Hey everyone, I'm so excited because we're going to be adding a really special offering onto the back of my solo episodes on Fridays. The Daily Jay is a daily series on Calm and it's meant to inspire you while outlining tools and techniques to live a more mindful, stress free life. We dive into a range of topics and the best part is each episode is only seven minutes long, so you can incorporate it into your schedule no matter
how busy you are. As a dedicated part of the on Purpose community, I wanted to do something special for you this year, so I'll be playing a handpicked Daily Jay during each of my Friday podcasts. This week, we're tackling the topic of mindset and how to approach life with focus, perspective, and positivity. Of course, if you want to listen to The Daily Jay every day, you have to subscribe to Calm, So go to calm dot com forward slash j for forty percent off your membership today.
Hi that season, Welcome to a brand new almost adulting, the largest self love podcast and movement, your number one destination for personal growth and mental health. I'm your big sister and your host Bioletta. So our guest today is Jay Shaddy. He is the number one New York Times best selling author of the books Think Like a Monk and his newest one, which we'll discuss today, A Rules of Love. He's also the host of the award winning podcast On Purpose and Chief Purpose officer of Calm Welcome.
Hey, thank you so much for having me. It's so nice to be in your home. I appreciate it. Thank you for being so welcoming and gracious.
Yeah, and I also love that your eyes match. You're sure looks really good.
Oh, thank you. I appreciate that.
You know, only two percent of people in the world have green eyes.
I did not know that. Is that true?
Are you joking?
I genuinely did not know that.
Oh. I just assume anyone agreed you were part of the two percent?
Yeah, my wife, Oh, you're right, Okay, do you have green eyes?
Maybe? God? Okay, then it would just seemed like everyone has. Yeah, that's so funny. I actually not know that. I feel like normally people with a blue or green eyes were like, look in my eyes.
It's so funny. I feel like when you grow up with something, whether it's eyes or a skill, or whatever it maybe you don't notice it, like you don't notice it as much when you have something. You notice it when other people notice it, because yeah, you kind of see as normal.
Oh yeah, I guess I guess you're right. That's true. All right, So I'm just shallow, not cool? No, okay, So before we dive into your book, which we have here if you're watching the video, this is right here. It's an awesome book and I've been loving it. But before we dive into the book, I thought it'd be nice to kind of get to know you, since on your show a lot of the time you dive into your guests, So I thought this was finding that.
Let's do it.
Your journey has taken you from being a monk to becoming a popular motivational speaker, New York Times bestselling author, and I was kind of wondering, how did you make that transition and what was the biggest challenge you would say that you face during that process.
I mean, the transition is like you're looking at like ten years, you know, of time in between. So I left the monastery exactly ten years ago right now, and so the journey you see is like it looks quick online sometimes, but then the actual journey is so much more slower and harder. And I'd said the transition happened in so many different phases, and that's kind of how
I think a lot of our life transitions happened. So when I left the monastery, I ended up moving back in with my parents in London, and for like twelve months I was just struggling to find work. No one wanted to hire someone who had been a monk before. People were like, what are your transferable skills? Sitting still and being silent, Like, we don't need that, right, And so I just spent a lot of time like trying to find myself again, reconnect again. I'd forgotten how to
do small talk. This would have been really tough for me to do like I would have. I didn't know who the Prime Minister of England was. I didn't know who won the World Cup. I didn't know what the latest movies were or music was. I had no idea, And so there was a whole period that was just reconnecting. And so the version of me you see today is like going back to being myself and reconnected again. But at that time, there was this whole phase of just
reintegration and reconnecting with society. And then after that, I went back into the world of work, which really helped me kind of get a sense of what was going on and how things were. And then after working in the corporate world for around two three years, that's when I was like, I don't feel like this is my purpose. I don't feel like this is what I was meant to do. I feel like I had that experience because I wanted to share what I'd learned to help people.
I've learned all these amazing techniques like meditation and mindfulness, and I've learned so many disciplines, and I've learned so much incredible wisdom from this experience. My goal must be to have to share it with people, right And I was sharing it while I was working in the companies and everything. So the biggest challenge I'd say I've had, which I think hopefully will relate to the people that are watching and listening right now, is allowing yourself to change,
allowing your self to say I want to be more. Yeah, and it's okay to want to transform and change and grow. I don't have to stay stuck. I don't have to stay the same. If I don't want to. And I think that's the greatest challenge that you go through, is allowing yourself, giving yourself the permission to be more of who.
You are, right Because normally before you make that decision or say that to yourself, a lot of times people first look at that as failure. They think, oh, I failed exactly, versus saying I'm allowed to change my mind anytime, or I'm allowed to wake up today and decide that this is not enough for me. So how do you kind of switch from feeling like a failure or not enough versus being like, no, this is just you know, rock bottom, just only up from here.
Yeah. Well, I look at it as how much time we have, right, Like, I think that a lot of us don't recognize a lot of us now today feel like, gosh, I'm getting old. And it's like we're not even that old, right, true, Like you're in your thirties, your forties, or even your fifties, and if you're in your twenties, definitely definitely not. And if you're in your teens, you're definitely not. And it's like we start putting this timeline and deadline on where we're at, and I kind of look at life and
go There is no timeline or deadline. There is no schedule, and I think we think about life as a schedule because someone in our life told us go to college, get a good job, get married, buy a house, like whatever. It is. Right, there was this laid out plan, and we're measuring ourselves according to that plan, as opposed to saying, wait a minute, there is no plan. I can only live my life. And so I think we have to disconnect from society's approach to what life should look like
and recognize there is no should look like. There's only the life you want to live.
Yeah. I agree, over the course of your career, of everything you've done. But would you say the worst advice you've ever gone.
Ah, that's a good question. I'd actually say it applies to that. The worst advice I've ever got is you're too old, you're too young, you're too early, you're too late, you're too underco you too overqualified. I feel like we put these extremes on we put these limits, boundaries, deadlines, schedules onto people, and I think that's bad advice. The amount of people that have said to me, Jay, I think you're too old to be doing this, or you're too young to be doing this, or Jay, you know what,
you're just too underqualified for this role. Like I think I've heard that so many times, and I think we start to internalize these statements and then we give up on our dreams or the things that are important to us. And I think we live in a world right now where I see you know, you see seventy year old YouTubers, you see you know, you see ten year old YouTubers. You see people doing things as in when they want
and can, And I think we've changed. I think the world has shifted and changed where like someone may say, well, I wanted to be an athlete and I'm too old to be a premier league football player. Sure, but that doesn't mean you can't play football on the weekends or the evenings, or it doesn't stop you from doing what you want to do. And I think that's the worst advice that I've ever heard of, Like, it's not going to work. That's not a good idea. It's only not a good idea if you don't try it out.
Yeah, I mean my mom, whenever I'm afraid of doing anything, my mom always taught me that I'm only quote unquote a loser because I've always get scared of being a loser. If I fail people, everyone will know. But she said, you're only a loser if you don't try. Yeah, and I agree. Do you feel that sometimes when people give you that advice you're too young or too old this, and that is because they're projecting because they're scared they can never do it.
Yeah, I think it comes and I have compassion for that because I think we all project our limits onto other people, and we all project our insecurities onto other people. It's like if your friend says to you, oh, I'm thinking about moving country and you've thought about it before, but you don't think it's a good idea or you're
scared about it now. When they say, you go, oh no, no, but have you thought about this, this and this, and you like, you give them your thought process and they're like, yeah, but those are not things I worry about. So I think a lot of us, when we're giving advice or receiving advice, need to recognize we need to not project our insecurities and our issues onto other people. And saying, when you hear advice from other people, make sure that
you're not just adopting their insecurities and their issues. You have to filter that out for yourself.
