Where do you excel? Where do you truly shine? I want you to be so aware of that, and I want you to know that because when you know you have strengths and then you know your weaknesses, you can live between acceptance and assessment. But often we don't live in acceptance. We live in criticism because we only know our flaws. We know our flaws deeply, and we know our strengths weakly. And because we don't have a deep understanding of our own strengths, that's where a lack of
self esteem and self confidence comes from. Hey, everyone, welcome back to our Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. If you're listening, you're investing in your physical, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual health. On Purpose is the space, the safe space where we create conversations, dialogue, insights, research on how you can simply, practically and in a focused way, create change in your life. If you want to change habits,
you're in the right place. If you want to change and transform patterns of thought, you're in exactly the right place. And if you want to create change in the world, affect change in the world, you're in the right place. Thank you so much for joining me. My name is Jay Shetty. If you've been here before, I am so grateful to you. You mean the world to me. If you've never been here before and this is your first episode,
I want to thank you for being here. I am so deeply committed to this community that we have, and it has been astounding to me at how many of you are listening to episodes on the daily now, and the feedback I hear from you all is that the more you listen, the more you grow, the more you change, the more you're able to affect change in your lives and the people that you love. And that fills me with so much joy. It fills me with so much
excitement and happiness. So thank you so much for doing that. Now. Today's topic is something I've been thinking about for a while, and it's because it's something that's come up with my clients now. As some of you know, I'm a life coach, a relationship coach, and I work with different people. All
of my clients also have a therapist. I really believe in co serving with a therapist because I believe that therapists fantastically help people entangle their past and really makes sense of the thoughts and patterns that they've developed, and as a coach, it's really about building forward. But this was a theme that kept recurring in some of my sessions, and I would talk to a lot of my therapist friends about this a lot as well. And it's all
about narcism. And I started to find out that a lot of people that I was working with may have been dating a narcissist at one point in time, may have come up with someone or being with someone at some point in their life who had narcissistic personality disorder. And so I became more interesting did in this space. And so I've been researching learning about the space, and I wanted to share it with you today because I
think it's important. Today you will discover that approximately zero point five percent of the United States population, or one in two hundred people, has narcissistic personality disorder. And this is study from the Recovery Village. And so when you hear that number, you think, well, that's not a lot of people. I'm not likely to bump into someone. But we realize that there are a lot of people that are on that spectrum, and so some of us may have dealt with someone who's in an extreme case and
some people less so. But we start to recognize that there are also significant gender differences when it comes to the prevalence of the disorder. Says Recovery Village that seventy five percent of people with narcissistic personality disorder are men, and the demographics go on to give a bit more detail. Two to six percent of those seek help from mental health clinics, six percent of forensic analysts, twenty percent of people in the military, and seventeen percent of first year
medical students. Now, a lot of what I'm going to share with you today are more signs that you can notice in people. And even if that person doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder or MPD, they may have certain traits. And it's important for us to be mindful of these traits in people we meet and even in ourselves, because a lot of these traits can create a lot of
challenges moving forward for us and for our relationships. So sometimes when I reflect on this list, I actually find that there are elements of this in a lot of people, right, and it's just valuable for us to be aware so we can actually navigate our relationships better. So here are the ways to know if you're with the narcissist dating in our this may be married to one. Maybe you
have elements of this in yourself. And I want to do this in a safe space of acceptance and non judgment and encouraging us to find help and support, whether it's through therapy in the beginning and of course through coaching long term, to just encourage you to move towards that. Whether you're with someone that way, you know a friend who's in that scenario as well, because sometimes we find
out too late and act too late. So one of the first simplest ways that we start to notice that someone has narcissistic tendencies is that they struggle to talk about others for too long. The conversation has to constantly shift back to talking about them. So if they start a conversation, it will often be about them. If they start a conversation, it will often reflect on everyone talking
