So Jay, who were the most influential people in your life, in your childhood, and what would you say are some of the biggest lessons that they passed on to you?

That's such an interesting question.

I feel I was very, very fortunate that the most influential people in my life became people I discovered through autobiographies and biographies.

So and, and that's because I think I was the eldest, and I kind of was a bit rebellious, so I didn't really fit in, and I don't think I was getting that much great advice from my family or extended family.

And I fell in love with, I mean, you know, I think I mentioned this to you when we first met, I fell in love with the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King.

I fell in love with Malcolm X. I fell in love with Dwayne The Rock Johnson and David Beckham.

So my, my reading, uh, [laughs] my reading spectrum was fairly wide.

Mm-hmm

So Jay Shetty, welcome back.

Ed, I just want to say that I'm so grateful to be back with you because I was just saying this to you off screen, but I want everyone to hear it.

The amount of your...

First of all, the people you attract in your community are just unbelievable.

Mm.

Honestly, like if you sit down and you talk to your partner and you ask them a question you've never asked them...

I'll give an example of a, a question that I love.

Like I might just say to my wife right now like, um, "You know, what was the most exciting thing that happened to you this week?"

Mm.

You have to treat yourself like someone you like before you can treat yourself like someone you love because you can't go from, "I don't feel worthy.

I'm not enough" to "I love myself.

I accept myself." There's levels and layers in between of getting to know, liking, falling out of love, looking at the dark parts, the hard parts, the inner work.

That's the journey we have to go on, and I think when we try and skip to self-love, you get back to self-hate as quick as you just jump to that stage.

So what does it mean to like yourself? F- first, to like yourself, you need to know yourself.

Goes back to what we were talking about before.

Mm

And I just wonder, have you ever had anybody on your show that that really has helped you or taught you a lesson?

Well, I have to give a shout out to Carl Anthony Towns Cat because.

His episode actually comes out on Monday on Spotify and Netflix video.

And he said something really, really powerful to me that has stayed with me when we recorded straight after he won the championship with the Knicks.

And I was at game four, which was unbelievable.

But he said to me, I'm recognized more for what I do than who I am, when who I am is more important than what I do.

Wow.

What do you find is by and large the underneath question that people really want answered?

Are there sort of little hacks that, uh, you have that, you know, not just in taking that time to step back, but just how do you continue to remind yourself and stay connected to that? How do you, how do you sort of train your brain to, to focus on that versus maybe where it might be meandering to?

Yeah.

I've got, uh, an acronym that I love with four habits in it.

So the first is T for thankfulness.

I think...

And, and here's the thing.

Everyone talks a lot about gratitude and gratitude journals and writing it down.

[chuckles]

Let's talk about getting to know yourself because that in itself is a massive job and I don't think I really got to know myself until I discovered walking and I would spend two hours a day for years on end and that was when I got to know myself and my entire physiology, mentality, everything changed through that process.

There's this incredible study where they asked men and women if they wanted to be alone with their thoughts for 15 minutes or give themselves an electric shock.

27% of women chose an electric shock and around 66% of men chose an electric shock because they didn't want to be alone with their thoughts.

So the reason why I raised that is what walking does for you is it's you spending time with yourself.

we don't really spend that much time with ourselves.

If you look at life, you're at school, then you go to college, then you get a job, then at one point you date, you get married, whatever it may be, you spend very little time in your life by yourself.

No wonder we don't know ourselves.

When you were last here, what did you love most about Australia? What are you excited to come down under and do?

Okay.

And one of the reasons why I love this one is everyone from Lewis Hamilton through to David Beckham has used visualization.

Yes.

So Lewis Hamilton would visualize the racetrack before actually driving in a Formula One race.

David Beckham would visualize a free kick before taking a shot at a World Cup tournament.

And this visualization allows you to deal with the pressure and stress before the actual activity.

What it does is it allows you to fast forward.

Right.

What is purpose? And is it something that you develop or you discover? Do you have one purpose? You know, these questions that people have.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I'm so glad that you're making space for these really important discussions.

I know we recently went live to talk about your incredible new book, Limitless.

And, you know, I think that your dedication to helping people lead limitless lives is so powerful.

And so I'm so glad you're opening up this space today.

And purpose is probably one of my favorite, favorite topics to talk about.

How do I identify the passion I must choose to fulfill my purpose?

And percentage you're spending, how much is like 20 hours over that week on Instagram or something like that.

Absolutely.

And Instagram analytics is doing the same for you too.

So if you really want to hone in on Instagram, you have it right there.

So the first step is awareness.

That's all I want you to do is take out some time to just journal down your usage.

Now, if you are saying to me and you're listening to this going, Jay, I already know I spend too much time on social media, then you can go straight to the second one.

and also for that's the place and also the time also

Johnny Pops, a better pop for a better world.