Yeah, I agree. When my family and I won the Green Card lottery, all of our family members sold us not to move. It would be so stupid from my father this age. He was in his fifties, and thank god, my dad didn't listen, and he moved our family to the US, and then everyone else wanted to follow our footsteps afterwards.
Yeah, exactly. That's a great example, right, And I think that happens with everything. It's like your friend says to you, you know what, I'm thinking of quitting my job, and I want to start a podcast, or I want to you know, whatever it may be. Now, you've also got to understand that when your friend projects their issues and insecurities, we shouldn't be upset about that. It's just someone trying to care for you and they're trying to show you
love or they're looking out for you. And often thinking it through is actually pretty helpful. Because I also think we live in a world that you know, I feel like we also just take these big rush changes as well, Like I think a lot of us are also living the other extreme, where it's like, Oh, I'm just going to do it anyway, it doesn't matter. Yeah, And it's like,
maybe the middle approach is better. Like when I was trying to find my passion in my purpose, I was also working a day job that paid my bills, and I spend my evenings and weekends doing what I love. And I think that that transition's healthy because it provides safety, it provides support, Whereas if I would have just thrown everything away and made this jump, maybe it wouldn't have worked because you don't create great work out of scarcity.
You don't create great work out of fear and insecurity. Oh.
I like that. That is a really good point. Also, like the fact that you looked at the other perspective of the fact that your friends or your family all that they're not coming from a bad place when they're giving you quote nquote poor advice. They're actually coming because that's all they know and they're just trying to be helpful. That's a nice perspect I just.
Want to live with no bidterness in my heart. You know, I made that commitment a long time ago. I was like, I don't want to live having bitter feelings or negative feelings towards any person or any group of people, because it doesn't carry me well, Like, it doesn't make me feel good to walk around with a bitter heart.
I like that, and I know you focus a lot about that, and I've spoken about that on my podcast as well, that people don't understand how much negative emotions can actually affect your to day life.
Yeah. Absolutely. I think there's three things that I talk about which I learned during my time in the monastery. It's in my first book, Think like a Monk. Our teachers would call it the cancers of the mind. And so they said, complaining, comparing, and criticizing with the cancers of the mind. When we complain reoccurringly, we lose control of the situation. When you're complaining, you're basically saying I can't influence this. So when you lose influence, you lose
your ability to transform your life. When you compare, you're setting yourself up for failure. Because here's the thing. If you feel ahead of other people, you'll always feel behind other people in both ways. So if you're like I'm now feeling ahead of the pack, that means one day you'll feel behind. If you're saying now I'm number one, one day you'll feel like number two. And so when we place these comparisons, we think when we're at the top,
it will feel amazing. It won't because if you lived your life on comparison, even if you're at the top, you're now insecure and unsettled because you're like, what if I lose this spot? And so comparing and then criticizing is probably the most obvious one out of all of them. Like, I remember when we were kids, we would watch people on TV, me and my friends, and we'd laugh at like, how's that person on TV? They're not even talented? Like who are they? Who do they think they are? But
then what were we doing? We were just sitting on our couches. So I remember being that kid where we were just so critical of other people. And as time's gone on, I realized that but that person tried. They put themselves out there. Yes they may be made mistakes, Yeah they're probably not perfect, but at least they put themselves out there, whereas I'm sitting on the couch, you know, criticizing and so removing, complaining, comparing and criticizing. Now, that
doesn't mean you can't open up to your friends. It doesn't mean you can't share how you feel like. I'm not saying you can't do any of that stuff, but I'm just saying being mindful of that can help.
How do we then shift our mindset from being negative to weak? Because it's easier said than done to be like, oh today, I'm happy and everything's going to be good. And people, I think put too much weight on emotions in general. They think being sad or angry at whatever it is is negative, it's bad versus just passing emotion. So how do you kind of able to shift those feelings?
Yeah, so I feel like there's there's four things that we're experiencing at any moment, our thoughts, our actions, our feelings, and that in a sense of knowing that we all have. So you have your thinking, your behaving, your feeling, and your knowing. And what you just said is, and I agree with you, we place way too much emphasis on our feelings. And our feelings are like you just said, they're near, they can move, they can pass, they're here,
they're gone. They change. But the way you change your feelings is not with how you feel. The way you change your feelings is by how you think, how you act and how you know, And so I spend more time trying to think. Am I happy with the thoughts in my head? Not? Am I feeling happy? Oh?
I like that.
Am I happy with what I do with my day?
Not?
Am I feeling happy? Because if I change my thoughts and I change my actions, I will change how I feel. But I'm not going to change my feelings by my feelings.
That's really interesting. That's a really good perspective.
Thank you. Yeah, I've been really spending a lot of time on that recently because I agree with you so much that I wake up feeling tired. Sometimes I wake up feeling like, oh I don't want to get up today.
I have those feelings, those.
Feelings, Yeah, I genuinely do, and I realized, but that feeling, I can't do anything with it. All I can do is accept it. I'm not going to pretend it's not there. I'm not going to pretend to be positive. I'm not going to say I'm Jay Shelley. I have to pretend to be positive. That's not going to help anyone. And I wouldn't say to anyone, Hey, just say something positive, dear, so I'll be happy. That doesn't work. That's toxic positivity.
And so what I would suggest is focus on let me change my thoughts and let me change my actions. So if I now change my thought to be I am tired, but I will sleep early tonight. Right, I am feeling a bit upset this morning, I'll reflect for a few minutes today in journal to figure out what's going on. Right, all of a sudden, I've changed my thought from being I'm tired to I'm tired and I'll sleep early. And I've added a behavior which means my thoughts and behaviors will change how I feel.
I love that, right, so, and as a solution, because I think a lot of times we don't realize that whatever we're feeling has to do with other things. Like for the longest time, I was anxious with driving, and I kept thinking it was because I was just scared of driving. And then I really sat I went backwards to figure out why am I so scared of driving? And I realized because when I get on the road, on the freeway specifically, I have no control over other people.
And I was like, oh, it's my control issues. And then once I processed, okay, I cannot control other people, I can control myself in my car. So once I came to that process, I realized, I'm not scared of driving. I'm just a control freak and I need to get over it.
That's a great example, And that's a great example if you have to change your thoughts in order to change how you feel. You can't just say I'm going to be a good driver. I love driving. Everything's okay, Like you can't just say that. It doesn't solve the problem. So I love that example. That's a great.
Example, right, But I don't think I always realize that. That's how I think. So I love the everything that you said because it's a reminder from myself because a lot of times I can be in my feelings and I love Yeah, I love the processing backwards. Okay, what can I do? What actions can I take to change this? I love that. So then, what would you say, in the course of your career, the best advice you've ever gone? I mean you have so many, that's a good.
Guy, best advice I've ever got, and I want to give you something really special and thoughtful. So let me think.
By the way, we have the same editor, so he knows exactly how to cut everything.
Right, yeah, Oh, I love No, you can leave this in there. I like the reality of me thinking about something because I really want to honor it's a great question, and I don't just want to say something. It's like, I'd rather give you something that I really really feel
is the best advice I've ever heard. I remember sitting with one of my mentors once he passed away from stage four brain cancer around three years ago, and losing him was tough because he was the first person i'd call when something good happened, and he'd be the person
I want to share it with. And I remember, years before my external online journey happened, before people were aware of my work, I was sitting with him and I said to him, I said, I have so many ideas, and I have so many things I want to do, and I don't know where to start. And I think this is a common thing that I hear a lot of people say to me today, where it's like I could start a company, I can start this. I want to write a book, I want to do a podcast,
I want to do social media. Whatever. It is that people have so many ideas, but it's like where do I start. And he said to me Jay. He said, he said start everything. He said open every door, and he said doors will naturally start to close or some won't open. Just keep walking through the ones that stay open. And if I look at the last five years of my life, seven years of my life that I've been doing this online externally, I can honestly say that that's
all I've done. I've knocked on every door. Some have opened, some haven't, and some have opened and then later closed, and I've just kept walking through the ones that stay open. And the reason why I think it's the best advice I ever received is we often paralyze ourselves with procrastination of choice of what do I do, Where do I start, what's the perfect route, what's the perfect path, what's the right thing for me to do? And it's like you have no idea. You can only try everything and see
what feels right and see what stays open. But it's not up to you to figure it out in your head what your purpose is. I think a lot of us are trying to figure out our passion, our purpose, our career path, our hobbies, everything in our head. And it's like you're not going to figure out in your head. You're going to see it unfold in front of you. And so I'd say that was the best advice I ever heard.
