellectual areas but the practical and the applicable areas as well so thanks to my monk teachers who gave me that
01:35:58
and then when i went to accenture where people were like jay you're just a monk why did you go to accenture i had
01:36:03
to pay the bills i couldn't rely on my parents and you know my parents are not wealthy that they could pay my way through life and i moved back into there
01:36:11
i moved back into my childhood bedroom when i was 26 wow living with my parents with 25 000 18 000 pounds worth of debt
01:36:19
and just feeling that you know i was like what do i do now and i applied to 40 companies
01:36:26
that would have given me a job i'm a first class honours degree student i'm a straight a student and i was rejected from 40 companies
01:36:33
because surprise surprise no one wanted to hire a monk so everyone goes what are your transferable skills sitting quietly
01:36:38
and sitting on the floor like no one needs that so 40 companies say no to me accenture finally give me a shot
01:36:44
and i meet someone called thomas power and thomas power i don't know if you ever met him actually he's london-based
01:36:50
uh he started up like an early linkedin kind of version called academy and he was he's very networked in london in the
01:36:56
business space definitely want to introduce you guys he's awesome uh and he was brought in by accenture to train
01:37:01
us in social media and train us in in this new wave of this new thing that was happening
01:37:07
and it's really interesting because we've talked about it me and him many times i'm going to have him on my podcast soon and i realized i was like you didn't
01:37:13
really teach me much about social media but you really taught me about breaking my mindset and he would always
01:37:18
repeat napoleon hill you become what you think about and he'd always tell me that i'd be like keep saying that to yourself
01:37:24
and i keep saying that to myself and you become what you think about you become and then i was like oh what am i thinking i'm not thinking about anything
01:37:29
so what am i going to become nothing and it was just really interesting so he would give me these little tools and little things to play with he had
01:37:35
another one called ors which he would say that successful people have to be open random and
01:37:40
supportive and he'd say that most unsuccessful people are closed selective and controlling csc and he was saying that
01:37:48
when you live in a csc mindset you limit your growth but when you live in an ors
01:37:53
mindset open random and supportive you expand your growth so you'd encourage me to be open with strangers on twitter it
01:37:59
encouraged me to be open with random people with me at a conference and he was just training me in behaviors and
01:38:04
mindsets it wasn't like how to post and what time to post and this is how you make it
01:38:09
wasn't how to make something go viral like that wasn't it it was how to engage how to push your comfort zone how to
01:38:14
challenge your fear why are you so uncomfortable to walk up to that person and tweet them you know all of those
01:38:20
kind of things and i saw that my mind just became just open to the idea so he would always
01:38:26
tell me you're an entrepreneur i'd be like no i'm not no i'm not meant to work for someone and so he would keep pushing me until i'd get really angry with him
01:38:33
like you don't even know who i am only for me to realize he saw something in me that i never saw
01:38:38
and then i'd say from there on that's kind of what gets me to the beginning of it i would say that for 10
01:38:45
years before 2016 i was making content and delivering it
01:38:50
in small venues in london so i had an event in london at university called
01:38:55
think out loud every single week i would design a poster on photoshop i taught myself photoshop and i'd make a poster
01:39:03
and i would talk about a movie from a philosophical psychological and spiritual perspective so i take a movie
01:39:09
like inception and i'd break it down and 10 students would come every week and then i teach meditation which i'd
01:39:15
learned from the monks and then 20 students would come and by the time i finished university 100 people came every single week to hear me break down
01:39:22
and this was no followers the events were free i was preparing for free doing everything for free and i loved it and i
01:39:28
got so much joy and then afterwards when i was accenture i ran an event in london called conscious living
01:39:34
and it was just a it was an event which was probably like five pound on a friday night and again i was teaching philosophy spirituality and meditation
01:39:42
and i was lucky if five people turned up it wasn't university anymore where you could go and deck the halls with flyers
01:39:48
and posters in the common room and the community area so we'd get like five to ten people every friday night paying
01:39:53
five to ten quid just for the food that we gave and you know the posters that we made just to cover the costs
01:39:59
so for ten years before i ever made a piece of content online i've practiced rehearsed
01:40:06
experimented grappled challenged these ideas again and again
01:40:12
and again and again and again without any followers without any money and without anything else coming from it apart from the fact that i love it i
01:40:19
love the idea of reading a book and trying to make it relevant so i would say that the biggest reason is because i've done this for 10 years offline
01:40:26
before i ever went online so i've been doing it for like 16 years and that doesn't count the 11 year old public speaking classes
01:40:32
it's really there's something really beautiful about that because it i think it gives them a sense of it's incredibly
01:40:37
inspiring but it also gives a sense of peace to people who are at stage in their journey where they're sat on the
01:40:43
phones in a call center selling i don't know double glazing like i was and they're thinking um this is a waste of time
01:40:50
they're thinking picking up this phone and trying to persuade margaret to buy some windows is a waste of time and it's
01:40:56
not serving my where i want to go and it's only in hindsight when you speak to people like yourself or you hear about
01:41:01
steve jobs journey or really anybody that sits here on this podcast yeah like so those are some of the most unbelievably formative and most pivotal
01:41:08
experiences as it relates to the thing you will go on to do and you never know when that's going to happen
01:41:14
right you never know when opportunity is going to meet preparation in your life totally and that also
01:41:20
speaks to something you said earlier which is it's about the mindset you have when you're doing those things and if you believe i think if you believe that
01:41:27
sitting on that phone is going to be the rest of your life forever you're increasing the chances of that being the case and i'm not putting down
01:41:34
people that do center jobs it's actually one of my one of my favorite and the job i did the longest um
01:41:40
but i just think that's such an important mindset shift that can inspire and not demotivate yeah i think we have to look at our life as a series of
01:41:46
things that add up each other rather than like this is a waste this is a waste and that's not a waste and by the
01:41:52
way you said call center that sparked a memory i had a internship when i was 16 years old
01:41:58
at the business design center in angel and i was working for a company called upper street events that sold