So the interesting thing is the first episode of my podcast On Purpose ever was me and Radhi telling this story together.

And I always wanted to start the show at a really authentic, genuine, conscious place.

And I thought, why not do it with the person who knows me best and knows me most deeply? And so the long story short version is I was in my final year of college and I knew that I was going to become a monk after I graduated.

And I would go to my local temple to serve and assist on the weekends just to stay out of trouble.

And when I was doing that service, I was asked to show a woman around who was around my mom's age with different chores and different practices at the temple.

I'd never been asked to do this before.

I want to ask you both, what simple thing does your partner do to show that they love you?

How do you figure out what you are, and how do you know if you trying to be like something else that you not?

Two processes.

One is personal excavation.

The more you observe yourself in different situations, the more you observe yourself when you're around certain people, the more you observe yourself when you're experimenting and testing and trying new things out, the more you get a sense for how you feel about it versus how someone feels that you feel about it, and that's our constant disconnect.

We're validating or verifying everyone through even a small question like, "How do I look in this?" We're letting someone else's opinion define how we feel about ourselves, even if we feel totally uncomfortable.

So we only get to that point when we start observing ourself and testing and experimenting with multiple things so that you can see yourself in different scenarios and different situations.

Really?

So I actually would sit down with a friend from, like, 16 years old, and they'd be like, "Jay, do you remember we did this?" And I'd be like, "Oh, yeah," but it would take me a moment.

What do you, uh, wanna teach people when you're here this time?

Yeah, so this time we're taking it to another level.

This Changes Everything is focused on the four big decisions of life.

So whether you're in a job and you wanna find another one, whether you're in a relationship and you wanna leave, whether you wanna find love, whether you're in a position in your life where you just feel stuck and you're looking for the next move, we're gonna focus on the four biggest decisions in life.

The first is how do I feel about myself, the second is what do I do for work, the third is who do I love, and the fourth is how do I serve the world.

We're gonna take a 360-degree approach to life, and I'm gonna help you through a series of practical tools and application to actually build your decision-making powers so you can take action on those four areas of your life.

It's gonna be super practical, super easy to put into practice, and I want you to walk away having a new direction in your life and being able to make big decisions.

Mm.

Why do we have to use the word boundaries? It sounds so cranky.

[laughs] I agree.

I, I'm not sure which psychological theorist came up with that word, and I think the reason it has to be so strong is because we're so bad at practicing principles or alignment or protecting ourselves or respecting ourselves, that boundaries are the only way to truly show ourselves what's important to us, what's valuable to us, and what's true to us.

How many of us have sacrificed what we wanted because of what someone else wanted because we didn't have a boundary? It's a necessary evil of a word, if that helps.

[laughs]

27, 27% of women chose an electric shock, and around 66% of men chose an electric shock, because they didn't wanna be alone with their thoughts.

So the reason why I raise that is what walking does for you is it's you spending time with yourself.

We don't really spend that much time with ourselves.

Why, why do we have to use the word boundaries? It sounds so cranky.

[laughs] I agree.

I, I'm not sure which psychological theorist came up with that word.

And I think the reason it has to be so strong is because we're so bad at practicing principles or alignment or protecting ourselves or respecting ourselves, that boundaries are the only way to truly show ourselves what's important to us, what's valuable to us, and what's true to us.

And so as much as we may not like the word, the word is strong because we sometimes need that.

How many of us have said yes when we wanted to say no because we didn't have a boundary? How many of us have sacrificed what we wanted because of what someone else wanted because we didn't have a boundary? And the risk of not having boundaries is so great on us that I think that's why we have the word boundary, because we have to really try so hard to stay disciplined and respect ourselves and stick to them.

And so I think it's, uh, it's, it's, uh...

Mm.

So Jay, how do you define love?

I define love romantically as when you like someone's personality, when you respect their values, and when you're committed to helping them achieve their goals.

And the reason why I define love that way is liking personality is obvious, and that goes back to, do I want to spend 200 hours with this person? Do I want to spend 2,000 hours with this person, and 20,000 hours with this person? Respecting someone's values, I use that word very carefully.

Most people feel that relationships are where you have the same values, and that you're on this magical search to find someone who believes in the same stuff you believe in.

That is so hard and so impossible, and I don't even want to put fairy dust on it.

I don't think that's gonna happen because people are so different.

We're wired so differently.

What is your advice for people that are in a relationship where both of the partners handle stress differently?

[laughs] Right.

But you, you've been living with for your whole life.

You can have clarity, so it's almost going back to the age-old wisdom of focus on what you can control.

Like, you can't control if someone loves you.

You can't control if someone likes you.

You can't control if someone's telling you the truth, but you can control if you're telling the truth.

You can control if you like yourself, and you can control if you're communicating that.

[laughs]

Are there any ways in which you feel like the spiritual tradition in which you were training is in tension with the life that you're living now?