That is actually beautiful, amazing advice, and I think it's always inspiring. I mean, you know in the back of your head that every person that you look up to, or every person that's out there that seems very successful, you know in the back of your head, oh, they must have failed once or twice, but you forget. So it's interesting whenever when I hear you speak and then you mentioned, oh, a lot of doors have closed, and then I just keep going for the ones to open.
You're like, right, of course, I forget that for a second.
Yeah, And that pleased everyone. I can honestly say, with every person I know that is massively successful, and every person that I've worked with or coached or had on the podcast or whatever it may be, every single one of those people will say that they still have doors closed on them. So to speak of myself, there are people who are far more prolific in their fields that still go through the same thing. And I think that
that actually is the reminder. Like to me, I love studying people's lives that I love, and I encourage everyone who admires anyone. Don't just watch that person's TV show and movie, don't just listen to their music, study their life, right, study their life, actually look at how they lived. So for me, I grew up studying Steve Jobs's life because I was a big fan of Steve Jobs. And if you look at the amount of failure that guy has had is insane. Like he got kicked out of his
own company. Imagine building Apple and being kicked out of the company you build. I don't think there's a bigger failure than that, or a bigger rejection than that. Then he went and built Pixar and then went back to Apple. Like, it's an incredible story. And I think when you uncover that, you go, oh, well, if that hapen to Steve Jobs, then it's okay. If it happens to me, right, and you get used to it.
I love that. Yeah, I love that you forget. Especially with social media now, a lot of times people just focus on everyone's highlight reels and they forget all the failing because no one's really gonna sit there, like, hey, guys, today really sucked. So like I haven't showered in four days anyway, by my book, like you're not gonna you know, it's hard to always be that open.
Yeah. And also I think, like, stop just following people on Instagram, stop just watching people's TV shows, stop just watching people's movies, and listen to people's music. Study the lives of the people you love and admire. Study their lives, and that will inform your life's path so much more genuinely and authentically. Instead of just watching and following people, let's start understanding them so that we can follow in their footsteps in our own way, in our own lives.
I like that. That's part of taking a chance on your own life versus just living through someone else's life exactly. I really like that. Okay, so then, what's one advice you've gone over the course of your career that you wish you would have listened to earlier?
Oh? Great questions? All right, and I'm pronouncing your name Violetta.
Right, yeah, Violetta Violet.
Yeah, no, no, no, I like saying it like I said. I all, I remember from my Russian classes thre Ust three minas Jay, that's so good. I remember. This is really embarrassing, but I was fifteen years old, so I was fifteen years old. When we studied Russian in school, we learned how to speak and write. I could speak and write fluently for that year, and we went to Russia on a school trip. So I went to Saint Petersburg in Moscow.
I'm from Saint petersh Way.
It's beautiful, like I loved. I literally fell in love with the Russia when I visited that.
I always say thank you. People tell me where I'm farm as beautiful as if like I created it. I'm like, thank you so much.
I get that. And and this is the embarrassing part. I used to think I was really cool when I was fifteen and walk around telling young girls that I saw that that they were really beautiful in Russian, and I thought they'd find me cute. But then I realized that the language I was using was more telling them that they look like a beautiful building. Like It's more like it's the language. So you can translate this for me and say, if I'm saying it, I still remember it.
It's that strong, it's toy orchin crassy boy? Am I saying that? What am I actually saying?
No, you're saying it, but you're saying it to a boy.
Right, Oh, Wow, there we go. Even better, there we go. That's what I'm saying.
You're saying it to a boy.
You actually say that, Okay, and you said boy boy.
Yeah, that's like you're either saying it to a boy, you're saying it to an object.
That's amazing. All right. Anyway, there's my embarrassing story from you.
Still in Russia.
No, I can't. I can't. I wish I could. I didn't have. Again, it comes down to any skill in the world. I didn't have Russian, like I didn't have any friends that spoke the language. I didn't you know. But anyway, I digress. Your question was not telling me embarassing stories.
About big secret. I can't write or read in Russian, but people always forget that, so they'll write to me listeners and things like that. I'll write to me in Russian and then I asked my mom what it means, and then I respond to them in Russian, and my mom actually has been writing it for me because some people don't actually know that I can't read. Itsh it's embarrassing.
I get that, I get Yeah.
Sorry, your question was what advice that I wish.
I practiced sooner?
Yeah?
I think there's something really interesting about speed and pace in life and especially career. As you asked a question about career. When you're starting out, you have to make a lot of quick decisions and you have to move quite fast in order to get something off the ground. But that comes with a lot of mistakes and baggage, and sometimes you set yourself up for issues in the future.
And I found that I'm happy I started fast, but I think as things grew fast as well, I wish I slowed down earlier to really take the time to be really mindful about certain career choices and about even the people you invite into your life through work and careers. And so I think sometimes when you're moving fast, you like you just work with everyone, you work with anyone. You just want to get on with it. You want to get going. People would always say your team is
the most important thing. The people around you the most important thing. And today I am so grateful for the amazing team I have around me, and He's in the room, and a bunch of incredible people that I have in my team who I'm so proud of. But I think that the idea of being selective and thoughtful wasn't always there for me because you're just trying to move and get stuff done, and I think there's a time and
place for that. I'm not saying you shouldn't be that way, because in the beginning you just got to go with it. But I wish I started thinking about that earlier. And I'm glad I figured it out now, but I wish I could I could have thought about that even earlier.
I like that. I think that is really good advice we do forget to slow down. And I mean I think even when I'm asking you a question and you take a second to think it through, the atmosphere in the room changes, suddenly I slow down and then I wait for you to speak. So I just it is interesting how slowing down in general is really good.
Yeah. And I think we think slowing down means achieving less, Yeah, And I don't think that's true. I think slowing down can actually make you more impactful. If you look at some of the best I'm a big fan of rap and hip hop music, or I was growing up at least like Kendrick Lamar takes like two to three years to create an album like He's slowed down, right, But every time it comes out, everyone's really excited and they're pumped, and the album's always dope and everyone's like, Wow, that's
art or that's a masterpiece. And so not everyone's going to be okay with waiting three years for an album. Yeah, but if that's what you're trying to create, then that's what it's going to take.
Yeah. I like that, and I think it's really important for anyone out there, is the slowing down. And then I think also there's just that memory of the fact that you kind of brush with it in the beginning about how in a way, if someone's giving you advice and some what you want to hear, it's you may
just be in the wrong room. I think a lot of people stop too fast, you know, they're just instead of slowing down, just being like, okay, and I've done I've done stand up a while back of one of my shows, and I kind of explained that, you know, if today no one laughed at my jokes, I'm not going to just give up. It just means I was in the wrong room and I'm just going to keep going to the until I find the right people in
the right room. So but I like that because I have to do with all the doors they close on you and open and you're slowing down and find me correct teams. So very monk, I'm very bad at slowing down.
So mine, so am I. I think it's it's the pace of the world we live in, right, I think even you look at let's look at the creator world like you look at someone like mister Beast who shifted to being like, I'm only going to create a video every month. Most YouTubers up until now thought they had to create a YouTube video every day. Right, And here's you know, the biggest guy on YouTube of all time going, I'm going to create one video a month and it's
going to be the best video ever. But I'm going to make one video a month, or maybe two videos a month. But it was different because we grew up, Like up until the last couple of years, YouTubers were making videos every day.