about them. They enjoy the idea of plant hunting the seed of a problem in a group of people and hearing what everyone has to say about them, And so we start to notice that if the conversation veers off, if the conversation goes in another direction, they will want
to drag the conversation back to them. Now, often when we're around these people will say things like, oh, well, they're so selfish, or they're so self centered, or we don't enjoy being around that kind of person because we always feel unheard or we feel like that person's unaware of us. And this can stay in relationships for years before someone asks for help or someone even knows that they have this trait, and it takes a lot of
courage as a friend to share this with them. And often we're not the right person, we may not be close enough, we may not have the trust of that individual, And I think we have to be aware of that that if you're going to say to someone that you know that they are self centered or selfish, or the conversation is always about them, it's important that you also
do this in a compassionate, loving way. It's very easy to assume that they should know and they should realize, but making them aware is extremely healthy if you're the right person, And of course doing it through the right person is even more important. Someone that that person trusts, respects, maybe even looks up to is what's truly needed. Now. An extended part of this Number two is that this person craves attention. Right, They crave attention. They want everything
at the party to be about them. They want everything at the event to be about them. They're not great at celebrating others. They struggle when someone else is the center of attention. Think about proposing at someone else's wedding,
think about announcing something at someone else's birthday. These are all methods to crave attention, and the Mayo Clinic says that although the cause of narcissistic personality disorder isn't known, some researchers think that in biologically vulnerable children, parenting styles
that are overprotective all neglectful may have an impact. Genetics and neurobiology also may play a role in the development of narcissistic personality disorder, so we start to recognize it's not that that person doesn't have a choice and you're feeling sorry for them, but it is understanding the context of how they got there. The Mayo Clinic also says that, as with personality development and with other mental health disorders, even though the cause is complex, there's three areas that
it can be linked to. The first is environment mismatches in parent child relationships with either excessive adoration or excessive criticism that is poorly attuned to the child's experience. I found this fascinating. Right, So, this idea that someone craves attention is because they received so much attention growing up for every tiny thing they did that they're now looking for everyone to give them the same thing. Or it was the opposite. They were given no attention for anything
they did, and so there's this natural movement towards it. Now. I'm sure as you're listening to this, you may be thinking, Jay, I feel like that a bit. There's times when I want attention because I didn't get any, or there's times when I want attention because my parents always gave me some. So you can start to notice how we all have different aspects of this within ourselves, within the development of
our own personality. Now, whether we notice it is one thing, whether someone else notices it is another, and whether it's a recurring pattern is another. So we start to see how the prevalence of this in our life is dependent on how obvious it is and how repetitive it is to the people around us. We often find that we can be self aware about something, but most people are round us don't notice it, or we're self aware and
someone notices it. And not only are we self aware, not only does someone notice it, but it is a repetitive cycle. Us being aware of it ourselves is really powerful because self awareness is where all change begins. But at the same time, there are lots of people in our lives, including us, who we sometimes miss this. We miss the understanding because from our perspective, we think we're right. Well,
of course I crave attention. Everyone craves attention, and we assume that because we crave attention, everyone must be craving the same thing. So now it makes it a competition. So we can find that in MPD and in terms of being a narcissist, that becomes this craving of competition. The other cause that comes up by the Mayo clinic is genetics inherited characteristics. Of course, if family members had aspects of this, we start to mirror it, we start
to replicate it. And then it is neurobiology, the connection between the brain and behavior and thinking. And of course the biggest area of negative impact this creates is in relationship difficulties, because we start to recognize that people really struggle to connect deeply with someone who has narcissistic tendencies, or we connect for a certain period of time, but then often people feel exhausted and drained. The third way to know that you're with a narcissist is that they
don't accept responsibility if they make a mistake. They're not vulnerable enough, they're not open enough to accept that they are part of the problem. And I think in relationships this often becomes a big, big, big issue because when someone doesn't take responsibility, sometimes we can take it all on ourselves and we think it's all our fault. We think it's all because of us, and when that person doesn't take responsibility, we can often start to feel like