First of all, I, I'm not su- yeah, I, I'd say that there's a understanding in spiritual tradition, which is all about how as humans, we tend to idolize or demonize things, and that the ultimate truth is to be able to utilize everything for a higher purpose.

And I think that's what's often missed.

And so there's a beautiful statement in the Gita, which I was talking about earlier, the Bhagavad Gita, that says, "Attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin." And so I think we often, in our Western understanding, see detachment as better than attachment.

However, our, the spiritual understanding is far more subtle and far more refined, that detachment doesn't mean aversion.

Detachment means you can be close to anything in the world and use it for a higher purpose.

Now, I'm not saying I'm doing that, and I'm not saying I live in that.

Uh, do you have any thoughts from our first conversation? Anything lingering?

Uh, tell us the place that you've chosen that you wanna talk about on the show today.

So I've chosen the monastery that I spent time in during my time as a monk in India.

It's two hours outside of Mumbai.

It's in a place called Palghar, P-A-L-G-H-A-R, and it's now this beautiful retreat center that people can visit.

But at the time, we were building it from forests and tiny villages.

Now it's a place people can visit.

But it's this special place near a beautiful river that's there now and four rocks at the top of this, it's a small hill, and there's a river that flows down through that area.

... that he taught you that you carry with you daily?

Yeah

... actually I would argue that some of the things, and I'm talking for myself, right? I can only talk for myself.

I'd argue and say a lot of the stuff I wear, the people around me don't even like it.But I like it.

It makes me feel comfortable.

It makes me feel confident.

It makes me feel like I app- Like, for me, I also like to dress up to feel how I wanna feel in this space.

So I'm comfortable in this.

Right

Yeah

... actually I would argue that some of the things ...

And I'm talking for myself, right? I can only talk for myself.

I'd argue and say a lot of the stuff I wear, the people around me don't even like it.But I like it.

It makes me feel comfortable.

It makes me feel confident.

It makes me feel like I app- Like, for me, I also like to dress up to feel how I wanna feel in this space.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, when you do something you don't want to do, it's because you're stressed.

When you react to someone in a way that you don't think is yourself, it's because you're agitated.

So, we act in unloving ways because we are putting ourselves under stress, irritation, agitation, or pressure.

And so for me, what I've realized that if I want to be my best loving self and be present with each and every person and be conscious of that energy, I have to learn to not put myself under so much stress that I can't be present.

So true.

...

the commitment I've made to myself is, I no longer want to ask for love in unloving ways.

So when someone can't get that ball rolling, how would you handle that?

The first thing I do, and I think you've already done this, but I think it's important to point it out, the first thing I do is I think about how many steps forward I took and how many steps back I took, and how often I did that on my own spiritual journey.

So I think about the time when I was that person who had all these grand ambitions and grand aspirations, but still fell short.

And I know in my spiritual journey, it was plenty cyclical and plenty two steps forward, three steps back.

And that allows me to have a expansion of my compassion again and empathy to be like, actually, when I was on that transition and that journey, that's exactly what it looked like for me.

I just forgot it because I'm somewhat on the other side now, and I've got better at those habits.

So that definitely is what avoids being a spiritual narcissist, because, you know, I think that's such an important part.

But how do you advise people to handle this in, in the times we're living in, because it is really obviously divisive and, and really scary for all of us?

Yeah.

There's a lot of people who feel so scared of being emotionally intimate, physically intimate, they just don't say it.

They don't, they're not as courageous as you to even let alone say it to themself, to say it out loud like you just have.

And I actually think that there's a truth in that, that the right person will actually know how to connect with.

And yes, there are some people who are gonna hear that or know that and think, "Oh, loser," whatever it is.

They are.

But those aren't the people for you.

Right.

Like, "Well, I can't leave a consulting job."

Yeah.

Thank you for saying that.

And the idea is everyone needs to become a professional quitter, right? It's like we need to get really good at quitting.

And as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking back to...

I remember when I decided to become a monk.

Pretty much no one around me understood why.

... and you've just been like, "You didn't do it this way, and I thought you had..." You know, like, "Nobody texted me on the thing, and nobody checked in on..." Like, we're so focused on what's not happening that you're blocking what actually is, and then you just keep preventing it from being an experience that's available to you right now.

(instrumental music plays)

No, it...

I was, I was listening to you, Michelle, and just relating in, in our own unique and different way to so much of what you said.

When I met my wife, I'd just left the monastery and I was in debt, I didn't have a job, and even though I was a first class honors degree graduate, I couldn't get a job because surprise, surprise, no one wanted to hire a former monk.

(laughs)

Yeah.

... is I've never felt pressure from her for a certain type of lifestyle, a certain set of things, even today.

And I think that's what allowed me to take more risks, it's what allowed me to dream bigger, it's what allowed me to try new things and fail and go backwards and forwards.