Well, it's always someone that starts it. Logan started Itgan, he.
Did a great job with it. Two when he did that.
And then he was over it. But then because he starts something, then everyone else thinks they have to catch up. That's a comparison part exactly. I just have to keep up. I have to keep up with people are going to forget about me versus I'm here to create art and you need to slow down.
And it may work for that person. Like there are certain people who can make incredible things every day. I'm not saying there aren't people. I mean there's TV shows, there's radio shows that make something amazing every day. I think it's about figuring out what you want to make and not comparing it. So if you know what you want to make, you're not trying to keep up to someone else's pace. Yeah, and I think we're trying to keep up with someone else's speed rather than setting our own pace.
What's the biggest lie you've ever told yourself?
Ooh? Or this could go one of two ways. One is that I'm not good enough and the other one is I am good enough. And I'll explain. So when you tell yourself the lie I'm not good enough, a lot of us get into that self sabotage critical judgmental behavior. We just talked about comparison, complaining and criticizing. Often we complain, compare, and criticize more about ourselves than we do anyone else, So we look in the mirror. I hate the way I look we have a meeting with someone, Oh, they're
much smarter than I am. We are applying for a job or looking for an opportunity, and we think I'm not good enough, and we lie to ourselves because we'd rather than not put ourselves in the risky position of trying and accept failure before someone else rejects us. We often feel it's better to reject ourselves than for someone to reject us, and then that replays in our minds and we keep saying I'm not good enough, and it's
a lie because you don't know. And when you try something, when you give it a go, when you take an opportunity, you often realize you're better at things than you imagined. You're better at things than you ever thought you could be because you tried. And I've had personal experience of that, where you know, I was a really shy kid growing up, but my parents forced me to go to public speaking school when I was eleven years old. And they forced me to go because they were scared that I wouldn't
be confident as a speaker. And they were right because before then I used to get When I was seven years old, I remember going on stage and the audience thought I was not great as a performer as a speaker.
So you were seven, Yeah, I mean you think you would do better.
Well, let me tell you. Let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you the story about what happened. I was asked to speak at a school assembly and I was asked to speak and sing from my culture, so from the Indian culture, and I was dressed in traditional Indian clothes. Now growing up, I was overweight and I was wearing these clothes and I didn't look so great in them, especially in front of the kids at my school. So I walked out and all the kids in the
school started laughing. I then started singing. I do not have a good singing voice. I started singing this prayer in my language and from where my parents are from, and everyone started laughing more Jesus. And then I started crying because I felt so embarrassed on stage. And then I forgot the words and I looked down and my tears had smudged the words, so I completely lost track, and then everyone's completely lost it. And then my teacher has to come on stage, put an arm around me
and walk me off, which is even more embarrassing. As a seven year old, and so that was my first experience of public speaking, and so my parents really want me to go to public speaking school. But the point is I was nervous to go. But if I never went, I'd never be able to do what I do today. So you're not going to know until you go, right,
That's one side. The other lie of why I am good enough as a lie I've told myself is I've applied for jobs that I don't have the qualifytions for I've had and not I've never lied about who I am, but I've applied for things that I'm not good enough for, or I've reached out to try and make things possible because you have to, right, You're not just going to sit there and be like, I'm going to wait till
I have it all together. And so I think it's important for people to recognize both of those ways, where sometimes you don't have to pretend you're good enough. You have to be honest and say, hey, I'm not good enough, but I love this opportunity. And I send messages like that all the time. I always send people a message saying, hey, I know you could do something way bigger than this, but this is what my idea is, and I'm okay with that.
That actually reminds me when I was at university and we had some exam that I didn't study for and everyone else was studying right before the test and they're like, yeah, you're going to study, and I go no, because you know why, I have God. I don't know why I said that. In that moment, I said, I'll just say a little prayer and I'm going to score it. I'm going to get an A. I was overly confident and
then I did my little prayer. Hey God, if you're listening, it's your favorite you like, please give me an a. And everyone else studied. I took the test. Guess what happened. I failed. So I was like, okay, so that was a little too confidence.
So that's yeah, yeah exactly.
So yeah, that's a wonderful I mean, obviously, I'm not saying it's great that you got bullied when you were seven, but what a wonderful experience that you were able to take something like that and now your whole career is public speaking.
Yeah.
I always love hearing stories like that that somebody decided instead of caring about what everyone else thinks, you're like, Okay, you know what, watch me, and then you're like the top motivational.
Speare I'm not yeah, not even you know, like not even to I genuinely mean this again, like I never do things with the intention of revenge or showing someone what I can do, because that means I'm still giving them the power and saying that how they feel about me is still more important than how I feel about myself.
I like that. Can you kind of elaborate before we dive into your book right now? Can you you kind of elaborate really quick about why it's so important to forgive people just in your heart, not in general where you have to be around them again, but in your heart because it eats you up.
So Yeah, when you carry around unforgiveness in your heart, it's so heavy that it blocks energy from the things you really care about and want to do. Whereas when you choose to forgive, you're almost removing this massive boulder that's weighing on your heart, which then frees you up to love others and receive more love. And so if your hand is holding tightly onto something, there's no space
to hold on to anything else. And if we're tightly holding on too revenge and bitterness and negativity towards someone, then there's no open palm for receiving love and connection and compassion from someone else. And so, to me, forgiveness is not about forgetting and letting go of what the other person did or not setting boundaries. Forgiveness is saying I want to make space for more love, not less love.
I like that. But do you think that some people they may not realize this, because I think I read this research a long time ago. Some speakers said this about how they think they don't want to be better, They think they don't want to be resempful of feel hate, but that's all they know. And sometimes it's scary too.
If every day I wake up and I'm miserable, I'm happy with my life or my purpose now just to hate someone else, it's scary then to wake up the following day and be like, you know what, today I choose love, because then they're like, what am I going to do with my life now? If I have so much happiness to give instead of hating someone all day?
Yeah? I forget what book it is and I can't remember it. But there's a concept that talks about how having a common enemy is often a way to unite people. Yeah, yeah, and even with ourselves. And so that's what you're referring to. It's why so many yeah, religions, philosophies, brands have a common evil so that we can get excited about defeating someone and beating someone. And I agree. It's not like waking up exactly. It's not waking up and saying I
choose love and that doesn't exist anymore. It's just saying I'm not living to prove or disprove anyone else because the only approval that matters is my own. So you're just saying I don't want to live to approve or disprove anyone else. I only want to live for my own approval. It's that decision as opposed to choosing love.
Do you kind of have some example, an idea of how you or a lesson in your time as a monk or after it where something kind of shaped your perspective on love and relationships.
I'd say the biggest one was this idea that monks didn't wait to receive love. They chose to express love or kindness or compassion or joy in every meeting So what I found is that monks lived a life of love not because people loved them, but because they loved others. And I think we think about love as being something you get and receive and people give to you, as opposed to I can feel love just by being nice and kind to someone else, and when I choose to
do that, I am feeling love. And I think also the idea that in the monastery, I felt a lot of love from my teachers, I felt a lot of love from my peers. I felt a lot of love from the people we served. And I think modern society has created romantic love and put romantic love on a pedestal. So we think that if I have romantic love, then my life is perfect, and if I don't have romantic love, then I'm not worthy. And as a monk, you don't
have romantic love. But I felt so much love, which made me realize that we shouldn't devalue other forms of love. Love for your parents, love for your children, love for your friends, love for your family. How can we say that there's a hierarchy of love. But I think subconsciously we do. I think somewhere in our hearts we believe that the epitome of love is between two people who romantically love each other. Right, But I would disagree with that.
I'd say that there are lots of different types of love and none of them should be compared to the other.