we're the only ones responsible. All the opposite happens. We know we're not the only ones responsible, but we keep waiting, maybe even forcing, for them to take responsibility. But the penny hasn't dropped for them yet. They haven't had it click yet that they are a part of the challenge that exists. The fourth way of knowing is that they make you feel like you're wrong. That comes from the
last one. When someone doesn't accept responsibility. A big part of that is they make you feel like you're wrong. Now iver clients who've been in this space of being made to feel like they're the ones that are wrong, they're the ones that are responsible. And whenever they've been in this position, the thing that I found is that they internalize it. If you're sincere, if you're genuine, you start to internalize this, and this starts to play on
your own self worth and your own self esteem. And this is why I'm doing this episode because I believe that where we want to get to is this perfect balance of assessment and examination of ourselves but acceptance of ourselves. Right, you've got assessment of yourself, but you've got acceptance on you of yourself. That's where we want to live between those two words, when often what we live between is
perfection and completely pulverizing ourselves. Or we live between criticizing ourselves or falsely cheering ourselves on, or we live in between judging ourselves or trying to boost ourselves up. And what I find is that acceptance and assessment are healthier words. For example, should we assess whether we're improving and growing? Of course we should. Should we examine whether we've grown since last year and developed? Of course we should, but
when we do that in a critical way. So the question is, how do you assess yourself without being critical? How do you examine yourself without being judgmental? Here's a way to do it. The way to do it is be more regular and consistent with assessing yourself and having clear criteria. For example, let's say I'm really committed to become more organized. Right, Let's say that's a personal commitment for me, and so today I'll say, on a scale of one to ten, how organized do I think I am?
And let's say I give myself a five. This is hypothetical, by the way, I consider myself to be very organized. And now I come up with a plan to be organized, and in a month's time, I ask myself the same question, how organized do I think I am? And I may say, well, I'm at six. Now I'm measuring progress, and because I've done that month on month and now twelve months, I could say, oh, I'm out a seven and a half.
That's amazing. I've gone up two and a half points done when I started, and now I feel really confident about this area. The mistake we make is what we kind of just think about in our head, but we don't have a scale. We make it subjective. We ask ourselves randomly on any given day when something goes wrong, how we feel about ourselves, and of course we don't rate ourselves highly. We've been getting so many amazing reviews for The Daily Jay, my new daily guided meditation series
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the many anxieties of the world today. I have recently downloaded the car mapp thanks to my mom. My mom and I are big fans of yours, and once she heard that you will have seven minutes of Daily Jay each day, she encouraged me in doing this. Your meaningful ideas and meditation have quickly become part of my daily routine, so much that I've begun incorporating some of them into
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for a daily guided meditation. Experience the Daily j only on Calm. The next thing to do is to be as clear with yourself about your strengths as you are about your weaknesses. I find that a lot of us are unable to name our strengths, but we find it very easy to reel off a list of weaknesses. What are your strengths? What are the parts of your life that you feel really confident about? And if you struggle with this, I want you to ask a colleague, I
want you to ask a friend. I want you to ask a family member, and I want you to ask a parent. Where do you excel? Where do you truly shine? I want you to be so aware of that, and I want you to know that, because when you know you have strengths, and then you know your weaknesses, you can live between acts seputance and assessment. But often we don't live in acceptance. We live in criticism because we only know our flaws. We know our flaws deeply, and
we know our strengths weakly. Let me repeat that, we know our flaws deeply, and we know our strengths weakly or shallowly. And because we don't have a deep understanding of our own strengths, that's where a lack of self esteem and self confidence comes from. Number five is superiority complex. Apart from making you feel like you're the one that's wrong. There's a way of making you feel inferior. You don't work as hard as them, you don't work as fast
as them, you don't work as smart as them. Right, if your partner always compares themselves to you or you to them, you start to notice that this isn't a healthy trait. Now, what do you do in that case? What do you do when your partner does this? The first thing is to make them aware that you don't think it's fair, you don't think it's clear, that you don't think it's the right way to feel encouraged. We