01:42:05
event space to companies for these big exhibitions and events that happened in the venue
01:42:11
and i remember at 16 having to call up nissan bmw vw audi
01:42:17
vauxhall etc because they're doing a big car exhibition now by the way i was a 16 year old kid
01:42:22
who didn't really know i was doing but the people trained me really well and i would i was cold calling and i
01:42:28
completely agree with you i think that gave me so much confidence to be able to pick up the phone to anyone and everyone
01:42:33
to tweet anyone and everyone to dm anyone and everyone by the way cristiano ronaldo has the longest list of dms from
01:42:40
me that he's never seen right he has the longest list of dm's for me that he's never seen but i'm hoping that one day
01:42:45
he's going to see them and i'm going to get to interview him and it's the idea of like i don't i'm not worried if he doesn't see them i'm not upset if one
01:42:52
day he sees 30 dms from me because i know that that's what it takes and i'm okay with that there's no ego
01:42:57
there i'm so happy if christina went out to open it up and saw oh this guy's desperate i would take that all day because i
01:43:04
think he's a i think he has a phenomenal mind and i would love to sit down with him what did you lose
01:43:09
what did you lose right but that comes from when you're cold calling in the call center you learn that mindset of what did i
01:43:15
lose if this person said no and there's 300 people on this list and that person might be the one that
01:43:21
wants it now and that person might come back around and you get to develop those skills so i just i just hope that wherever you are
01:43:28
listening to this right now wherever you're watching it you just take a moment to realize that that place can teach you everything you
01:43:35
need to know about your purpose and if you just approach it in that way you're going to walk to work with a pep in your
01:43:40
step and like this energy that's going to be so electric and so magnetic that everyone's going to know what's going on
01:43:46
with you and all it is is that you're looking at life as an addition rather than a subtraction and you'll receive in
01:43:51
a completely different way right correct yeah we have a long-standing tradition on this podcast um where the previous
01:43:57
guest writes a question for the next guest in the diary that's genius i love that new addition
01:44:03
the reason why we did it and i've never really explained this is we want to basically connect the the episodes together and the guests
01:44:09
together in some way and doing that by a question written in the diaries our way um
01:44:14
who came up with that great idea it's brilliant it's absolutely fantastic i'm going to tell my team
01:44:25
it's funny because this question is actually one i think i asked you already so you can ask me another one if you want you can pick a pick a random one
01:44:31
yeah i can just make one up no um so the question asked what is your definition
01:44:38
of true success
01:44:49
i'd say my definition of true success is that
01:44:56
there are four important decisions we make in our life and if you can make every
01:45:02
decision intentionally with the desire to
01:45:08
learn and serve then that's all you can do so the four most important decisions we
01:45:13
make in our life are how do i feel about myself
01:45:19
what do i do for money who do i give my love to and how do i serve others
01:45:27
and if you spend your life focusing on intentionally making those choices
01:45:32
then your life is a success because all you can do is try to live intentionally and
01:45:37
try to hope that it helps other people amen listen jay i can't thank you enough for
01:45:43
coming here and doing this um i know you are a very in demand very um a very very
01:45:48
successful man who's who's only in the uk for a short period of time so it's a true honor that you would come here and sit with me and have this conversation
01:45:53
for me you've been a real role model in many many ways and you know you've led the way in the the content the
01:46:00
self-development the helping people change their lives domain especially as someone that comes from the same country
01:46:05
as me for the longest time so i've always looked looked at you for the last i don't know seven years since i've i've
01:46:10
started doing this and i think your success has propelled and enabled mine from a point of inspiration but also
01:46:16
from giving me a blueprint on how to serve so i've never got to say that to you before but i really want to say thank you because that's um you know
01:46:21
you've helped you're probably the reason i get to help people as well in my own way so that means you know it means a ton to me that you would come here and
01:46:27
sit with me and uh yeah it's just thank you that is probably one of the most humbling things anyone's ever said to me
01:46:32
because i'm a huge fan of the podcast i think you do an incredible job and i think you have some amazing guests
01:46:38
guests that i've never sat down with or you know may not be in my ra my radar or radius and you've
01:46:45
shared things with them that have just been phenomenal and so when i'm listening and watching i want to get my haircut yeah i was
01:46:50
talking to my um hairdresser about you and i was like i'm going this podcast tomorrow and and you know and he and he
01:46:55
listens to you as well and knows who you are and and i was just like yeah and the the
01:47:00
easiest thing that came back to me was just yeah stephen's a really nice guy like he's really down to earth he's really humble and i find that phenomenal
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because of your age because of what you've achieved i've never felt like even
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a drop of ego around you and whether that's in your online presence whether that's when we met in
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new york whether that's on twitter all those years ago whether it's today before we're on camera
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and and i really appreciate that i think as monks we were trained that the most
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admirable quality in a human is humility like that was seen as like the the if if we could say that in the material world
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the highest thing about someone is whatever it is the currency in monk life was humility
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and so when i meet people who have humility i really they're like my they're like the people that i get drawn to the most
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and and you just have it in bags for and i i just think you're gonna go off and do even more incredible successful
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phenomenal things for the world and i'm excited to watch i'm excited to be a fan a friend
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and hopefully we get to do stuff together too but uh this was beautiful man thank you so much thank you thank you for having me i wanted to come on
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this is this is beautiful this is brilliant i hope we hope we do it more and i can't wait to have you one i'm very excited now that you're coming to l.a
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we're gonna have you on it's gonna be amazing [Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music] you