I like that because in your book Eight Rules of Love, there's two of the rules. One of them do you discuss service, what you can do for others? Another one you discuss unconditional love, which we're going to dive into, because for me, it's hard to see how unconditional love is possible. I think people want that, But me personally, from my own experience when I've come to unconditional love
is that love comes. Growing up, it felt like love comes with terms and conditions, and if I don't fulfill a certain term or people get everything they need for me, they leave. So is do you think unconditional love is actually realistic? I think, of course you do. Obviously.
I think unconditional love is real I just don't know if it's realistic for two people in a romantic relationship as quickly as people want it to.
Be, Okay, it's quickly. Yeah, I like that.
So I think that unconditional love is a tall order and reciprocal love is more realistic. What you just described is transactional love, and below that is no love. So if you look at love as layers, when you meet someone new, you don't love them and they don't love you.
You don't know that, I'm kidding.
Yeah, yeah, you don't. What you just talked about is what I would call transactional love, where it's like you give me what I want, I give you what you want, and then we're done with each other, right, And that's a lot of people experience that today. Sadly, a lot of people that I've been speaking to recently are experiencing that sense of immature people who just want to use someone's take and they're in their own pain, but that doesn't give them an excuse to do that. Higher than
that is reciprocal love. That means I do nice things for you, you do nice things for me, and we don't count, but we love each other. And then the highest is unconditional love, where I'm ready to do anything for you and I don't even care whether you don't do anything for me. And that's yeah, exactly in parent love, right, is that what you said? Yeah, Like, that's like how parents love their kids, for sure, And that's the kind
of love that exists realistically with unconditional love. But romantic love has to go through these levels because you can't just skip to unconditional love. We think if you put the ring on the finger, or you got married, or you moved in you automatically move into unconditional love. And that's just not true. And so I would want people
to just pace themselves better. Don't fall in love too fast, because that's why it's called falling in love, because you're moving so fast that you can't even walk right, You're just falling over yourself. And I think if we move slower, maybe we could walk in love a bit longer and then maybe learn to run.
Yeah, so you can grow in.
Love exactly, that's the goal. Yeah.
Okay, so that conditional love was your number four rule, But if you kind of go backwards really quick, because many of us grow feeling unloved or we feel like we don't actually understand what love is. Many of us still don't know definition of love because we think it's toxic or based on whatever our parents were. So in your first rule, it's in kind of the whole theme of around your book. It's idea that love is not just an emotion but a skill. And I like that
because a skill gives me hope that I can. You know, the more you do a skill, the more you get to learn how to be better. So how can we kind of shift our mindset to see love in that way? And then what are some practical exercises we can do to develop our ability to love as a skill?
I love that that shows me how thoughtfully you've read the book, because that's such a nuanced point, Like that's such a subtle point, but it's so important because so I love what you said, and you already took the words out of my mouth. That love is a skill and a practice, which means you can learn to love, which means other people can learn to love, and which
means you can build it as a foundation. If love is just a feeling or an emotion, then you're always trying to chase it and find it and you don't know what it looks like. So here's a habit. Here's a couple of habits. Every day, find something you love about your body, and it could be Often when people think of that, they think I have to think of something aesthetic, and I'm like go beyond, think about your organs, like your heart is just working away every day with
no love. When was the last time you showed love to your beat heart? And you think about how much love you think you give to others and they don't give you it in return. That's your heart. Your heart is giving love to you every single day by keeping you alive. Yet we rarely think of our heart. Think about how easy it is to forget about the thing that keeps you beating, breathing and alive right like, we just forget about it. And that translates into our relationships
as well. And so the first thing is, every day or every week, find one thing you love about your body, one thing you like love about your mind, and one thing you love about your heart. If you can start that practice, you are learning to build self love. That's a habit for self love. I'm not telling you to say it out loud. I'm not telling you to say in the mirror. I'm just saying, can you acknowledge that there's so much good here and there's so much worthy
of love? Now? A habit to love someone else a great way is saying I'm going to learn when this person needs attention and when they need space. I'm going to do a little experiment to say, do I actually know this person well enough to know whether they need space? Attention awareness? That's love, and that's a habit and a
skill I can tell. And me and my wife do this with each other all the time, Like I'm always trying to learn does my wife need me to be a fixer or does she need me to be a listener? That's love. That's a skill. That's why love is a skill. I can learn to know that. And if I'm learning, I can ask her, do you want me to be a listener right now? Do you want me to be
a fixer? She just asking that question. It's not complicated, and she could say, yeah, I just want you to be a listener tonight, or and I need you to fix this for me right now. And yesterday she came up to him, She's like, I really need to talk to about something. I want to figure this out. And I was like, great, so we're in fixing mode right And then that helps her love you back. And the third thing is tell people how you want to be loved. I think so often we're scared because we think if
we tell someone how to love us. It's a weakness. But actually, if you tell someone one this is how I feel loved, now they get to choose whether they want to love you in that way or not. Rather than expecting them to read your mind and figure out who you are, tell them share with them.
Right, because you end up setting them up for failure. Oh, they don't care and so on.
Yeah, and some people just most people have just not been trained to like notice these things. Like people just not can't read between the lines.
Well, normally we assume people love the way we love. Yes, we don't realize there's so many different love languages. I mean, I grew up half of my life thinking my dad didn't love me. And my dad every day did his best to show me that he loved me by giving me something his father didn't give him, which was a roof over my head, and supporting me financially. But I never got hugged by him when I never heard the words that he loved me. So I'm like, what is
my dad hate me? When I got older, I realized that's all he knew, Like he doesn't know how to show love that he did his best. Yeah, and we connected again and I feel so always thankful that I was able to learn all these different love languages and got to learn and give my father and I another chance. And I think that I think so many people in this life don't give other people a chance and they just assume, Oh, that person doesn't care about me.
That's so beautiful. That's an amazing reflection. I really appreciate. No, I genuinely do. That's that's so great, because, yeah, we want to be loved the way we give love, and we don't realize there are so many beautiful ways to show love to someone and receive love. And actually, if you tell someone I only want to be loved this way, you miss out on the way they can love you too.
Oh I like that. I love that a lot. Okay, your third rule in your book, you wrote that it's about love is that antidote to fear. And we've earlier discussed fear. Can you kind of discuss how fear can really hold us back from experiencing a connection.
Fear is just an unformed boundary. So fear is a boundary in the making, but it isn't yet a boundary, and that's why it's still a fear. And so what we have to do is we have to take our fears and we have to turn them into principles, agreements, and boundaries. So if I have a fear that someone may leave me, instead of keeping it that way, I'm going to set a boundary saying I'm not going to get too close too quick without the person showing me
they're ready for commitment. Right, I'm not just going to make up in my head and pretend what I think this relationship should be. So I'm going to change my fear into a principle I can live right, as opposed to just saying I'm just going to constantly be scared of this. For example, if I'm scared that someone doesn't love me, I'm going to set an agreement with my partner to say every week we do this, this, and this because it makes us feel close together, and does
that person want to commit to that. If they do, great, we now have an agreement, which means we don't have to hold on to that fear. So we need to change our fears into boundaries, agreements, and commitments to each other so that both people are not walking around with insecurities.
Right, Because people get scared to even communicate in that way, but at least then you would know if your partner is willing to go the extra mile with you or not. It's just living in fear.
Exactly Like I remember when I first met my wife, I was scared. I had a fear that the amount I care about my purpose could scare someone away. So that was my fear. My personal fear was I am so committed to the life I want to create and build that it may scare someone away. So I said that to my wife when we were dating. I said to you, I said, my purpose is going to come first to me forever because I love it. It's my life and soul to help people. Is that okay with you?