have to give the person the opportunity to become aware. Now, if they still don't change, chances are they will need therapy, that they will need support. And as I go through this podcast, I'll also add that you have to set boundaries because a lot of the times this person is using you as a punching bag in their journey to perfection, right, and they're never going to get to perfection, so they're
going to keep punching trying to release that pressure. And so you have to be really careful that you don't allow yourself to become a punching bag to be made to feel inferior consistently, which it takes people years to recover and rebound from things like this. To this group number six is everything feels like a threat to them. Everyone you mentioned, any person, any idea, It starts to
feel like a threat. And the reason why I'm making you aware of that is because I don't want any of you to get caught in the act of feeling like what you're doing is wrong. I think a lot of people live in this fear in their relationships that I'm doing something wrong and my partner is upset. Now, it's different if you cheat on someone, is different if you lie, it's different if you steal. But often we think we're doing something wrong because they make everything feel
like a threat. You're meeting up with a friend you care about, you're meeting up with an old friend, you're starting a new job, you're applying for something new, you're getting advice from someone, and you might start to say, well, you know, everyone has these traits. Of course we do. We all have this because of how we were raised, and it's good to be aware of these things in people. Because we are, they're not surprised. I think so much of the time we get surprised. We think, oh, but
they loved me. But then we unpack it and we go, oh, wait a minute, I saw all those things. I just ignored them, right, I just ignored them. The next one is they switched the commode to themselves. Whenever you say something, they switched it back to themselves. And this was something I had to train myself out of. I found that I always thought it was a way of building rapport, and I started to realize how it wasn't effective lessening.
So if someone says to me, oh my gosh, I just went skydiving this year, rather than me saying how was that experience for you, my reaction was like, oh, yeah, I went last year as well. It was amazing. And So I found that actually being a better listener, actually asking better questions, has allowed me to reduce some of these tendencies by me saying how is that experience for you? Like what was your favorite part about it? What was the worst part about it? And then me sharing my
experience actually builds up a much healthier bond. So even if you're listening to this, and I hope you are noticing some of these traits within yourself that you start to recognize that you don't want to treat yourself this way either. Sometimes we take out our nasism on ourself. Now. Number eight is taking credit. Often the narcissist wants to take credit for everything, whether they did it or not, and they will find a way to scoop up the credit whether they did it or not. Something to be
very wary of. And as you can notice, some of these are very normal. And when you're first starting a relationship, it's so easy to be blinded by love. It's so easy to think, oh, yeah, no, that's fine, and then as time goes on, we start to go, oh, I knew this. I noticed this, so I wanted to flag that one to you. And number nine and ten. Number nine is a really subtle one, and I found that, you know, there were elements of this that I did as well in my relationship that I had to really
work on. This was reclaiming difficult moments as yours. So if your partner says I had a really long day to day, you'd say, we'll tell me about it. Had a longer day, right, or oh my gosh, I'm really stressed about this week and you're like, well, tell me about it. I've got so much I'm stressed about this week. Someone says I've got a lot of planning to do for this meeting, and you say, well, I've got ten of those meetings this week. So you're reducing the other person.
This is almost accumulation of all the other areas where you reduce the other person's efforts because you're reclaiming difficulty as your badge. You've honor. And I have spent a lot of time noticing this in myself, and when I've done that, because again, I want a little bit of attention, and you know all of us do, and so being able to accept that and say okay. There were times in my relationship with Radi where she would tell me she's stressed about something and I'd be like, well, I'm
more stressed than you. I imagine what I've got on. And then you start to realize, well, why am I minimizing? She wasn't comparing her stress to me. She wasn't trying to say that her stress was bigger than mine or greater than mine. But because I'm not feeling heard myself, and because I'm not vocalizing how I feel myself, I want to use her vocalization as my opportunity. If you use someone else's opportunity for vulnerability as a chance to
vocalize your own feelings, you are reducing their voice. You're reducing their vulnerability. Take a moment to reflect on yourself. It's so easy for us to listen to these and think about other people, but it is important to see some of this in ourselves and again to safely assess and accept ourselves for how we are. We're not bad people. We've adopted some poor habits and patterns. Right. If you have a bad diet, it doesn't make you a bad person.