Is that something you're comfortable with? And then we looked at what that looks like on a practical level, And luckily I have a wife who understands that about me, and she said the same thing to me. She said, my number one priority is my family. And we had that open and honest conversation and because of that, there hasn't been this weird feeling when I jump on a plane to do something that's my purpose. She's not going to me, well why are you going? Where are you going?
And if she's saying I need to be back with my family, I'm not there, going, well, you've been there a lot this yet, Like because there's a respect and there's an understanding of that's what fuels you. So you can turn your fear into a conversation, a principle and a boundary and a commitment which frees you. Now, she could have said no, Jay, I don't want you to live that way, and then we would have figured that
path out and seen where that would have gone. But I think a lot of us are scared, and then what we don't realize is we end up living out our fears in the future. Right, Yeah, it doesn't go away.
Like literally, if you say I'm just going to take a step back and just in case if they want to leave me, then it won't be all in. And then because you're not all in, they're thinking, oh, the person's notn't.
Interested exactly, rather than you sharing it, and then.
All your fears actually come true. I think a lot of the time that's what happens.
Yes, I did it.
Someone that kept getting scared that someone was going to happen during our dating and then we will break up because of it. In the end end up breaking up because of it.
Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah, your fear is becoming your future for sure.
I love how well you're and your wife communicate, Like I am honestly astonished by it. I mean everything that you're saying. There's so many things you're saying. In my brain. I'm like, oh my god, I want to like save it, press saved so I can remember. It's such good advice for people out there who may not have the type of relationship theyp with your wife or with other partners, or in general, who are currently struggling with loneliness, and this book really helps you know to understand all the
different types of love. What is your message to those that may be struggling with loneliness or heartbreak or lack of love in their lives.
Being alone is a great time to get to know yourself because when you get with someone else, you often start adopting their behaviors, their likes, their patterns. Nothing wrong with that, but if you don't know who you are in the first place, that's why so many people say I lost myself in the relationship right or I forgot who I was. But it's like you weren't really you are in the beginning, And so being alone after a heartbreak is such a great time to get awareness of
who you are. And I think it's so important to go, well, what do I like and what do I not like? What kind of life do I want to create, and what kind of life do I want to build? What's important to me, what's a priority to me, and what isn't And when you start taking that interest in yourself, most often we don't find ourselves interesting. That's why we want someone else in our life to make life interesting.
But if you learn to become interested in yourself, I promise your life will become more interesting and you'll like to take joy in your own company. And by the way, that applies even if you're in a relationship. Even if you're in a relationship, spending time alone is so healthy for a sense of self esteem, for a sense of self awareness. And so this isn't just a skill that you have to practice when you're alone. It's a skill
you have to practice when you're with someone. If you're constantly around someone, you are going to dissolve your identity into who they are and who you become in the relationship and that's not bad per se, but it's not healthy for your own long term. That's why people have been married for three decades and one person says, I haven't achieved my goals. I don't know who I am. It's not because they didn't have a good relationship with that person. It's because you didn't have a good relationship
with yourself. Often when people end up in breakups of divorce, it's not because they didn't have a great relationship. It's because they didn't have a good relationship with themselves and they sacrificed or put aside parts of themselves thinking that that made the relationship better, only years later to find I wish I didn't do that. So I think those
times are times to really get to know yourself. And the way you get to know yourself is doing things by yourself, taking yourself out on dates, going out to dinner on your own, going out and finding the friends that you want to connect with, going and developing the habits and the disciplines and the routines that are fruitful for you. If you do that, you start to attract the right community around you as well.
I think a lot of people are afraid to take a look in the mirror, spend time with themselves because zep down, they may not like who they are. And I think that's a lot of people's biggest fear that what if I get to know myself and I don't like that person?
The best thing is you can change it and you're not that person, like you're not You're not the person you feel like right now. You're something so much more powerful beyond it, beneath it, and you can become anything you want to be, like you truly can. And I think we if you do get to know yourself and you don't like yourself, I promise you another person will not solve that or period right, it just won't.
I like that. From your eight rules, what would you say has been over the course of your life the hardest rule for you to follow?
I think the hardest one is always the rule that
win or lose together. So, because your ego is a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly battle, and when your partner is being stubborn and you don't want to give it in and you want to point them out, or you want to trip them up, or you want to call them out, we do that and oftentimes I think that's what ruins relationships is our partner's trying and we want to act all hard to get, and then we try and then they're acting all hard to get or we're trying to be nice, but they're
not being sincerely nice, so we want to call that out. Like I think we just call out our partners a lot, in a way that we don't do to anyone else, right, Like we pick their faults, more, we pick out their insecurities, more we dig it, the more we know them better, so we know which buttons to push to get a reaction. And I think that's sort.
Of just saying hey, when you're not around, it hurts my feelings totally.
We we don't want to. We want to say in a passive aggressive way.
Oh, you're with your friends tonight, Okay, I guess that's better for you than to hang out with your wife exactly exactly.
We want to say that rather than just saying, hey, this week, shall we plan which nights we're going to spend together. It's the same thing, but and I think that's why win or lose together. It's like, it's really interesting, I was thinking about this. We spend so much time trying to win someone over and then we want them to lose arguments, and it doesn't make any sense, Like we spend all this time trying to win someone over, to impress them, for them to love us, and then
we want them to lose. And I wish we could just give ourselves and them more grace in relationships, because if you win and they lose, you both lose. Right, If you lose and they win, you both lose. So you have two choices. You either win together or you lose together. But if you win and they lose, that's a loss. Because you sleep in the same bed, you live in the same house, you wake up with that person.
You're sharing energy now, and whether you like it or not, if you're trying to put them down or pick them apart, that is going to affect you every day, and you're setting yourself up. I don't want to live in a house where we hate each other or don't like you to each other, or take shots at each other every day. I just don't want to live in that environment. Why would you put yourself through that. You might as well be.
Alone, right, right, Because sometimes you can focus so much on winning an argument and then that's how you lose versus we're arguing, but how can we win together by coming to an agreement?
Yes, we focus so much on winning an argument that we often lose the person because of it. And so often it's not about you losing the argument and them winning either. It's about saying, how do we win together because we're on the same team.
But how can you do that without accidentally giving too much of yourself? Because you know how everything you're saying is so peaceful and so wonderful. But then sometimes we forget that it takes two people to take go. You need your partner to be as understanding as you are. So what if every day I'm the one that's like, it's okay, don't worry about my feelings as long as we can win together.
That's the mistake. That's such great question, And that's the mistake. I'm not saying, you say my feelings don't matter, it doesn't matter, I'll give in. That's not what winning together looks like. Winning doesn't mean tolerance. Winning together doesn't mean like you're just tolerant of someone else's issues and things. It's creating agreements, commitments and boundaries together, us coming together and saying, okay, this is a weekly problem in this house.
How are we going to solve it? It's not me saying you're the issue. You need to change this, you need to sort it out. It's saying this is something we both disagree on, right, how are we going to take care of it? I'll give a silly example. In my own house, the bed was never made right, The bed was never made My wife wakes up earlier than me, so in her head it was my job to make the bed. Now I wake up later, but I feel like I've got a million things to do, and so
I'm thinking, well, she can take care of it later on. Now, if we never talk about it, this could be an issue that lasts for years. And all the studies show that most couples argue about the same things for long amounts of time. It's not that you have new fights, you have the same fights again and again. I'm taking a silly example just to help the situation. Now. The reason why I don't like doing the bed is because we have way too many Christians on that bed. I
don't need bed pillows. I just need the pillow I sleep with and the douvet. She wants the decorative pillows on top, so we made an agreement and a commitment we would limit the decorative pillows and the last person to wake up would do the bed. Oh, and that agreement is solved that problem where five out of seven days, I'm the last person to get out of bed, and so I'll do it, and I'm happy to do it.
But We've also limited the amount of pillows so that I'm not having to like do all this decorative stuff that I'm not a huge fan of in the morning because it may not be like the right act for me. And so I've taken a very silly example. But the point is that's what winning together looks like. Winning together doesn't look like her saying oh, Jay, it's fine if you just want to end exactly, or it doesn't mean me saying I'll do all this decorative stuff for you, honey, because.
I'm gonna pretend, but then I'm going to resent them.
Why would we do that, right, It's not a compromise. It's trying to create a commitment and an agreement together that we can both vibe with.
It would have been funny if you'l like, so now every morning iowaka before.
M Yeah, yeah, so you have to do it.
Yeah, I like that. It's a compromise. Okay, that is really good. You heard so many powerful lessons and insights in your book. Can you kind of share another lesson or piece of advice so you believe that has the power to truly transform someone's life beyond everything else you already mentioned that I think can help anyone. Well. Wow.
I think in love and relationships we often ask the wrong questions.
I like that.
So we often ask questions like are they the right person? Are they right for me? Is there someone else? And I think those questions have unlimited answers, and they're not the right questions because I don't think it's about whether someone's right for you. It's whether you both want to make it right. Like, there is no pers perfect person, there is no perfect partner. There's only the person that wants to make it work with you and the person
you want to make it work with. And if someone doesn't want to make it work with you, it doesn't matter how perfect you think they are, it's not going to work. And we keep asking that question, or we keep thinking when we break up with someone, but they were perfect, they were the one that was the person I wanted to be with And that's real because the research shows in science that you're literally when you break up with someone, you're detoxing from the relationship as if
you're craving a drug. It's like detoxing from a drug. So you're craving that person, but you're craving the idea in your mind of what it looked like, not what it actually was, because guess what, that person doesn't actually want to be there. And so the biggest advice I can give is stop living life in your head and how it looks and how you want it to look, and start navigating the real world, because I guarantee you the real world has more beauty in its beauty, and
it has more signs in its reality. But the version you're living in your mind and your head is going to constantly keep perplexing you because you have a projector of your ideal life up here and then you have the reality of your life down here, and they're never going to match. It's never going to match.
I like that about asking the wrong questions or just a thought when you keep playing. So that person was perfect, If they were perfect for you, then they would want to be with you.
That's exactly that perfect. Yeah.
Yeah, I actually that reminds me of a long time ago. My ex men were together for eight years and when we're going through our one million breakup and I was sad about it, and I was going through my love with drawls, which are like a drug heroin, and I kept remembering this one moment that we had the best time ever. And I was just giving my friend this advice because she's going through it right now, and I said,
that day we had the best memory. We went to Malibur together, then we got massages together, and then we had dinner and we made love. It was the best stay ever. And then finally I said, let's really go back, and I remember I was really thinking more logically, and I went back to that day that was my best day of a relationship, and it tell me I got
to see for what it was. When we're having lunch in Malibu, my boyfriend's on his phone and he was looking and I was like smiling, so happy to be there with him, and You're just like, okay, you're almost done, are ready? Then we go get massages. He looks at me, He's like, you know this was really expensive. Are you going to be thankful for this and it's like all these little moments, which is funny. You know, I'm I'm not in any way blaming him. I'm just mean we
weren't to match. Yeah, but it's the way I wanted to remember that day was as if we were perfect, it was beautiful as my person, when in reality, he'd I don't think the guy even liked me. Yeah, you know, then dinner again on his phone. So it's not easy when you look at things realistically, but I think it is so helpful because I was so desperate to be loved that I didn't even notice that the person in front of me didn't love me.
Oh, that is so powerful. That is exactly it. We're so I'm going to repeat what you just said. We're so desperate to be loved that we often don't even realize is that the person in front of us doesn't even love us, like you just said that, And that is so powerful, and it is so true that we're making up the story. And it's really interesting. The trick of the mind is when you're with someone, you pick at all the negatives, but when you break up with someone,
all you do is remember the positives. Yeah, and our mind plays that trick on us. When you're with someone every day you're like, oh, they're annoying and they're the worst and they don't care about me, and then when they break up, you're like, no, no, no, because it turns into that craving And so we have to remind ourselves of reality. Always focus on the facts. If you want the truth, The truth is the facts of what
was really happening. And if you look at the facts, chances are you don't want to be with that person.
Yeah, Or kind of what you said in the beginning with how when you're negative, our minds we like ourselves or mind place s tricks on us. So if I have a completely wonderful relationship with you and then I fall into a depression or and I start lying to myself thinking that I'm not worthy of love, I'm going to go back to our memories to remember something you look at me weird or and all that, and I'm going to think you don't love me. It's just it's
really interesting. Okay, So from your book Eight Rules of Love, what would you say? I mean, there's so many great pieces of advice, but what would you say One of the best piece of advice that people can take from your book.
I think I would say overall, I think we've touched on some really beautiful points in the book. And the biggest thing I'd say is the book's about every stage of love, how to find it, how to keep it, and how to let it go. And I think that I tried to write a book that was for everyone at every stage of a relationship, almost like a map. And if someone wants to talk about and think about love in a more systematic, in a more scientific, and in a more step by step way, then this book
is great. If someone wants to talk about love in a more practical, real way, then this book is great for you because I'm not trying to talk about love with this ethereal concept or this fluffy woo woo thing. It's like, I'm just laying it out as it is.
And if someone wants to help going through a breakup, if someone wants help because they're just about to move in with someone, if someone wants to help figure out being alone, this book covers the best research, the best wisdom, and the best ideas, not just from me, but from And this is what I keep reminding everyone when I'm putting a book together. I'm not just sharing things that I know that would be limited. I go out there and research and curate so I find science, I find wisdom,
I find real life stories. I interview people, I look at research and studies like it's all curated to give you a really complete picture.
And I think one thing from this whole interview that I really liked. When you're discussing you and your wife is that it seems that you never stop learning about her. And I think that's one thing that people to understand when it comes to love, that you're always as long as you continue to be curious about your partner how to grow, that's a successful partnership.
Right, Love means to learn. Love means that I will. If you love something, it means you will never stop learning about it. When someone says I love football or basketball, what does that mean? It means they're always learning about it. What happened this week? R What did the player do? That player got injured, This happened that person scored? Like it's constant. Right, That's what love is. If you love your garden, you take care of it every day. If you love your home, you take care of every item
every day. But with our partners. We say we love them, but we take care of them once a year, and that doesn't make any sense. That's not love, that's ownership.
I like that analogy and I like that comparison also, then with yourself, because that's another thing. I love myself yesterday. How can I hate myself today?
Exactly right.
One of the biggest things I struggle with is focusing on my progress over perfection because I'm a perfectionist, which sets me up to failure obviously. So how can we shift our mindset and embrace this philosophy and what would you say some practical steps we can take towards our goals with just you know, not being a perfectionist.
Yeah, I just I think we have to come at it from the point of view that perfection doesn't exist. And I think the fact that we even think perfection exists is partly the problem because it gives you something to work towards. But when you realize perfection doesn't exist. But there's a great book called flow and flow state is all about when you feel like you're in the zone.
So musicians or rappers or swimmers or singers when they're like fully zoned in, like if you watched Elvis, or you watch Beyonce, or you watch your favorite athlete, you can tell they're in the zone that's called flow state. And they say flow state is when your challenge meets your skill. So when your skill and your challenge meet and are aligned, that's when you experience flow. But most of us experience one or the other. We experience our
challenge above our skill. That's really depressing, it's disheartening, it makes us feel unworthy. Or we experience our skill above our challenge that makes us feel bored, it makes us
for lethargic, just feel complacent. So what I say to people is if you want to feel progress and not work on perfection, just focus on making your skill and your challenge a line and that will create such a powerful mode to help you focus on your skill and your challenge, not on perfectional progress, and it gives you something worthy to focus on. So that's what I always focus on. If I find something too easy, I'm like,
what challenge do I need to take on? And if I find something really hard, I'm like, what skill don't I have? So I'm not worried about perfectional progress. I'm more worried about my skill and my challenge, Well.