It just means you picked up some unhealthy habits along the way that have become your normality. If a car's driving through the mud and it gets muddy, it doesn't make the car mud. It just means that it rolled in some mud. It picked up some mud along the way. But it can be washed, it can be cleansed, it can be detoxed if you like, it can be purified. And that is the same with us. And number ten is a term called love bombing. This is probably the
hardest one. It's when people are overly loving in the beginning, they're treating you, they're complimenting you. They're going all out telling you how special you are, how important you are, how amazing you are. They're excessively intense. They put you on a pedestal, they give you extra gifts and positive compliments,
and it just gives you so much energy. And if you're one of these people, I hope you hear this because it makes other people feel like they are going crazy right when you exaggeratedly fall in love with someone, and the reason you're doing it is because you want them to think you're amazing. You overlove in the beginning, because you want someone else to think you're amazing. You want them to say you are the best thing that ever happened to me. You want them to say you're
the most incredible thing that ever happened to me. And then all of a sudden, when you run out of that, you dropped them, and you say, hey, I don't think we had anything real. I don't think there was anything between us. I didn't really feel the spark, I didn't really feel the chemistry. I tried my best I overloved
you. You You didn't love me back enough. And that's another thing we loved in order to be loved back but the other person can't keep up with that exaggerated, inflated flattery, and so then we go, oh, well, you never love me the same as I loved you, And so how many of you have ever experienced that in your life where someone is so excessively, exaggeratedly in love with you, you feel like this is going somewhere promising, and then
they lean away. If you've been through that, I just want you to understand that that is a challenge for someone. That is something they're dealing with. And I know everything about you makes you want to think you did something wrong or you messed up, and chances are it was a trait that made them do that, especially if you were just happy and going along. And I just want you to take a moment again to assess what happened, but accept yourself to where you are. If you've experienced
any of this, what have you got to learn? What do you do? One of the biggest things is developing this understanding of your strengths. Your self esteem not based on what someone sees in you, but what you see in yourself. That is self esteem. Self esteem is not based on what others see in you. It's based on what you see in yourself. Self confidence is not what other people notice, it's what you wear, and naturally, whether people notice or not, it's always there. I want you
to thank you for listening to this episode. I really hope that it helped. I want you to share it with a friend because I want people to be aware that sometimes the people that they're with, the conversations that they're having that often it's really really important that people find help and support and therapy. That we don't just allow them to be this way and just keep dealing with it and think, oh, yeah, we're trying to help
them and we can help them out of this. We need talented, skilled experts and professionals to support people out of these Do not put that pressure on yourself. I think so many people in relationships are trying to be their partner's therapist. It's really tough to do that and it isn't your role, it's not your job, but helping them to find help is an amazing thing you can do. And I want to end by reading some amazing reviews and I thank you so much. We're growing every week
in reviews. We're nearly at the twenty thousand goal for the end of this year, so please, please, please, It would mean the world to me if you left a review. This is a review from Sarah. She says I've resisted podcasts for some reason, but realize now that it can be just like a breath of fresh air in a world with such high demand. Listening to your guidance is a wonderful way to slow down and make the most of moments we have. Thank you so much. This is
from Krista Jay. Your podcast has changed my life for the better. I was going through a tough time with anxiety, depression, and panic attacks when I came across your book Think like a Monk. The book helped me so much, and I tell everyone I know to read it. I started listening to your podcast while I was reading the book, and I haven't stopped listening since. You always have had such good wisdom and helpful advice. I take something away
from every single one that makes my life better. Thank you so much for everything you do, and I'm going to read one more because there's so many beautiful one. This one is from Courtney. I've started my work day with you for the past couple of months. Something about your voice an unbiased advice brings me such peace and energy to greet the day ahead of me. I love learning something new with your guests, and I just want to thank you for bringing me calm, wisdom, and happiness
each day. Thank you all who've left a review. Thank you to everyone who's listening. I hope you're enjoying this week's episode as soon