I have a question. Yeah, is there something that I should be asking you that I haven't asked you?
No, I think you have asked brilliant questions. This has been such a fun conversation. I've answered so many questions that I've never been asked before. That's credit to you and your research and preparation. And I've had such a good time talking to you.
Oh yeah, thank you. Let's close this with your message of love and connection over the course of your career, over the course of this book. I think it's phenomenal and it's so powerful. So what advice last advice do you have for those who may be struggling to cultivate meaningful connections in their lives and what can they do to kind of deepen the connections they already have.
Connect with people who want to connect with you. I think most of our issues come when we're trying to connect with people who don't want to connect with us, right, And I promise you you may think you make effort with people who don't make effort with you. I promise you there are people who make effort with you that you don't make effort with. I guarantee you there are people there that text you more than you text them, but you don't want to text with them. You want
to text with someone else. And we live in this world where we are constantly chasing, pursuing, wanting to be around different people. But there are people who love you right now that you're disconnected from, and so connect with people who want to connect with you. Make an effort with people who make an effort with you. Sure, make new efforts and try and connect with new people, but don't chase someone who's clearly showing you that they don't
have space for you in their life. That doesn't make them a bad person, they just don't have time right now.
I like that. It's kind of it's your childhood trauma. You're chasing that I love you didn't get as a child. And then it's talked about a long time ago, where you spend your whole life thinking people don't love you, and then when you actually pay attention, you realize all these people around you do love you. They've been trying to show you love. And you said, you're like, why doesn't that person out life?
Yes, that's often what our life is. That is exactly what it is. We're looking at the one person that we want love from, as opposed to looking at the ten people are showing us love.
How do we stop then and become aware? Because self awareness is not easy, How do you finally like, you know what enough? I don't want to chase this person anymore. They don't love me.
It will only happen the more you connect with the people who do love you, you'll naturally feel it. You'll feel less needy, you feel less fomo, you'll feel less disconnected. So it's not about I think sometimes we think I have to disconnect first to connect somewhere else. It's the other way around. If I go and connect with the people I want to connect with, who naturally disconnect from the people that I don't need it.
So you have to unlearn your all behavior in a way, because if actually thinking chasing someone, that's what love is versus this person's saying. If I'm so used to only chasing love, if you're sitting next to me and you're showing me love, I'm not going to understand.
This is love. That you've just hit the nail on the head. That's exactly.
It's all because of your book.
No, no, no, But that's exactly it that we have that is so well said. We've conditioned ourselves to believe that love is chasing someone, which means even when the most loving person is sitting right next to us. Or we've convinced ourselves that love means fixing someone, and so
we keep finding people to fix. Or we've convinced ourselves that love means saving someone, so we keep finding someone to save, and so we keep looking for someone to fix, someone to save, someone to chase, not realizing that love men who's willing to sit with me right now and be present.
I agree because, like I said in the past, when I grew up with my parents, we're all together. My mom showed me so much love. She's the most loving person of ever in my life. My dad didn't, and I chase that so much, and my mom would show me love. I thought, that's so weak. She cries so easily. She's overly loving. And my father forget who my birthday was, and I was like, that's my hero.
Yeah, exactly exactly, and we get trained. That's a perfect example.
Okay, so where can people find you?
You can find me in my new book, of Course, with a great Place, which is eight rules of love dot com. You can find me on my podcast on Purpose and which is across all platforms, and you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at j Sheddy Okay Perfect.
And then you're currently also your first ever world tour Love Rules, So you guys can go to Jshatdy tour dot com for tickets and also be my description. And you can follow Jay on Instagram and subscribe to his podcast if you can already subscribe, which I surprised his podcast is on Purpose. If you have any questions, make sure to DM him and follow him. Is there anything else you want to add?
No, I just want to say thank you to you. Thank you so much for having such a genuine, thoughtful conversation and doing so much incredible preparation, asking such great questions, such amazing I would just say to be a letter and for all of you that listen via Letter's amazing host, because when I said something today, I felt like she was internalizing it, reflecting it, and you could see her
do what I hope everyone else is doing. And I think that makes you an amazing host to actually do that live and in real time and apply it to your own life. And I think that's going to benefit your community, and obviously it is, that's why they follow you. But I just want everyone to know that that's a really special skill. So thank you so much.
Thank you so much for saying that.
Of course I mean it.
Okay, bye, you guys, have a beautiful day.
Thank you. I read something mind boggling recently. Most of the cells in our body completely renewed themselves over our lifetimes, some in just a few days. Make no bones about it. Were literally built for change. Yeah, for some reason, we resist it. The next seven minutes are about you and how to change your attitude towards well change. I'm Jay Shaddy.
Welcome to the Daily Jay. Now let's get centered with three mindful breaths inhaling and exhaling, feeling the air flow in and feeling it flow out, bringing your attention to this moment, and settling in to the here and now. There's an old story about a man who had been struggling with anxiety. He heard that meditation could support his mental and emotional health, so he went to a local
mindfulness center and started taking classes on his own. He practiced diligently, getting up every morning and meditating to begin the day. One night, a few weeks after starting his practice, the man stayed after class to talk with his teacher. I don't know what's wrong, he said. I'm doing everything you described. I'm sitting every day, I'm breathing, I'm noticing thoughts and trying to release them. But I just can't get my mind to calm down. It's not working. The
teacher nodded and smiled. It's okay, she said, keep meditating. It will change. The man was skeptical, but he kept meditating. A few months later, the man stayed after class again, this time with good news for his teacher. Everything's changed, meaned just like you said. I'm finally feeling it. All the calm, the relaxation. I can easily clear my mind. It's wonderful. The teacher nodded and smiled. Keep meditating, she said,
it will change. If only we could freeze those good feelings, those times in life when things are going our way. We had a great day at work or a fantastic date. We're feeling energized and healthy, and we think, finally it's all coming together. Then when things shift, as they inevitably, do we feel despondent, angry or frustrated. Today was a struggle at work. We're feeling misunderstood by our partner. We're feeling burned out and warm thin. In these moments, it
feels like things will never change. But there is no feeling in the world that is eternal, and there is no feeling in the world that is eternally absent. Whatever you're experiencing, it will change on some level. We know this, and yet we either push back against it or we try and rush the change. But wishing your life would stop changing is like hoping that summer won't turn to autumn, and trying to rush change is like telling winter to
hurry up and become spring. Just like in nature, life happens in seasons, and while it seems like some seasons are good and others are bad, attachment and aversion are really just different sides of the same coin. They can make change more difficult or painful than it needs to be. By labeling the shift as good or bad, we're judging the moment. We're resisting the flow of life. Instead, when we learn to accept change, we're able to embrace whatever life gives us. Then we'll be able to meet each
moment with courage. Clarity and composure. So today good or bad, happy or sad, calm or stressed, just let it flow. And with that in mind, let's meditate and then reflect on your approach to change. So get comfortable wherever you are, giving yourself the permission to release a little tension, closing your eyes if you feel like it will help you settle in the natural rhythm of the breath in and out,
observing how your body feels. You can rest your attention on any part of this moment and see if you can bring an attitude of acceptance to whatever you're experiencing. If something feels good, we're not trying to hold onto it, And if something feels challenging or uncomfortable, we're not trying to change it. We're just noticing what is and allowing ourselves to be okay with that, breathing in and breathing out, stretching up and sinking down. And now let's open this up.
Think about your relationship with change. Are you familiar with attachment or aversion? Do you meet change with resistance? Can you let go of your grip on the good times? Relax your rush during tough times? I know this might be easiest, said than done, but remember we're built for change. I'm so grateful to you for joining me today. I'll see you tomorrow.